The Center for Architecture is pleased to announce Un/Fair Use, the Center's first exhibition following the organization's summer restoration. The exhibition, which explores issues of copying and copyright in architecture, is curated and designed by Ana Miljacki, historian, curator and Associate Professor of Architecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Sarah Hirschman, designer, editor, and lecturer at UC Berkeley.
Copying is as much part of architecture as the expectation of novelty. Architecture advances via comment, criticism, parody, and innovation, forms of appropriation that fall under the umbrella of fair use, a loophole in copyright law to safeguard culture from monopoly. But what happens when appropriation is deemed unfair? Where and how are the lines drawn around permissible use? Un/Fair Use probes that legal boundary, illuminating the strange constellation of protections provided by the Architectural Works Copyright Protection Act of 1990 (AWCPA).
As it applies to the workings of architectural practice, the copyright law is utterly unglamorous. It is a collection of statutes and legal language that is most often associated with litigation, with contentious neighbors, and with costly reviews. Each time a case is brought before a court, new terms are defined and new notions of architectural creativity and operation are tested for legitimacy. And yet this law is rarely interrogated as a cultural artifact. Un/Fair Use is invested in an idea of the law as participant in the construction of the public's architectural imagination.
Un/Fair Use offers for contemplation models of common, and therefore uncopyrightable, architectural tropes and formal themes next to those protected under the AWCPA. Video interviews with key players in the development of the 1990 architectural copyright language – Bill Patry, Michael Graves, Karen Nichols, David Daileda, and Jane C. Ginsburg – provide a first-hand account of the legal and legislative questions answered en route to resolution.
Create a Core77 Account
Already have an account? Sign In
By creating a Core77 account you confirm that you accept the Terms of Use
Please enter your email and we will send an email to reset your password.