Gordon Matta-Clark’s Anarchitecture

Gordon Matta-Clark’s ‘anarchitecture’ applied anarchist strategies of mutual-aid, direct action, and critiques of property to urban spaces in a bid to destabilize the top-down procedures of architecture and urban renewal. This chapter challenges scholarship's predominantly biographical approach to Matta-Clark’s work with a study of Window Blowout, a pivotal work that connects Matta-Clark to social justice and artist protest actions in 1960s-70s New York. Confronting the complacency of architects, Matta-Clark shot out windows at an architecture exhibition, placing photographs of South Bronx housing—blighted with broken windows—in the casements. With this action as a focal point, I explore Matta-Clark’s challenge to mainstream perspectives on violence, urban renewal, and vandalism in the context of New York’s urban crisis.