Modernity, Promise or Menace?
French Pavilion at the 14th International Architecture Exhibition - la Biennale di Venezia 2014
ed. by Jean-Louis Cohen, with Vanessa Grossman

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Editor(s)

Jean-Louis Cohen, Vanessa Grossman

Publication

Paris : Institut francais : Editions Dominique Carré, 2014

Scope

52 Pages, illustrated, 22 cm.

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Curator Jean-Louis Cohen poses four questions throughout four galleries, demonstrating the contradictions that fill the story of modernity and architecture in France. The ambivalent responses of architecture to the original promise of modernity is shown through the juxtaposition of a continuous cinematographic montage and large-scale objects. Focusing on the super-modern Villa Arpel in Jacques Tati's 1958 film Mon Oncle, the exhibition in one of the galleries examines the tension between the promise of a life made easier by machinery and the often farcical results of trying to make that dream a reality.

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Keywords

design , utopia , architecture theory , modernism

Geographical location

France

Location

Cabinet 15 - 3: Architectuur en Kunst

Remarks