Annette Fierro

As an Associate Professor at Weitzman, Annette Fierro teaches design studios and theory seminars, where she addresses issues of technology within contemporary international architecture and urban culture. Fierro's new book traces a network of legacies instigated by the radical technological speculation of the 1960's in London. Comparing the work of Archigram and the High Tech architects thematically, the book explores the historical and cultural context of London to reveal their influences and interconnections and why two such radical groups emerged from seemingly conservative London. The book speculates on, among other topics, technological utopias as they were embraced in different eras to the present, the effect of WWII on the technological iconography of the various architects, on the influence of experimental theatre of the 60's on the evolution of their technological surfaces, on the relationship between engineering and practices of drawing in the appearance of technological apparatus, and finally the co-evolution of practices of narrative description with systems of movement in the post-industrial, nostalgic, and neoliberal city. Fierro earlier authored The Glass State: The Technology of the Spectacle/Paris 1981-1998 (MIT Press, 2003), which focused on issues of transparency and technologies of François Mitterrand's "Grands Projets" in Paris. This work addressed the material and technological symbolism instigated and imposed on the city in the socialist moment of Mitterrand's presidency, during which the civic infrastructure of Paris was transformed.

Fierro’s introduction to her new book will be followed by a discussion between Weitzman faculty: chair Rossana Hu, Ferda Kolatan, Daniela Fabricius and Vanessa Grossman, moderated by Fernando Lara. How does history and theory prompt questions in the practice of design? How does design parallel but elude questions of history and theory? Archigram was notoriously averse to theorizing their design work and/or having their work theorized, but as Fierro asserts, provide a provocative example of an indelible and now infamous design practice which was codependent on ideas in intellectual spheres, whether they were explicitly framed as such.
 

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