Poster for the seventh CIAM congress
- Social organisers -‘The members of the international CIAM groups are meeting in Bergamo. Building is their vocation, and their professions of architect or city planner call on them to fulfil the role of social organisers.’ These ambitious words were spoken at the opening of the seventh congress of the international group of architects and city planners that had been meeting as CIAM since 1928. CIAM was the name of the congresses - Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne - that were the group’s main activity.
The seventh CIAM congress, which took place in Bergamo in 1949, is regarded as a turning point in the series of meetings. In the following years, the themes of the congresses comprised an increasingly wide-ranging set of social issues. The ‘social organiser’ in the above quote illustrates how the architects and city planners saw themselves as the designers of society. The world was their case book. In consequence, the programme soon became overcrowded, making it more and more difficult to conclude the meetings with general guidelines or solutions.
In 1959, the last CIAM congress was held in Otterlo, a village in the Dutch region of the Veluwe. A group of young architects such as Jaap Bakema and Aldo van Eyck wished to distance themselves from the gilded reputations of the architects that had made their name between the wars. They challenged the general statements and schemes of previous CIAM congresses by putting forward a more personal and specific approach.
Request number AFFV 84
Literature
-A. Van der Woud, CIAM, Volkshuisvesting Stedebouw. Het Nieuwe Bouwen Internationaal, CIAM Housing City Planning. Het Nieuwe Bouwen International, Delft/Otterlo 1983, quote from page 86