Lang, Deyong address Houston symposium examining utopian projects from the 1960s

Two Texas A&M architecture professors were among a panel of experts who participated in a University of Houston symposium that examined a time when transformative ideas about the built environment percolated during a period of social unrest and change.

The event, “Concrete Utopias: 1960s Architecture and Urbanism,” which took place at the University of Houston’s Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture Feb. 17 – 18, included presentations by Peter Lang, associate professor of architecture, and Sarah Deyong, assistant professor of architecture.

Lang lectured about Superstudio , the legendary group of radical Italian designers who produced experimental architecture beginning in the late 1960s.

Deyong’s presentation, “New Beginnings: The Urban Architecture of Team 10,” eyed a group of architects and other invited participants who began meeting in July 1953, challenging doctrinaire approaches to urbanism . The group would later spawn two different movements, New Brutalism and Structuralism .

Other scholars discussed more innovations of the utopian projects put forth during the 1960s and their relevance to today.

- Posted: Feb. 15, 2011 -