Making CIAM. The Organizational Techniques of the Moderns 1928–1959

This study points at the condition of necessity between architecture and organization. It argues that the International Congresses of Modern Architecture (CIAM) was an organizational project of institutional change. On one hand, institutional change in post-war architecture took place not as rupture, but through a complex intermediation between professional organizations and the CIAM. On the other hand, modern architecture was developed as a shared purpose, not independently from but together with the organizational structure, legitimacy, continuity and design of the CIAM. In this context, discourses about architecture evolved at the same pace as discourses on organization. Thus the study explores how organizational processes such as knowledge transfer and routines took place, positioning them amongst the theories and strategies of planning of the time.