“The most important architecture exhibition in 60 years comes at the most important time in San Francisco’s growth.”
The goal of this website is to provide an entry point into the history of one of the most significant architecture exhibitions of the 20th century, and particularly to trace its journey to San Francisco.
The 1980 Venice Biennale architecture exhibition—The Presence of the Past—included works by prominent and up-and-coming architects that are now household names, Pritzker Prize winners, and starchitects. Among them were Frank Gehry, Michael Graves, Arata Isozaki, Rem Koolhaas of OMA, Hans Hollein, Ricardo Bofill, Robert A.M. Stern, and Venturi, Rauch & Scott Brown, and many others.
The installation of the exhibition in San Francisco has been all but forgotten, but involved many luminaries of the Bay Area’s architecture scene. And while academic debates at the time were centered on the East Coast, the staging of the exhibit was hugely influential in discussions around architectural Modernism and Postmodernism. Facades by Charles Moore and Thomas Gordon Smith were included in the original Venice exhibition, and four new facades by local architects were commissioned for the Fort Mason Center installation—Batey & Mack, Daniel Solomon, William Turnbull, and SOM.
Previously unpublished color photographs by Richard Sexton included here provide fresh insight into the exhibition at our current moment when late 20th century architecture and urbanism deserve a new critical investigation. Sexton was commissioned by graphic designer Thomas Ingalls to document the exhibition for the Friends of the Biennale and for publication in Archetype.
This website was created by Hannah Lise Simonson, an architectural historian based in San Francisco / Los Angeles, who first researched The Presence of the Past exhibit while writing the San Francisco Modern & Postmodern Architectural Styles (1960-2000) Historic Context Statement.
All photographs featured in this website are courtesy of photographer ©Richard Sexton. Photographs may not be downloaded, appropriated, re-used, or re-published in any form whatsoever without the express written consent of Richard Sexton. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
If you are interested in using a photograph seen on this website for an article about The Presence of the Past exhibition, Postmodern architecture, or one of the architects featured, please contact us.
All quotations are from the Spring 1982 issue of Archetype magazine.