As part of a series highlighting the history and initiatives of the SOM Foundation, in this piece we look at John Whiteman’s leadership of the Chicago Institute for Architecture and Urbanism, from 1988 to 1991.
John Whiteman, “Conference on Architectural Theory,” September 1988. Courtesy of the Graham Foundation.
On September 5, 1986, coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of SOM, the SOM Foundation announced that it was establishing an institute for architectural research, ultimately called the Chicago Institute for Architecture and Urbanism (CIAU). As the press release states, the CIAU would “focus on man's, and society's, growth and needs” with a particular emphasis on “the creation of both physical visions and societal strategies toward architecture that is in sympathy with the ecology of human habitation.”
Also in 1986, the SOM Foundation purchased and began restoration of the Charnley House in Chicago, an historic house designed by Louis Sullivan with assistance from his junior draftsman, Frank Lloyd Wright, built between 1891 and 1892. After a period of restoration that took until May 1988, the Charnley House became the home to the SOM Foundation’s offices as well as the CIAU.
Leon Krier was appointed as the first director of the CIAU, but his tenure lasted less than a year; Krier abruptly resigned in January 1987 to become the Prince of Wales’s personal consultant for architecture and urbanism. A new search began, and, ultimately John Whiteman, who was then teaching architecture and urban design at Harvard University, was appointed as CIAU’s new director. Whiteman’s three-year term as director of the CIAU began in 1988.
Born in 1954 in Manchester, England, Whiteman joined the CIAU with extensive academic credentials: two undergraduate degrees—architecture and philosophy—from Cambridge University; a master’s in architecture from Bristol University and a master’s in city and regional planning from Harvard University; and a PhD in urban planning and philosophy, also from Harvard.
Interior view of the lounge area, Charnley House, Chicago. © Hedrich Blessing, courtesy of SOM.
In a publication released on March 7, 1989, the CIAU outlined its goals and objectives under Whiteman:
The long-term goals of the Institute are to study contemporary problems of architectural knowledge and technique as they are influenced by the shifting physical and cultural conditions of the American metropolis.
The Institute sponsors research programs under the charge of a sequence of directors. Each director, appointed for a period of three years, is given the authority to structure a program of activity and inquiry into contemporary issues in architecture.
Under the directorship of Dr. John Whiteman, the first research program of the Institute has four immediate goals:
- To provide the space and resources for a new generation to formulate its own projects and commitments in architecture.
- To undertake research by making, discussing, and criticizing architectural propositions embodied in drawings, models, and installations.
- To allow emerging figures in contemporary architecture to test their ideas against more established and accomplished individuals.
- To produce architectural theory—thoughts on how buildings are made as “works of architecture,” and on how they can be interpreted as such.
The program aims to articulate the difficulties of and present a challenge to contemporary architectural production by developing and emphasizing the understanding of a building as an artwork set within the wider context of the city. By insisting on a philosophical rigor of the building as an artwork, by radically experimenting with novel techniques of architectural design, and by constructing a center for artistic debate on architecture, the Institute will challenge both the profession and the university.
The underlying intention of the first research program, then, is to seek out those practices and articulate those thoughts that can bring architects to a greater precision and subtlety in the making of a work of architecture.
View of construction, “Tabbles of Bower, ” by 1989 CIAU fellow Jennifer Bloomer. Photograph by King Au. Courtesy of Jennifer Bloomer.
The CIAU invited fellows to work at the Charnley House on individual projects. Not all fellows were architects; some were artists, poets, critics, literary and social theorists, philosophers, and theologians. While the Institute encouraged the involvement of people from various disciplines, it also required each fellow to translate their knowledge into the architectural domain. The CIAU provided two types of fellowships: Senior Fellows, drawn from a body of established and accomplished individuals; and Fellows, drawn from the field of emerging practitioners and theorists. Both groups were assisted by student interns.
