[Smithson, Alison [ed] "Team 10 Primer", The MIT Press, (1968), ISBN 0-289-79556-7] Team 10's theoretical framework, disseminated primarily through teaching and publications, had a profound influence on the development of architectural thought in the second half of the 20th century, primarily in Europe. ]Two different movements emerged from the Team 10: the New Brutalism of the English members (Alison and Peter Smithson) and the Structuralism (architecture) of the Dutch members (Aldo van Eyck and Jacob Bakema).
"Core family members" included:
*Jacob B. Bakema, The Netherlands
*Aldo van Eyck, The Netherlands
*Alison and Peter Smithson, England
*Georges Candilis, France
*Shadrach Woods, USA/France
*Giancarlo De Carlo, Italy
History
Team 10's core group [Text by Max Risselada & Dirk van den Heuvel - www.team10online.org] started meeting within the context of CIAM, the international platform for modern architects founded in 1928 and dominated by Le Corbusier and Sigfried Giedion. After the war CIAM became the venue for a new generation of modern architects. As a student, Candilis had already been taking part in the CIAM meetings since the congress in Athens, 1933, while Bakema and Van Eyck had been involved in the discussions on the future of modern architecture since the ‘reunion’ congress in Bridgwater, 1947. Alison and Peter Smithson attended the congress in Hoddesdon in 1951 to hear Le Corbusier speak, and it was there that they met, among others, Candilis, Bakema and Van Eyck. These individuals would form part of the core of Team 10 after the dissolution of CIAM, as would Shadrach Woods and Giancarlo De Carlo.
The younger members who instigated the changes in CIAM formed a much wider group than the later core of Team 10. After the eighth congress in Hoddesdon, the individual national groups of CIAM set up ‘youngers’ sections, whose members generally took a highly active part in the organization. The intention was to rejuvenate CIAM, but instead a generation conflict started to dominate the debates, triggering a lengthy process of handing over the control of the CIAM organization to the younger generation. After the tenth congress in Dubrovnik in 1956, organized by a representative group from the younger generation which was nicknamed ‘Team 10’, the revival process of CIAM began to falter, and by 1959 the legendary organization came to an end at a final congress in Otterlo. An independent Team 10 with a partly changed composition subsequently started holding its own meetings without declaring a formal new organization.
There is a variety of reasons why Team 10 and its particular core participants emerged from this process. They certainly belonged to the most combatant, outspoken and eloquent ‘youngers’. They also shared a profound distrust of the bureaucratic set-up of the old CIAM organization which they refused to continue. But perhaps more importantly, they were initially part of the most active and dominant CIAM groups, namely those from the UK, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Switzerland, which were run by the second, so-called middle generation of modern architects. This observation partly explains why there are no German participants to the Team 10 discourse in the early years; due to the Second World War most of the first and second generation of modern architects had fled the country to the UK and the USA. This migration also explains the dominance of the Anglo-Saxon contribution to post-war CIAM, which was quite different from the pre-war years, when modern architecture was dominated by developments on the European continent. Especially the English youngers were eager to abandon the CIAM organization and set up their own platform.
There is no doubt that Team 10 sprang from within CIAM but it is impossible to identify an exact and singular moment of origin; looking back each Team 10 participant seems to remember a different particular moment. The chosen period of 1953-81 represents the years of the most intensive interaction between the core participants. All of them were present in an official capacity for the first time in 1953, at the CIAM congress in Aix-en-Provence, except for De Carlo who first attended a CIAM meeting in 1955 and who did not really form part of the core group of Team 10 until after the dissolution of CIAM. The last ‘official’ Team 10 meeting took place in 1977, but in retrospect the core participants identify the demise of Bakema in 1981 as marking the end of Team 10. With the loss of Bakema as a driving force, the ‘magic’ of the meetings apparently evaporated. At the same time, this was the moment when Van Eyck and the Smithsons became embroiled in a dispute which damaged their formerly close relationship beyond repair. Individual Team 10 members continued to meet, but the core of the group had finally disintegrated. Besides the ambiguous status of the participants and of the group, as well as the time frame, there is a third factor complicating the reconstruction of the history of Team 10. From the perspective of conventional historiography, there is scarcely a tangible product or object to research. The individuals within the group emphatically maintained their autonomous standpoints as demonstrated by the many clashes that arose. Yet they persisted in calling Team 10 a ‘family’, so expressing their close bond and their mutual trust and respect.
