ABSTRACT
Peter Bürger’s 1974 book Theory of the Avant-Garde (first translated in 1984), made the
argument that certain strategies of the historical avant-garde of the 1920s were repeated
(in a depoliticised form) in the creative production of the 1960s in art, and specifically the
paintings of Pop Art.1 The 1970s were replete with theoretical projects that sought to
critically connect contemporary practices with historical precedents, and, most
specifically, those of the historical avant-garde. The historical positioning of a neo-avant-
garde gained a degree of traction in architectural criticism in the same period,having
been theorised by Manfredo Tafuri in the seminal Architecture and Utopia: Design and
Capitalist Development (1973; English, 1976), which then percolated through the
theoretical New York wanderings of Oppositions and October, and then culminated in
the high-profile Deconstructivist Architecture exhibition at MoMA, curated by Philip
Johnson and Mark Wigley.2 Featuring the work of seven architects, the exhibition
showcased an array of critical and conceptually rigorous projects from a wave of (mostly)
young and ambitious international practitioners who would, in the coming decade,
emerge as one of the dominant paradigms in architectural production at the turn of the
millennium. Each of the seven are now frequently positioned as agents of a resurgent
neo-avant-garde in architectural design which has, in tandem with a number of other
emerging international practices, reshaped the relationship between architecture and its
expanded popular audience.
