In 1974, the historic architectural conference, “The Whites and the Grays,” was held on campus, putting UCLA at the center of discussions around the status of architecture and its relationship to abstraction, historical representation, and the continuing suffusion of technology into design. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
The conference was organized by Tim Vreeland, the first chair of Architecture and Urban Design and has come to symbolize the beginning of the postmodern movement in architecture.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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The Whites were five New York architects—Richard Meier, Peter Eisenman, Michael Graves, Charles Gwathmey, and John Hejduk—who shared an interest in the work of Le Corbusier. The Grays—Charles Moore, Jaquelin Robertson, Robert Venturi, and Richard Weinstein—with an interest in history, aligned themselves against the international style. In addition to the Whites and the Grays, The Silvers were formed by two other UCLA architecture faculty, Cesar Pelli and Craig Hodgetts, whose work focused on high technology.