There was no unequivocal Team 10 theory or school in the traditional sense. There was only one manifesto, the Doorn Manifesto of 1954, and that had been assembled within the older CIAM organization before Team 10 came into being. Even this one manifesto was moreover a subject of dispute between the Dutch and English younger members of CIAM. Mention may be made of two other brief public statements which were sent into the world in 1961 in the aftermath of the dissolution of CIAM – the ‘Paris Statement’ and ‘The Aim of Team 10’. They stated the new group’s intentions to continue to meet, but can hardly be called a programme for a new architecture. According to the introductory text of the Team 10 Primer, the individual members ‘sought each other out, because each has found the help of the others necessary to the development and understanding of their own individual work’. It could be argued that the only ‘product’ of Team 10 as a group was its meetings, at which the participants put up their projects on the wall, and exposed themselves to the ruthless analysis and fierce criticism of their peers.
External links
* [http://www.team10online.org Team 10 Online]
* [http://www.lecarrebleu.eu lecarrebleu.eu]
References
elected Bibliography
* Risselada, Max and van den Heuvel, Dirk (eds),Team 10 1953-1981, In Search of A Utopia of the Present, Published by: NAi Publishers, Rotterdam 2005, ISBN 90-5662-471-7.
* Smithson, Alison, ed., Team 10 Primer, MIT Press, Boston, 1968, ISBN 0-289-79556-7
* Smithson, Alison, ed., Team 10 Meetings: 1953-1984, Delft/New York 1991
* Smithson, A., The City Centre Full of Holes , Architecture Association Quarterly 1977, no. 2-3, 4-23
* Smithson, A. and P. Smithson, The Heroic Period of Modern Architecture, London/Milan 1981 [reprint of Architectural Design December 1965]
* Smithson, P., Three Generations , in: ILA&UD Annual Report 1980, Urbino 1981
* Smithson, A. (ed.), The Emergence of Team 10 out of CIAM: Documents, London 1982
* Smithson, A., and P. Smithson, The Shift, London 1982 Smithson, P., To Establish a Territory, in: ILA&UD Annual Report 1985-86, Siena 1986
* Smithson, P., Conglomerate Ordering , in: ILA&UD Annual Report 1986-87, Siena 1987
* Smithson, A. and P. Smithson, Thirty Years of Thoughts on the House and Housing 1951-1981, in: D. Lasdun (ed.), Architecture in an Age of Scepticism, London 1984, 172-191
* Smithson, A., Héritage: Carré Bleu, Paris, Le Carré Bleu 1988, summer
* Smithson, A. and P. Smithson, Italian Thoughts, Stockholm 1993
* Smithson, P., Markers on the Land, ILA&UD Annual Report 1992-1993, Urbino 1993
* Smithson, A., and P. Smithson, Whatever Happened to Metabolism? A Summons to the Fourth Generation, The Japan Architect 1988, April
* Smithson, A. and P. Smithson, Changing the Art of Inhabitation; Mies Pieces, Eames Dreams, The Smithsons, London 1994
* Smithson, A. and P. Smithson, The Charged Void: Architecture, New York 2001
* Smithson, A. and P. Smithson, The Charged Void: Urbanism, New York 2005
* Vidotto, M., Alison and Peter Smithson: Work and Projects, Barcelona 1997
* Bakema, J., Gedachten achter architectuur, Rotterdam 1977
* Bakema, J.B., Thoughts About Architecture, London/New York 1981
* Eyck, A. van, Imagination and Competence : No Misplaced Suburbia / The Enigma of Size, Spazio e Società 1979, no. 8, December, 43-78
* Eyck, A. van, What Is and What Isn't Architecture; à propos of Rats, Posts and Other Pests (R.P.P.), Lotus International 1981, no. 28, 15-20
