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Architecture in Uniform

Article May 2011

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Architecture in
Uniform at the CCA 1 annotation here
May 20, 2011 - 12:07
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An architecture report from Montral by Write a comment...

Mary Louise Lobsinger

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Investigating the role of designers during World War

II, curator Jean-Louis Cohen fills a crucial gap in the
history of architecture

The Architecture in Uniform: Designing and Building for the Second World Section
War exhibition at the Canadian Centre for Architecture presents an Architecture

extensively researched investigation into a largely overlooked part of Author

Mary Louise Lobsinger
20th century architectural history. The exhibition addresses World War II,
Published
which has often been treated as a sort of interregnum in architectural 19 May 2011
history, as lying between the interwar period on one hand, and the Keywords
postwar, on the other. As curator Jean-Louis Cohen, Sheldon H. Solow Albert Kahn, Architecture in Uniform, Bruno Zevi,
Canadian Centre for Architecture, Jean-Louis
Professor of History of Architecture at New York University, more than
Cohen, World War II
ably demonstrates architects were involved in many capacities in the
Location
years leading up to and throughout the conflict. Montral

The exhibition is also premised upon an even bolder thesis. Cohen is not
only interested in showing the ways in which architects participated in the Domus Network
war effort but argues that their contributions to mass industrial "interesting :)"
Add comment 1
production were integral to the advance of modernism, paving the way for by Francesca Schioppo
Recommend 24
its absolute authority in subsequent decades. As Cohen asserts in a press
12
release statement, the war served as an "accelerator of technological
innovation and production that would lead to the supremacy of RSS feed English or Italian
modernism in architecture." This claim sees the intensification of
industrial production for the war as galvanizing experimentation and
advancing expertise that would radically change ways of living at the end
of the war.

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Architecture in Uniform at the CCA - Architecture - Domus 01/10/11 1:36 PM

Ford Motor bomber factory, Willow Run, Michigan, by Albert Kahn Associates, view of the drafting room, 1942. Photograph by Hedrich-Blessing. CCA
Collection. Gift of Federico Bucci. Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal. Chicago History Museum, HB-07074-G.

The exhibition evidences a wide-ranging pursuit of materials that set the

context for and document architectural involvement in the years
preceding and during the conflict. Although the exhibition focuses on
Europe as the main theater of war the contents crisscross the lines of
conflict representing the Allies and Axis alike through projects from
Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United States, the Netherlands,
Spain, and the USSR. The contents are arranged thematically over seven
gallery spaces, introducing the viewer to various topics and artifacts
through categories, such as the Home Front, Producing War Production,
Mobile Architectures, Fortress Europe, Camouflage, and Macro-Projects
and From War to Peace. These categories identify key aspects of
architectural activity from the domestic and small scale like planting a
victory garden or installing a backyard bomb shelter to the large scale,
including the planning of territorial systems of defense and concentration
camps; and from the experimentation with materials such as plastics to
innovations in camouflage techniques.

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Architecture in Uniform at the CCA - Architecture - Domus 01/10/11 1:36 PM

"Guideline for an Air Raid", Tokyo, 1943.

The Wolfsonian-Florida International
University, Miami Beach, Florida, The
Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection,
XB2002.07.26.034.

Perhaps most dramatic is the scale of mass industrialization as seen in the

design of buildings and assembly lines producing the machinery for the "The Second World War was
war. With this came innovations in worker housing and, of course, the marked by total
need to protect the sites equipping the war by either submerging buildings industrialization in civilian life
below ground as in the European context or through decentralized
and in conflict. And in the
planning strategies in North America. The Second World War was marked
aftermath of the war the
by total industrialization in civilian life and in conflict. And in the
aftermath of the war the materials, technologies, and planning strategies
materials, technologies, and
would be recycled for new markets and to new effect. planning strategies would be
recycled for new markets and to
new effect."

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Architecture in Uniform at the CCA - Architecture - Domus 01/10/11 1:36 PM

Bruno Zevi in the uniform of the British Army, 1944. CCA Collection.

