Aesthetics between provocation and production

Abstract

In Brussels of the mid 1970s ‘counter-projects’ produced by students of La Cambre became a tool of resistance that resonated with the activism of the Atelier de Recherche et d’Action Urbaines (ARAU) and the Archives d’Architecture Moderne (AAM). These drawing-manifestoes simultaneously criticised existing proposals for urban development and offered alternatives. Isabelle Doucet revisits the less-known ‘first’ genera­tion of counter-projects and illumi­nates how these architectural ‘reac­tions’, while similar in method and aim, can differed greatly as projective gestures. They functioned as test-grounds for aesthetic articulation as much as for political provocation.