Véronique Patteeuw: OASE 97. Action and Reaction in Architecture

Lecture by Véronique Patteeuw discussing her work as co-editor of OASE 97. Action and Reaction.

OASE 97. Action and Reaction presents a collection of confrontations between architects themselves, and between architects and architecture critics. Creating and thinking about architecture has always been defined by the mechanism of action and reaction. One way of making architecture is criticized or rejected and immediately used as a starting point for another, opposing and better method, practice or theory. Architects and critics react to each other’s views using drawings, texts, models and buildings. A good architecture culture thrives on such a basis: the exciting battle between views, opinions and beliefs. OASE 97 describes and illustrates passionate debates and polemical interactions from the seventeenth to the late twentieth century. The result is a collection of opposing yet inseparably connected definitions of good and necessary architecture.

Véronique Patteeuw (PhD) is associate professor at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture et du Paysage Lille and editor of OASE, Journal for Architecture. Her research focuses on the theory and history of architectural publications, mostly intersecting with the history of postmodernism. From 2001 to 2010, she directed architectural publications for the Netherlands Architecture Institute in Rotterdam and co-curated in 2006 the Belgian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Currently she is co-editing – with Léa-Catherine Szacka – Mediating Messages, a publication on the role of media in shaping postmodern architecture (Bloomsbury, 2017) and developing architectural research for Studio SNCDA (Brussels).

Part of the Arguments Lecture Series organized by the M.S. Advanced Architectural Design program.