Crossed Histories

“Gae Aulenti, Ada Louise Huxtable and Phyllis Lambert all shared a belief in the need for public engagement in the creation of the city—both through public spaces and through public voices.” —Léa-Catherine Szacka, “Pioneers of the 20th Century”, exhibition catalogue, SKIRA-CCC, 2025.

Born in the 1920s, critic Ada Louise Huxtable and architects Gae Aulenti and Phyllis Lambert were among the most influential figures in architecture and design during the postwar boom. Pioneers in what was then a largely male-dominated field, and key players in the transition from modernism to postmodernism, they set out to conquer the public spaces they designed and built. Through accounts, archival images, drawings and photographs, this exhibition sheds light on some of their emblematic achievements and interweaves their extraordinary biographies to rethink the crucial role of women in the history of 20th-century architecture.

“Strong women and pragmatic intellectuals, Gae Aulenti, Ada Louise Huxtable and Phyllis Lambert shared a way of thinking about the value of historical buildings and their essential coexistence with other modernities that is both ambitious and profound.” —Catherine Bédard, “Breathing Life into the Walls: The City at the Centre of the Monument“, exhibition catalogue, SKIRA-CCC, 2025.

The three protagonists of this exhibition have taken the debate on architecture and the city to the public place and the metropolis. They have succeeded in preserving entire districts of their beloved cities, or in changing the general public’s view of what they can contribute to their environment. How did they do it? Thanks to or despite what circumstances? 

While many recent studies have focused on single narratives and individual stories, Crossed Histories proposes to explore five projects from the second half of the last century—The Seagram Building and its Plaza (New York); The Destruction of Pennsylvania Station; The project to document Montreal’s grey stone buildings and the creation of the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA); the Musée d’Orsay (Paris); and Piazzale Cadorna (Milan)—and thus follows a series of thematic red threads that interweave these stories into a tightly woven network of relationships that, together, will establish a new collective narrative.

The result is an unprecedented collection of images and documents thematically linking North America (Canada and the United States) and Europe (France and Italy). It also includes exclusive interviews, conducted in 2024, with Phyllis Lambert (architect and founder of the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal), Alexandra Lange (architecture and design critic, New York), Mary McLeod (professor of architecture, Columbia University, New York), Mirko Zardini (curator and architecture critic, Milan, former director of the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal), Giovanna Borasi (director of the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal), Maristella Casciato (curator of architecture, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles), and Barry Bergdoll (professor of art history and archaeology, Columbia University, New York). 

Curator: Léa-Catherine Szacka / Associate curator: Catherine Bédard / Design by Studio Pitis e Associati, Milan.

A book, published by SKIRA, accompanies the exhibition (144 pages, 50 illustrations, bilingual).

Léa-Catherine Szacka is associate professor in architectural studies at the University of Manchester and director of the Manchester Architecture Research Group. Since 2024, she has served as vice president of the European Architectural History Network. Szacka is the author of Exhibiting the Postmodern: The 1980 Venice Architecture Biennale (2016) and of Biennials/Triennials: Conversations on the Geography of Itinerant Display (2019). She is also co-author of Le Concert: Pink Floyd à Venise (2017) and Paolo Portoghesi: Architecture Between History, Politics and Media (2023), as well as co-editor of Mediated Messages (2018). In 2022, she co-curated the 10th International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam.

Catherine Bédard is an art historian and exhibition curator, who has directed the exhibition program at the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris for nearly thirty years. She has organized over a hundred exhibitions, in partnership with various Canadian and European art centres and museums, expanding the reach and influence of Canadian creators and thinkers on the European scene, and is the author of numerous exhibition catalogues, including four published with SKIRA. In 2019, she won the Award for Outstanding Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art of the Hnatyshyn Foundation.