Flanking the entrance to the exhibition are two large photographs

depicting the ruins of Cologne following an Allied aerial raid. The
photographs by August Sander set the tone and identify major conceptual
threads at play throughout the exhibition: the scale of war and the
menace, as never seen before, of aerial bombardment. The latter, the shift
in combat from field to air, had been anticipated immediately in the
aftermath of WWI. The change in scale plays across several conditions
including the planning of cities and industry to protect from aerial
bombardment, the mobilization of workforce and the degree of
destruction.

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Architecture in Uniform at the CCA - Architecture - Domus 01/10/11 1:36 PM

Chrysler tank armory, Warren Township, Michigan, by Albert Kahn Associates, 1941. Photograph by Hedrich-Blessing. Chicago History Museum, HB-
06539-C

Scale is evidenced in Albert Kahn's work, such as the Ford Motor Bomber
Factory at Willow Run, Michigan or the Chrysler Tank Arsenal in Warren
Township Michigan. The photograph of the long faade expanse of the
latter and the seemingly infinite interior of the drafting room of the
former (both depicted on the exhibition poster) point not only to scale in
the sense of structural span, size of enclosed space or the workforce
contained within, but in terms of environmental control, of technological
reach. For the interior climate, the maintenance of consistent quality in air
and lighting answered the demand for controlled twenty-four hour
working conditions to produce the war. The emergence of scalein all
sensesbut particularly in the isolated industrial landscape would
continue into postwar planning.

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Architecture in Uniform at the CCA - Architecture - Domus 01/10/11 1:36 PM

"Plant a Victory Garden", poster, 1943. The Wolfsonian-Florida International University, Miami Beach, Florida, don de Leonard A. Lauder, 2007.12.45.

This scale of planning in response to fear of aerial attack had of course

been imagined well before the beginning of the war and here one need
only consider Le Corbusier's preoccupations in proposals such as La Ville
Radieuse. And the viewer learns, as Cohen contends that, "The war was a

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Architecture in Uniform at the CCA - Architecture - Domus 01/10/11 1:36 PM

process of transformation involving all components of architecture in its

mobilization. This militarization of the field forced the pursuit of the new
in order to meet the demands of war production: new materials needed to
be implemented in new ways, and new technologies needed to be put to
new uses." The claim that the architectural contribution to the war and to
industrialization secured the success of modernism in the postwar period
is unassailable on this account.

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Architecture in Uniform at the CCA - Architecture - Domus 01/10/11 1:36 PM

"Atlantic Wall; 1943 is not 1918", German poster printed in the Netherlands, 1943. The Wolfsonian-Florida International University, Miami Beach,

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Architecture in Uniform at the CCA - Architecture - Domus 01/10/11 1:36 PM

Florida, The Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection, XX1990.2907.

The exhibition features drawings, photographs, posters, books and other

publications, models and films. The materials are drawn form the CCA
Collection as well as loans from many international institutions.
Mary Louise Lobsinger

The exhibition Architecture in Uniform: Designing and Building for the

Second World War, curated by Jean-Louis Cohen, is on show through 18
September 2011.

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A team of camouflage artists at work at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, illustration in Robert P. Breckenridge, Modern Camouflage: The New Science of Protective
Concealment, 1942. McGill University Library, Montreal.

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Architecture in Uniform at the CCA - Architecture - Domus 01/10/11 1:36 PM

Montral

Architecture in Uniform at the CCA Domus Network

An architecture report from Montral by Mary Louise Lobsinger Add comment 1

Recommend 24
More 24 May 2011, Albert Kahn, Architecture in Uniform, Bruno Zevi, Canadian Centre for
Architecture, Jean-Louis Cohen, World War II 12

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Architecture in Uniform
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Palladio at Work On view until 22 May 2011, the

exhibition gives new insight on
Palladio's use of drawings as a
An architecture report from Montral tool to record, develop, and
disseminate his ideas

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Architecture in Uniform at the CCA - Architecture - Domus 01/10/11 1:36 PM

Unknown Fields
Division Part III:
Baikonur Cosmodrome On hand for the launch
of a space telescope, the
UFD team completes its
mission to
technologically altered
An architecture report from Baikonur by landscapes at the
Nelly Ben Hayoun Baikonur Cosmodrome

Roberto Zancan talks

with curator Jean-Louis
Architecture in Cohen about his survey
currently at the CCA,

Uniform investigating the role

that design and
architecture played in
An architecture report from Montreal by Roberto Zancan World War II

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