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6 Denise Scott Brown, “Little Magazines in Architecture and Urbanism,” American Institute of Planners Journal 34 no. 4 (July 1968): 223–32.
Margaret Anderson’s Little Review of the 1910s and 1920s, that were dedicated to progressive theory, art and culture. They were set apart from established periodicals by their non-commercial operations and small circulation. But they aimed to influence the dominant periodicals, claiming to be “the magazines read by those who write the others,” as Margaret Anderson put it. The term was transplanted to architecture in the 1970s by Denise Scott-Brown, who used the term to describe magazines like Archigram and Clip Kit, in an insightful review article.
“Little magazines” in architecture refer to small circulation, self-published magazines, often difficult to obtain and produced with little or no support, on kitchen tables or in the backrooms of schools. The phenomenon is pivotal both for the physical and intellectual objects produced and as something that functioned as a networked, interactive and international platform for experimental design and discourse. Little magazines operate as an infrastructure for hosting change. One can even consider, as Denise Scott-Brown has suggested, “little magazine phases in architecture” appearing “...when a debate has expanded enough to demand organization and a rudimentary mailing system.”6 Little magazines have to be analyzed as systems. Their littleness and ephemerality is directly related to the wide spread and resilient network in which they appear.
Professional magazines can be considered little for certain periods of time. Changes in the magazines’ economic model and editorial policy are reflected in everything from the types of paper and printing methods used, to the kinds of projects featured in their pages. Conversely, we may see the “littleness” of a self-published, small circulation magazine dissipate as publication numbers and circulation expand. Littleness is fleeting and improvised. The publications remain as the surprisingly permanent but almost invisible record of the pulse of a moment.
For example, Architectural Design during the years of Peter Murray and Robin Middleton as technical editors in the mid-1960s and 70s, decided to pass on advertising, change the paper quality, and start publishing the same kind of work that little magazines were publishing, especially in a section called “Cosmorama,” printed in cheap, non-glossy, colored, rough paper and dedicated to ecology, counter-culture, new materials, electronic technology, mobility, and disposability. This is what can be called “moments
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