From the 2nd of February to the 9th of March 1952, the travelling exhibition “Frank Lloyd Wright – Sixty Years of Living Architecture” made a guest appearance at the Zurich Kunsthaus. The reportage by Comet Photo AG (Zurich) immortalises in eighteen shots the obvious joy of discovery that the huge, almost overwhelming architectural models triggered in the public. Today’s viewers of this historical photo series will not fail to notice the contrast between the avant-garde appearance of Wright’s buildings and the out-of-fashion clothing of the museum visitors. However, if one takes clothing seriously as a cultural medium – and not as an anecdotal addition to the “actual” image content – it is precisely fashion that offers itself here as a common denominator between architecture, photography or photojournalism and personal image cultivation. The relationship between modernism, which from the beginning aimed at a comprehensive reform of life, even a permanent revolution along the lines of the technical-scientific innovation process, and fashion has always been fraught with tension and marked by contradictions. Such image sources as those of the Wright exhibition in Zurich in 1952 are irreplaceable for examining the history of architectural reception.
Sylvain Malfroy
Sylvain Malfroy (1955) ist Kunst- und Architekturhistoriker. Er hat an der Universität Lausanne Kunstgeschichte, Romanistik und Germanistik studiert. Die Zusammenarbeit mit Prof. André Corboz am Lehrstuhl für Geschichte des Städtebaus an der ETH-Zürich zwischen 1980 und 1988 bot ihm die Möglichkeit, sich in Theorie und Methodologie des kontextuellen Entwerfens weiterzubilden. Der Schwerpunkt seiner Forschungstätigkeit liegt in der Vertiefung von Saverio Muratoris Ansatz zur Stadtmorphologie. Nach vierzigjähriger Lehrtätigkeit in Geisteswissenschaften an Schweizer Hoch- und Fachhochschulen tritt er gerade in den Ruhestand. Er ist Gründungsmitglied des International Seminar on Urban Form seit 1994.
Sylvain Malfroy (1955) is a historian of art and architecture. He studied Art History, German and French literature at the University of Lausanne. The opportunity to collaborate with Prof. André Corboz at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich between 1980 and 1988 allowed him to specialise in theory and methodology of contextual urban design. His main research focus lies on Saverio Muratoris contribution to urban morphology. He is now retiring after fourty years lecturing on Humanities at various Swiss Universities and Universities of applied sciences. He is since 1994 a founding member of the International Seminar on Urban Form.