* Eyck, A. van, World Architecture 1983, no. 22, special issue, 22-45
* Eyck, A. van, Wasted Gain, in: D. Lasdun (ed.), Architecture in an Age of Scepticism, London 1984, 234-253
* Eyck, A. van, and H. van Eyck, Recent Work, Amsterdam 1989, with contributions by P. Buchanan, L. Lefaivre and A. Tzonis
* Bohigas, O., Aldo Van Eyck or a New Amsterdam School, Oppositions 1977, no. 9, 21-36
* Correa, F., Aldo van Eyck: a biographical conversation, Arquitecturas bis 1977, no. 19, 17-21
* Santis, P. De, Aldo van Eyck : scritti e architettura, Florence 2003
* Strauven, F. (ed.), Niet om het even wel evenwaardig; van en over Aldo van Eyck, Rotterdam 1986
* Strauven, F., Aldo van Eyck: The Shape of Relativity, Amsterdam 1998
* Candilis, G., ‘Housing and Development, CAU 1980, no. 68, 46-57
* Avermaete, T., Travelling Notions of Public and Private: The French Mass Tourism Projects of Candilis-Josic-Woods, OASE 2004, no. 64, 16-45
* Erskine, R., Democratic Architecture: The Universal and Useful Art , in: D. Lasdun (ed.), Architecture in an Age of Scepticism, London 1984, 72-93
* Egelius, M., Ralph Erskine: Architect, Stockholm 1990
* Carlo, G. De, The University Centre, Urbino, in: D. Lasdun (ed.), Architecture in an Age of Scepticism, London 1984, 50-71
* Carlo, G. De, and F. Karrer, Paesaggio con figure [interview] , Spazio e Società 1988, no. 41
* Carlo, G. De, A New Theory of Urban Design, Spazio e Società 1990, no. 49
* Carlo, G. De, Architecture and the Spirit of Place, Building Design 1993, no. 1151, November, 17-23
* Carlo, G. De, Feminine Virtues; Alison Smithson, a Courageous Utopian, Architects Journal 1993, no. 8, 18-19* Karrer, F. and G. De Carlo, Architecture, Urban Planning, Society, Domus 1988, no. 695, 17-28
* McKean, J., Giancarlo De Carlo: Layered Places, Stuttgart 2004* Carlo, G. De, Notes on the Uncontrollable Ascent of Typology, Casabella 1985, no. 509-510, 46-51
* Maki, F. (ed.), De Carlo, Space Design 1987, no. 274, special issue, 6-64
* Pesci, R.O., Giancarlo De Carlo: From the Centre to the Periphery, Summa 1986, no. 225, 28-46
* Rossi, L., Giancarlo De Carlo: architetture, Milan 1988
* Avermaete, T., Mat-Building. Alison Smithson's Concept of Two Dimensional Density , in: Heynen, H., Vandenburgh, D. (eds.), Inside Density, Brussels 2003, 65-75
* Gunay, B., History of CIAM and Team 10, METU, journal of faculty of architecture 1988, no. 1, 23-44
* Johnston, P., (ed.), Architecture Is Not Made with the Brain: The Labour of Alison and Peter Smithson, London 2005
* Le Carré Bleu 1958-88, Architettura; cronache e storia 1989, no. 5 (403), May, 355-375
* Banham, R., The New Brutalism: Ethic or Aesthetic?, London 1966
* Lüchinger, A., Strukturalismus in Architektur und Städtebau / Structuralism in Architecture and Urban Planning / Structuralisme en architecture et urbanisme, Stuttgart 1980
* Mumford, E., The CIAM Discourse on Urbanism: 1928-1960, Cambridge, Mass. 2000
* Mumford, E., The Emergence of Mat or Field Buildings, in: Sarkis H. (ed), CASE: Le Corbusier's Venice Hospital and the Mat Building Revival, Munich/New York 2001, 48-65
* Pedret, A., CIAM and the Emergence of Team 10 Thinking, 1945-1959, PhD dissertation, MIT 2001
* Sarkis, H., et al. (ed.), CASE: Le Corbusier's Venice Hospital and the Mat Building Revival, Munich/New York 2001
* Zardini, M., Dal Team X al Team x From Team X to Team x, Lotus international 1997, no. 95, 76-97
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