Simon Sadler (b. 1968, UK) is a professor in the Department of Design and in the Art History Program at the University of California, Davis. His publications focus on histories, theories and ideologies of architecture, design and urbanism since the mid-twentieth century, and include studies of the Archigram group, the Situationists, and counterculture.
He keynoted at the Design History Society (2017), the “Alteration” symposium at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2011), the Architectural Humanities Research Association (2011), and the 1st International Conference on Structures and Architecture, Guimarães (2010), and was the discussant with Michael Pollan at the Berkeley Art Museum (2017). He was an Andrew W. Mellon Researcher at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal (2014-16) and a Fellow of the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London (2002).
The avant-garde are people or works that are experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society. It is frequently characterized by aesthetic innovation and initial unacceptability.
Archigram was an avant-garde architectural group formed in the 1960s that was neofuturistic, anti-heroic and pro-consumerist, drawing inspiration from technology in order to create a new reality that was solely expressed through hypothetical projects.
Charles Willard Moore was an American architect, educator, writer, Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, and winner of the AIA Gold Medal in 1991. He is often labeled as the father of postmodernism. His work as an educator was important to a generation of American architects who read his books or studied with him at one of the several universities where he taught.
Postmodern architecture is a style or movement which emerged in the 1960s as a reaction against the austerity, formality, and lack of variety of modern architecture, particularly in the international style advocated by Philip Johnson and Henry-Russell Hitchcock. The movement was introduced by the architect and urban planner Denise Scott Brown and architectural theorist Robert Venturi in their book Learning from Las Vegas. The style flourished from the 1980s through the 1990s, particularly in the work of Scott Brown & Venturi, Philip Johnson, Charles Moore and Michael Graves. In the late 1990s, it divided into a multitude of new tendencies, including high-tech architecture, neo-futurism and deconstructivism.
Sir Peter Cook is an English architect, lecturer and writer on architectural subjects. He was a founder of Archigram, and was knighted in 2007 by the Queen for his services to architecture and teaching. He is also a Royal Academician and a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of the French Republic. His achievements with Archigram were recognised by the Royal Institute of British Architects in 2004, when the group was awarded the Royal Gold Medal.
Lawrence Halprin was an American landscape architect, designer and teacher.
Peter Reyner Banham Hon. FRIBA was an English architectural critic and writer best known for his theoretical treatise Theory and Design in the First Machine Age (1960) and for his 1971 book Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies. In the latter he categorized the Los Angeles experience into four ecological models and explored the distinct architectural cultures of each. A frequent visitor to the United States from the early 1960s, he relocated there in 1976.
Mid-century modern (MCM) is an American design movement in interior, product, graphic design, architecture, and urban development that was popular from roughly 1945 to 1969, during the United States's post–World War II period. The term was used descriptively as early as the mid-1950s and was defined as a design movement by Cara Greenberg in her 1984 book Mid-Century Modern: Furniture of the 1950s. It is now recognized by scholars and museums worldwide as a significant design movement. The MCM design aesthetic is modern in style and construction, aligned with the Modernism movement of the period. It is typically characterized by clean, simple lines and honest use of materials, and it generally does not include decorative embellishments.
Neo-futurism is a late-20th to early-21st-century movement in the arts, design, and architecture. It has been seen as a departure from the attitude of post-modernism and represents an idealistic belief in a better future.
Amelia Jones originally from Durham, North Carolina is an American art historian, art theorist, art critic, author, professor and curator. Her research specialisms include feminist art, body art, performance art, video art, identity politics, and New York Dada. Jones's earliest work established her as a feminist scholar and curator, including through a pioneering exhibition and publication concerning the art of Judy Chicago; later, she broadened her focus on other social activist topics including race, class and identity politics. Jones has contributed significantly to the study of art and performance as a teacher, researcher and activist.
William Wilson Wurster was an American architect and architectural teacher at the University of California, Berkeley, and at MIT, best known for his residential designs in California.
Timothy James "T. J." Clark is a British art historian and writer. He taught art history in a number of universities in England and the United States, including Harvard and the University of California, Berkeley.
Jack Werner Stauffacher was an American printer, typographer, educator, and fine book publisher. He owned and operated Greenwood Press, a small book printing press based in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Cliff May (1903–1989) was an architect practicing in California best known and remembered for developing the suburban Post-war "dream home", and the Mid-century Modern.
JB Blunk (1926–2002) was a sculptor who worked primarily in wood and clay. In addition to the pieces he produced in wood and ceramics, Blunk worked in other media including jewelry, furniture, painting, bronze, and stone.
Maurice R. Stein is an American sociologist and innovator in higher education. Stein is co-recipient of the 1987 Robert and Helen Lynd Lifetime Achievement Award bestowed by the American Sociological Association's Community and Urban Sociology Section, while his pedagogical innovations have been highlighted of late by Harvard University's Jeffrey Schnapp in Schnapp's studies in the digital humanities. Retired from Brandeis University since 2002, Stein resides with his spouse, Phyllis Stein, at their home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is a long-time member of the Harvard Institute for Learning in Retirement.
Dell Thayer Upton is an architectural historian. He is chair of the Department of Art History at University of California, Los Angeles, and Professor Emeritus of Architecture at University of California, Berkeley. He previously has taught at the University of Virginia.
Elizabeth (Bauer) Mock was director of the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and a university professor. She was a charter apprentice at Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin, and the first former Taliesin fellow to join the MoMA staff. She was an influential advocate for modern architecture in the United States.
Avant-garde architecture is architecture which is innovative and radical. There have been a variety of architects and movements whose work has been characterised in this way, especially Modernism. Other examples include Constructivism, Neoplasticism, Neo-futurism, Deconstructivism, Parametricism and Expressionism.
Frances C. Butler is an American book artist and educator. Butler received her B.A. in History at the University of California, Berkeley in 1961, her M.A. in History at Stanford University in 1963, and a second M.A. in Design at UC Berkeley in 1966. She was a professor at UC Berkeley from 1968–70, and began teaching at UC Davis in 1970. She ran Goodstuffs Handprinted Fabric from 1973–79, and co-founded Poltroon Press with Alastair Johnston in 1975.