Space exploration: Kevin Pratt on "Clip/Stamp/Fold".

THE STOREFRONT FOR Art and Architecture is a small wedge of space, tucked behind Vito Acconci and Stephen Holl's unfolding facade on Kenmare Street in Lower Manhattan. Barely fifteen feet deep, it was the perfect opening venue for "Clip/Stamp/Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines 196X-197X," an exhibition on view there through last February and dedicated--as its title suggests--to the explosion of small publications produced in architectural circles in the 1960s and '70s. Across one long wall was a time line featuring covers of significant issues printed on curving, backlit panels, each image accompanied by a short explanatory text. On the opposite wall, its folding partitions kept closed against the cold of late winter, hundreds of covers were digitally collaged into a wallpaper grid. In the remaining space, Plexiglas bubbles on spindly telescopic legs contained actual magazines--some open to particularly interesting interior spreads, others flaunting off-color images or iridescent materials on their covers. Overhead speakers broadcast interviews with many of the publications' editors and contributors. And, finally, tethered to the walls were a few--too few--facsimile copies of magazines available for closer study.

Organized by the architectural historian Beatriz Colomina (with Craig Buckley, Anthony Fontenot, Urtzi Grau, Lisa Hsieh, Alicia Imperiale, Lydia Kallipoliti, Olympia Kazi, Daniel Lopez-Perez, and Irene Sunwoo at the Princeton University School of Architecture), the show--by virtue of its sheer density and the range of countries represented--lent credence to the implicit contention that this surge of small-scale production was a significant departure from the modes of architectural communication prevalent in the two decades following World War II. An accompanying brochure reminded us that these little magazines were modeled on the literary chapbook-style journals published since the …