OASE 97. Action and Reaction presents a collection of confrontations between architects themselves, and between architects and architecture critics.
Creating and thinking about architecture has always been defined by the mechanism of action and reaction. One way of making architecture is criticized or rejected and immediately used as a starting point for another, opposing and better method, practice or theory. Architects and critics react to each other’s views using drawings, texts, models and buildings. A good architecture culture thrives on such a basis: the exciting battle between views, opinions and beliefs.
OASE 97 describes and illustrates passionate debates and polemical interactions from the seventeenth to the late twentieth century. The result is a collection of opposing yet inseparably connected definitions of good and necessary architecture.