The Architectural Exhibition Review (2024)

08/10/2024

Imagine you just touched down on the dust covered, barren surface of the moon. You don your spacesuit and open the hatch of your lunar lander. As you walk up the ramp you pass the blue taxi lights on the tarmac before reaching a deep opening that leads you into an artificial mound. There, you will be protected from space radiation and itinerant meteorites. You step inside the round pressure dome of the base. Finally you can breathe. You’re home. As you gaze back out beyond the craggy ridges your eyes get lost in the black abyss of infinity.

As much as the exterior of the Neil Armstrong Museum in Wapakoneta, Ohio, dwells on the romance of manned space travel, the interior brings everyone back down to earth quickly. Its slender concrete ramps and landing bridges feel much too tight for today’s visitors. And the daunting brief of having to balance a shrine to the first man on the moon with the legacy of the entirety of space travel since the Apollo missions appears impossible.

I’ll admit the reason I went was not only to see the building but a deep seated love for hard sci-fi and the aesthetics of early space travel. New yellow-and-grey museum education panels crammed in next to original experience-focused displays of life size mockups, relics and high tech debris from the space race age were simply not what I had hoped for.

The only leftover that hasn’t been touched since the museum opened in 1972—mere three years after the moon landing—is the Infinity Room, a simple optical illusion using mirrors and Christmas lights, that beckons with the endlessness of the nebulae of galaxies far away. You need a lot of imagination and love for retro tech to make it work. But it is precisely here that it feels possible to understand just how outrageous the afternoon of July 20, 1969, really was to those watching. It wasn’t just about figures and dates in history books. It was about pushing a final frontier further into the unknown and sharing that experience with millions who were unable to see for themselves. In taking a page out of the playbook of 19th century period rooms, the Armstrong Museum’s building embodies this human desire to envision the impossible until today.

tf.

28/08/2024

Let’s just say that “Barbie®: The Exhibition” at the Design Museum in London wasn’t high on my list of exhibitions to see this summer. Nevertheless, a request by our youngest family member saw it injected into our schedule.

With more than 180 Barbies on display, the exhibition spans decades of design, fashion and cultural shifts, making it a must see for all those Barbie enthusiasts out there. For those like me, who approach with a little less enthusiasm, the atmosphere of the exhibition more than makes up for it.

Once adjusted to the bright candy pink entrance, made even more vibrant by a large neon Barbie logo, you have no choice but to let go. Sam Jacob Studio has done a brilliant job of creating spaces that are both visually stunning and engaging. Indeed, the careful curation of light and color throughout these displays enhances their visual impact, making them a delight to photograph even for those who find the content somewhat less important. One standout is a chandelier made entirely out of Barbie hair. A somewhat surreal display which adds to the playful spirit that pervades the entire show. Another standout is the Astronaut Barbie display in an oval vitrine surrounded by neon light.

Astronaut Barbie, Architect Barbie and (quite poignantly) Barbie for President, etc.—in both black and white skin tone incarnations—are displayed in colorful tubes alongside everything else Barbie might need in her life. It is here that we learn about a recent collaboration with Kartell, resulting in bubblegum pink reproductions of chairs such as the “Louis Ghost” and “Masters” chair. To further emphasize the feeling that we have entered a real-life Barbie Dreamhouse, the same chairs are also available for weary visitors to take a seat. Whilst seated we cannot help but listen to a reel of Barbie adverts through the decades, with excited kids (girls) squealing: “You Can Tell It’s Mattel … It’s Swell.” Perhaps so; but most definitely so if you can see it within this visually captivating exhibition.

vvb.

19/08/2024

It is a risky yet necessary bet to show the cultural value of digital language in architecture that, in general, is underestimated in academic environments. The exhibition “The Visible City / The City at Game” at CentroCentro in Madrid is an important attempt to decipher new and old languages of city building. For the nostalgic, it will remind them of their beginnings back in the 90s in Simcity or Pharaoh where, in a more daring way, they tried to build and manage settlements and cities in ancient Egypt.

For architects who visit the exhibition, there are intelligent clues that connect them with their profession, such as the one revealed by Aida Red in the show’s central video, Ciudades y videojuegos: hacia un urbanismo interactivo, credited to Santiago Bustamante: “the video games known as arcade games drew their cities with an Egyptian perspective.” Such a connection of recent game engines and the history of architecture is perhaps the key to understanding the whole. At the same time, there is a lack of a narrative accompaniment that would contemporize more current pieces in the show, such as the work at the beginning of the show, Espacios resonantes by Sofía Balbontín, Mathias Klenner and Joan Lavandeira that combines industrial architecture and virtual tours.

The exhibition’s venue—CentroCentro—does not allow a complete immersion in the exhibition. Rather, the openness of the historical building assures a constant presence of the goings-on inside the building. These transit spaces could have been used in a didactic accompaniment of the social interest of the exhibited pieces. But perhaps too few tools are given to understand it as a laboratory for the construction of citizenship with the capacity to establish a participatory dialogue between agents. It remains halfway between satisfying one or the other in its general narrative.

jpi.

