Review: Ian Kiaer, Neubauer Collegium
Luke Filder, Newcity Art
March 2016
“Endnote, Ledoux” is Ian Kiaer’s most recent investigation of the utopian architectural projects that litter the long history of modernity, taking its lead from the work of the French neoclassicist Claude Nicolas Ledoux (particularly his speculative Maison des gardes agricoles). Although Ledoux designed a variety of buildings for wealthy patrons before the Revolution, he is better known for a series of theories and designs toward ideal cities and unbuilt dwellings. To revisit Ledoux is to reckon with nascent forms of utopian ambition that problematically reprise the power structures of the Ancien régime. […]