CIAM

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CIAM (Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne). At the request of a rich patron of architects, Madame Hélène de Mandrot(1867–1948), in 1928, Sigfried Giedion organized a meeting of leading Modern architects including Berlage, Le Corbusier, El Lissitzky, Rietveld, and Stam. Karl Moser was elected as the first president of CIAM, which became the arbiter and disseminator of the theory and dogma of International Modernism until its dissolution in 1959. It promoted Functionalism, standardization, and rationalization in the 1930s, when it was dominated first by the Germans, and then by Le Corbusier. In 1933 the Athens Charter set down the primary functions of urban planning, including rigid functional zones with green belts between, high-rise apartment-blocks for housing, provision for traffic, and space for recreation. Costa's Brasilia was to be the realization of CIAM's aims in this respect, but rigid adherence to the dogmas of CIAM has been responsible for many problems in planning and architecture since 1945, and the results have not been happy aesthetically, socially, functionally, nor in many other ways. Furthermore, the insistence on rectangular structures has resulted in plenty of SLOAP which cannot be used for much. CIAM held its final meeting in 1959 after which architects such as Bakema and the Smithsons attempted to take Modernism forward on new tracks with Team X.

Bibliography

Jeanneret-Gris (1973);
Lampugnani (ed.) (1988);
Mumford (2000);
Smithson (1968);
Smithson& and Smithson (1991);
Steinmann (1979)

C.I.A.M. (Congrès internationaux d'architecture moderne). Founded in 1928 by Hélène de Mandrot, Sigfried Giedion , and Le Corbusier , C.I.A.M. sought to divert architecture from academic preoccupations. The organization was the major instrument for propagating avant-garde ideas in architecture and town planning during the periods from 1930 to 1934 and from 1950 to 1955. The early congresses stressed rigid functional zoning and a single type of urban housing; at subsequent meetings members reacted against inflexible and mechanical concepts of orderly planning. Internal conflict led to the group's eventual collapse after the Dubrovnik congress of 1956.