Abstract of Architecture Demonstrated: The Protest of the Milan Triennale

An undergraduate thesis for the Princeton University A.B. in Architecture, advised by Beatriz Colomina
2020

As a platform of communication, exhibitions are events of disciplinary engagement across political and geographic divisions. Looking into the protest of the XIV Triennale di Milano in 1968, this thesis examines the multiplicities of ideas behind political assembly and addresses the complications within their modes of action and critique. In this historical event, architectural exhibition has inadvertently become a site of protest, becoming a physical locus of embodied engagement as well as an ideological locus of intellectual engagement. The thesis conducts visual analyses of the design of the Palazzo dell’Arte and archival documentation of protest aesthetics, asking how critique can operate within the apparatus of architecture, and how the physical space of exhibition became a host for these events.