RESEARCH
Initiated in 2003, No Place Like Utopia is a long-term, “excavation” research project, documentary film, website, and archival platform singularly focused upon the Los Angeles modernist architect Gregory Ain.
Long before the recent resurgence of interest in Ain, No Place Like Utopia (NPLU) advanced original research into his architectural legacy written by David Gebhardt, Esther McCoy, and Elizabeth Mock. NPLU expanded upon these voices re-iterating Ain’s socio-political vision, and specifically the then-unknown fate of his 1950 MoMA Exhibition House, Our View of the Future. The NPLU project first entered broad public view through the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale and the 2017 Center for Architecture solo exhibition This Future Has a Past. In so doing, it made a significant contribution to establishing the critical framework through which Ain would later be reconsidered in the press, in exhibitions, and academic scholarship.
The significance of the NPLU project lies not only in its early date, but in its preservation of rare primary-source testimony and interviews with figures who have since passed away, including Emily Ain, Julius Shulman, and Frank Gehry, making the project not simply interpretive but archival: a record of voices and historical knowledge that can no longer be recovered or reproduced.
Public recognition of the project’s significance appeared early. In 2017, The New York Times and Artsy each amplified the project’s recovery of Gregory Ain’s suppressed political history and the heretofore unresolved fate of the MoMA house. In 2021, the New York Times returned to the story when the house’s survival and location were publicly confirmed. Taken together, this record shows that the central questions now associated with Ain’s recovery entered broad public discourse through a framework that No Place Like Utopia had initiated and already been developing for years.
———CHRONOLOGY ———
2000 - 2011
Lived experience at the Avenel Cooperative Housing Project by Gregory Ain and Garrett Eckbo. “An unusual example of a Federal Housing Administration funded project in the postwar period, ten families pooled resources to create a modestly scaled complex that incorporated modern ideas about affordable indoor-outdoor living.” -LA Conservancy
2001
During her MArch studies, Katherine Lambert and Anthony Denzer each began discrete research on modernist architect Gregory Ain and urban housing under the tutelage of UCLA Professor Thomas Hines.
2003–2009
Excavation research on Ain was initiated, along with interviews with associates, collaborators, and related figures in Los Angeles and New York. The NPLU project produced a unique and expository foundation of new archival research. This generated epistemic files (FBI) artifacts, performances, exhibitions, installations, catalogs, public presentations, and designed experiences throughout the following decade.
2005-2010
The mini-series Edendale was scripted by Christiane Robbins and Andrew Avery and was formally submitted for production by major cable entities.
2008
Sundance Institute Independent Producers Lab featured NPLU's short 1000 sq.ft.
2009
NPLU’s first video short, 1000 sq. ft., was selected for screening during the American Association of Architects’ (AIA) Festival in the City in San Francisco and screened nationally under the auspices of the AIA.
2011
Material from the project was presented in relation to the Gwangju Biennale, extending its international exhibition life prior to Venice. Curated by Seung H-Sang and Ai WeiWei, the exhibition "design is design is not design" included the NPLU video short, 1000 sq. ft. to augment the segment on Gregory Ain.
2012
Following the delay of several Freedom of Information Ace (FOIA) requests initiated in 2007, FBI files on Gregory Ain were finally delivered fro Robbins and Lambert for review in 2012.
2015
NPLU’s first video short, 1000 sq. ft., was screened at a panel discussion accompanying the exhibition, Gregory Ain: Low-Cost Modern Housing and the Construction of a Social Landscape, at the Julius Shulman Institute at Woodbury University in Los Angeles. Other panelists included Barbara Bestor (Architect/Professor), Rick Corsini (Architect/Professor), Anthony Denzer (Professor/Author), and Anthony Fontenot (Professor/Curator).
2016
This Future Has a Past debuts at the Venice Architecture Biennale, Reporting from the Front, as a collateral exhibition. This installation globally advanced the project’s investigation into Ain’s political marginalization and the unresolved fate of his 1950 MoMA Exhibition House.
2017
The project was selected by Curator Cynthia Davidson as the opening exhibition for Anyspace hosted by New York’s Center for Architecture. It is presented as a seminal forensic investigation into Ain, FBI surveillance, and the “mysterious fate” of the 1950 Exhibition House, Our View of the Future. MOMA re-discovered the original model of the Exhibition House (1950) which was then included in This Future has a Past exhibition at the Center for Architecture.
2017
Several media including articles in The New York Times and Artsy ’s The “Most Dangerous Architect in America” Built a House—Then It Vanished brought international attention to the project and the question raised by its research.
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-most-dangerous-architect-america-built-house-vanished
2018
During Modernism Week (April 2, 2018) at the Palm Springs Museum, Katherine Lambert and Christiane Robbins lectured and presented a panel discussion, The Most Dangerous Architect in America, on Gregory Ain and the “mysterious” MoMA Exhibition House. Panelists included Antonio Pacheco and _____.
2021
The New York Times publishes an article on the public “rediscovery “of the house in Croton-on-Hudson.
