Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne

The International Congresses of Modern Architecture (CIAM) was founded in June 1928, at the Chateau de la Sarraz in Switzerland, by a group of 28 European architects organized by Le Corbusier, Hélène de Mandrot (owner of the castle), and Sigfried Giedion, (the first secretary-general). CIAM was one of many 20th-century manifestos meant to advance the cause of architecture as a social art.

The organization was hugely influential. It was not only engaged in formalizing the architectural principles of the Modern Movement, but also saw architecture as an economic and political tool that could be used to improve the world through the design of buildings and through urban planning.

The fourth CIAM meeting in 1933 was to have been held in Moscow. The rejection of Le Corbusier's competition entry for the Palace of the Soviets, a watershed moment and an indication that the Soviets had abandoned CIAM's principles, changed those plans. Instead it was held on board ship, the SS Patris II,SS Patris II,[lower-alpha 1] which sailed from Marseille to Athens. Here the group discussed the principles of "The Functional City", which broadened CIAM's scope from architecture into urban planning. Based on an analysis of thirty-three cities, CIAM proposed that the social problems faced by cities could be resolved by strict functional segregation, and the distribution of the population into tall apartment blocks at widely spaced intervals. These proceedings went unpublished from 1933 until 1943, when Le Corbusier, acting alone, published them in heavily edited form as the Athens Charter.

Otterlo Meeting 1959 (also CIAM '59), organized by Team 10, 43 participants. Meeting place: Kröller-Müller Museum, located in the Hoge Veluwe National Park. Dissolution of the organization CIAM.

CIAM's conferences consisted of:

• 1928, CIAM I, La Sarraz, Switzerland, Foundation of CIAM
• 1929, CIAM II, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, on The Minimum Dwelling
• 1930, CIAM III, Brussels, Belgium, on Rational Land Development (Rationelle Bebauungsweisen)
• 1933, CIAM IV, Athens, Greece, on The Functional City (Die funktionelle Stadt)
• 1937, CIAM V, Paris, France, on Dwelling and Recovery
• 1947, CIAM VI, Bridgwater, England, Reaffirmation of the aims of CIAM
• 1949, CIAM VII, Bergamo, Italy, on The Athens Charter in Practice
• 1951, CIAM VIII, Hoddesdon, England, on The Heart of the City
• 1953, CIAM IX, Aix-en-Provence, France, on Habitat
• 1956, CIAM X, Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia (now Croatia), on Habitat
• 1959, CIAM XI, Otterlo, the Netherlands, organized dissolution of CIAM by Team 10

• Modern architecture
• Modernist architecture topics

• Eric Mumford, The CIAM Discourse on Urbanism – 1928–1960, Cambridge Mass. and London 2000. (Foreword by Kenneth Frampton).
• Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture – The Growth of a New Tradition, Cambridge Mass. 2009, 5th edition. (CIAM, summary in Part VI).
• Max Risselada and Dirk van den Heuvel (eds.), TEAM 10 – In Search of a Utopia of the Present – 1953–1981, Rotterdam 2005. (TEAM 10 out of CIAM).
• Lorenzo Mingardi, Reweaving the city: the CIAM summer schools from London to Venice (1949–57), L. Ciccarelli, C. Melhuish (eds), Post-war Architecture between Italy and the UK.Exchanges and transcultural influences, London, UCL Press, 2021, 107-126. ISBN 9781800080836