Pinkcomma Gallery in Boston is presenting an exhibition that explores original documentation, mapping, and historical studies of the vast architectural output from The Architects Collaborative (TAC). This body of work shows the normalization of radical precepts of modernism into vernacular, especially in the building types of schools, housing, and healthcare. Founded in Cambridge, MA in 1945 by eight equal partners, including Walter Gropius, TAC was the largest, exclusively architecture office in the US by the 1970s. The result of several years of archival research and fieldwork, the exhibition presents photographs and ephemera related to hundreds of previously unpublished built projects, as well as new physical models and images. Curated by Gabriel Cira, James Heard and Emma Pfeiffer.

Gabriel Cira is a licensed architect and historic preservation consultant based in Massachusetts. He is a professor in the history of art at MassArt, where he teaches the longstanding architecture of Boston course; he also teaches community-engaged practice courses at Boston Architectural College, and has also taught at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Tokyo. Cira’s work and research focuses on historic preservation, vernacular/popular histories, ecological resilience, accessibility and preservation, and infrastructure history. He is also a project organizer for The Architecture Lobby’s Cooperative Network project, a group that works on the transformative power of collaborative and cooperative modes of practice and firm ownership in architecture.

James Heard received his bachelor’s of architecture degree from Virginia Tech and is currently pursuing a master’s of science in architecture studies with a focus in history, theory, and criticism at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is a licensed architect and cofounded uxo architects, a Los Angeles-based worker-owned and cooperatively operated architecture practice. He is an active member of The Architecture Lobby and was the organization’s former national design coordinator.

Through February 2022
Pinkcomma Gallery
Boston, MA
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