Encounter EDUCATIONAL MODERNISM

Encounter Educational Modernism productively revisits the University of Lethbridge, Alberta, an iconic campus from the late 1960s by Canadian architect Arthur Erickson. The university is recognized for its architectural vision, its linear relationship with the spectacular landscape, and its dynamic spatial imagination of education as an expansive encounter. Designing the interdisciplinary university as a city within one building, including student housing, the campus stages public spaces of encounter to activate the concept of the student as a global citizen in a new world order. This sixties humanist imagination of the student shapes the spatial program of the architecture, a program which clashes with the current neoliberal view of the student as entrepreneur. The third book in Bitter and Weber’s series on architecture and the educational complex, Encounter Educational Modernism is an artistic research project on the architecture of the University of Lethbridge and on modernist imaginations of education. It includes photographs and an introduction from the artists and contributions from University of Lethbridge faculty member Victoria Baster and poet and educator Jeff Derksen.

The series Educational Modernism is published in cooperation with (Edition Camera Austria, Graz) and will be continued with a focus on The Workers University Zagreb by Yugoslavian architects Radovan Nikšić and Ninoslav Kučan.