During Whiteman’s three-year term, the CIAU brought in a number of established and emerging scholars to pursue projects. Fellows included Jennifer Bloomer, Beatriz Colomina, Elizabeth Diller, Mario Gandelsonas, Benjamin Gianni, John Hejduk, Catherine Ingraham, Jeffrey Kipnis, Ben Nicholson, Mark Rakatansky, Yehuda Safran, Saskia Sassen, Ricardo Scofidio, Richard Sennett, and Mark Wigley. Fares El Dahdah, Michael Freedberg, Nina Hofer, Michael Markham, Mark Robins, Hashim Sarkis, Harry Simms, Silvano Sole, William Urban, and Ann Wittlin were interns and/or research assistants. Projects developed during that time included “The Urban Text” by Mario Gandelsonas (published as a CIAU book), “Time and the City” by Richard Sennet, “Appliance House” by Ben Nicholson (published as a CIAU book), “Building Bodies and Notations” by Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio, and “Tabbles of Bower” by Jennifer Bloomer.
City views, “The Urban Text, ” by 1988 CIAU fellow Mario Gandelsonas. © Mario Gandelsonas.
Sectional name collage, “Appliance House, ” by 1988 CIAU fellow Ben Nicholson. © Ben Nicholson.
In addition to supporting invited scholars, the CIAU produced its own series of publications distributed by MIT Press and organized events related to fellow research. Notable examples from Whiteman’s tenure include:
Supported by the SOM Foundation, 12 and ¼ Degrees was a site-specific performance that was created for and around the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio. Produced and directed by Elise Bernhardt, the performance took place on June 9, 1988—a year before the building was complete—and was intended to introduce the unconventional building and grounds, designed by architects Peter Eisenman and Richard Trott and landscape architect Laurie Olin, to the local community.
In November 1987, Dietmar Steiner and the Donnau-Festival of Lower Austria invited Whiteman to participate in an exhibition planned to commemorate the moving of the state capital of Nieder-Ostereich (Lower Austria) from Vienna to the rural town of St. Pölten. Whiteman’s project, Divisible by 2, was conceived as an architectural experiment; the pavilion was designed to explore the political power of architecture and set at play certain cross-relationships between building, image, and word. The pavilion was constructed in St. Pölten between June 13 and June 25, 1988. This work was published as a book titled Divisible by 2 (MIT Press, 1990).
Left to right: John Whiteman, Karl Werckmeister, Stanley Tigerman, Charles Jencks, and David Watkin, “Conference on Architectural Theory,” September 1988. Courtesy of the Graham Foundation.
Left to right: Stanley Tigerman and Charles Jencks, “Conference on Architectural Theory,” September 1988. Courtesy of the Graham Foundation.
“Conference on Architectural Theory”
Held at the Charnley House in September 1988, the “Conference on Architectural Theory” included fifteen young professors of architecture who were asked to present papers that demonstrated how they problematized architecture for themselves. Each author invited a respondent. This work was published as an edited volume of papers on contemporary architectural theory, Strategies in Architectural Thinking (MIT Press, 1992).
“Ethics on Architecture: Building Without Thinking vs. Thinking Without Building”
In December 1988, a two-day symposium sponsored by the SOM Foundation in collaboration with the Graham Foundation and the Chicago Chapter of the AIA Foundation took place at the Graham Foundation’s Madlener House. “Ethics on Architecture: Building Without Thinking vs. Thinking Without Building” addressed ethical issues that architects face as they strive to build a “better” world. Henry N. Cobb of I.M. Pei & Partners opened the symposium, followed by debates with David Watkin, John Whiteman, Charles Jencks, and Karl Werkmeister, moderated by Stanley Tigerman.
Below is a chart that outlines the program and activities completed and planned under the three-year tenure of John Whiteman.
After John Whiteman’s term concluded in 1991, British architectural critic and editor Janet Abrams succeeded him and was the director of the Chicago Institute for Architecture and Urbanism between 1991 and 1992.
Following his term as director of the CIAU, Whiteman became the director of The Glasgow School of Art on December 1, 1990. He would resign from that position nine months later. According to family sources consulted by the SOM Foundation, John Whiteman died in 2016 in London.
