CIAM
(established 1928)
This international architectural organization was formed by a number of progressive architects who adhered to the ideas of Modernism and was brought about through the patronage of Madame Hélène de Mandrot, a wealthy widow associated with the arts. Initial membership of the group included architects and designers Le Corbusier, Gerrit Rietveld, Robert Mallet-Stevens, El Lissitsky, and Karl Moser, who became its first president. Siegfried Giedion was CIAM's secretary-general, a post he held for more than two decades. In the interwar years CIAM met at La Sarras, near Geneva, in 1928, in Frankfurt in 1929 (where discussions centred on ideas of living in minimal dwellings), in Athens in 1933 (which gave rise to the organization's Athens Charter and ideas of the ‘Functional City’), and in Paris in 1937. CIAM provided an effective forum for debate amongst Modernist theorists and practitioners although its vitality faltered in the years following the end of the Second World War, when critiques of Modernism became increasingly attractive to the avant-garde. It was finally dissolved following its last meeting in Dubrovnik in 1956.
