From the 1970s, four influential Architects explored to reveal that “new thinking 30 years ago is relevant today.“

By the 1960s many artists had started to look at extra-aesthetic considerations in their work. There was a movement towards site specificity in art and dialogue emerged between artists and their environment–particularly the architectural. To further encourage integration of art and building, ‘percent for art’ schemes were established across North America and Europe, with the sixteenth century Italian piazza as the model. Under these schemes beginning in 1965, the Department of Public Works in Canada first allocated one percent of new construction costs of federal buildings for fine art; the architect was to be responsible for co-coordinating the programme. Artist Richard Serra used the term “piazza art” reproachfully to speak against much of the work conceived at this time. Out-of-scale studio art seemed to drop arbitrarily in front of new buildings without questioning or challenging the space. Serra’s own work was always devised as a counterpoint and a critique of its architectural surroundings.

It is unfortunate that public outcry over some of Serra’s most contentious work has led, in part, to today’s civic art programs. Introduced to most Canadian cities during the late ’80s and early ’90s, the programs use a model of art funding involving both corporate and citizen representation with an emphasis on process (often to head off controversy). Although in principal the idea seems worthy, public art created this way frequently ends up bland and lifeless.

“It is the rigid mentality that architects install the walls and artists decorate them that offends my sense of either profession,” says Gordon Matta-Clark, whose views on the subject reflect a new way of thinking about art for architecture in today’s increasingly multi-disciplinary world–a collaborative approach. Collaboration between an artist and an architect does not result in a reaction to a given space, as in the work of Serra, or a work unrelated to its context (e.g., ‘piazza art’ or ‘plop’ art), but instead there is a commingling of ideas where both art and architecture are the better for it. The funding structures based on a percentage of project costs or a dollar amount per square foot of revenue construction need not change, though the process must.