12/08/2024

In 2014, the Korean Pavilion at the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale presented “Crow’s Eye View: The Korean Peninsula.” The exhibition achieved several notable “firsts.” It was the first to feature both South and North Korea, the first to fulfill the pavilion’s long-held aspiration of representing the whole peninsula, and of course, the first to win the Golden Lion. Despite the “admittedly South Korean view,” as noted by Minsuk Cho—commissioner of the pavilion run by a South Korean government organization—the exhibition successfully staged an unforeseen total picture of two Koreas in the remote, seemingly uncharged location of Venice, Italy.

“Fundamentals,” one of the most debated architecture biennales directed by Rem Koolhaas, not only enabled this gathering of Korean histories under the theme “Absorbing Modernity: 1914-2014,” but facilitated a symbolic cultural reunification. It was undeniably an “amazing” moment as Koolhaas himself expressed with intrigue. Indeed, the idea of displaying architecture under two different ideological stances of capitalism and socialism side by side was striking. The rare, saturated, bold drawings of North Korean architects’ visions for future cities, presented in one of the four subsections, “Utopian Tours,” contributed to the pavilion’s vibrant image, which compensated for the then-perceived lightness and vulnerability of the architecture as an exhibition venue.

This show might still astonish people if displayed again. Yet, reflecting on the decade since these “firsts,” questions previously overshadowed by its initial glory can now be reconsidered: Did it provide fruitful perspectives on the supposed slow disappearance of national features because of modernism and globalization as Koolhaas had theorized? Was it “fundamentally” about architecture? There have been no “seconds.” Perhaps because the hope this show inspired was enough. Bringing the two Koreas to the forefront was, as Cho stated, a logical choice given the context and timeframe. Yet, as an ostensible spectacle this extra-territorial locality has dissipated, becoming a lost moment in history.

hl.

05/08/2024

I walk through a mostly empty courtyard to an 8 story, yellow brick, new-build apartment building in the eastern-most corner of the London’s Royal Docks. We could be anywhere in the city. It’s part of a recently completed large-scale residential development which has become the norm across the docks.

Thomas and William McLucas’ “Post-Post-Industrial” archives the nearby Beckton Gasworks site as a tribute to a defunct industrial site as part of Newham Heritage Month. The site has endured change across time: as gasworks, as a post-industrial wasteland and now as an empty plot, primed for redevelopment. The gasworks have always had a presence in the brothers’ lives having grown up nearby in a former gas worker’s cottage.

Whilst there is an austerity to the setup with small archive photographs neatly grouped on grey board, there is also a sporadic quality to the exhibition with photographs, videos and found objects dotted throughout the space. With the archive photographs and documents, the site’s past is recalled. With the 3D scans, found objects, casts, and video recordings, we receive the site in its vacant state. Within the gallery housing these objects, we are pointed to the future of the Beckton Gasworks site. A pane of glass curtain-walling, leftover from construction and propped up on pallets even becomes part of the setup.

The artists’ affection to the gasworks is clear. In a film showing footage of the vacant site, the “art” of gas-making is described in excruciating detail and reproductions of ornamental features of the gasworks place particular emphasis on how these were once the pride of industrial Britain. It is impossible to wholly document the 30-acre site. In this exhibition we experience it in tender fragments. The casts of the ground are particularly intriguing after learning how they were made through the repeated melting of gelatin in the brothers’ family home, a material chosen specifically because it is non-toxic. Here, the contaminated ground is abstracted, made a sculptural object and lifted onto a plinth. Ultimately, the exhibition sees Britain’s industrial history as something to be cherished despite its rapid and forceful erasure. mp.

30/07/2024

The 1990s are on the verge of being historicized. Today, the transition between “then” and “now” is marked by the decade’s so-called end of theory and post-criticality, the rise of the “starchitect” and buildings with “effects,” and the turn towards “neo-postmodern” and “post-digital.” As new paradigms for archiving and history writing emerge, the question of how to exhibit a born-digital archive becomes pertinent. Once the drawing loses its Benjaminian “aura,” its reproductions in different media and materialities create “effects” through the experience of the archive.

Time Scale, curated by Meriç Öner, surveys thirty years of architectural work by Erginoğlu & Çalışlar from Istanbul, Turkey. Celebrating its thirty-year mark, the exhibition is held at Tophane-i Amire Culture and Art Center with a series of public events involving architects, researchers, clients and employees.

The exhibition chronologically displays the office’s production since 1993 with a historical timeline that highlights significant socio-economic events in Turkey. It unpacks a wide variety of media, chronicling the architects’ trajectory of shaping their practice around commissioned buildings and all design work aiming toward a tangible object.

The exhibition begins with axonometric drawings, hand-drawn on mylar paper from the early 1990s, transporting the viewer back in time. This brief encounter with conventional drawing ends with a floppy disk, placed on the wall like a placeholder, reminding us of the turn to digital production. The curator provides an alternative set of “original” materials: slides, photographic prints, construction documents, sketchbooks, meeting notes, books by corporate clients, video interviews, models, furniture pieces, and material samples used in construction. Photographs vary in size from 9 x 13 cm frames developed from analog films to gigantic prints, almost situating the viewer in a 1:1 section. Two building blocks in different colors (the original design’s color has been discontinued) become prominent exhibits. This architectural time travel through the curator’s thoughtful observation of material novelty hints that history is both near and far.

ek.

23/07/2024

Pipes and pipelines in architecture are either a pop symbol—the Berlin Umlauftank, the Stuttgart Staatsgalerie, or the city library in Rotterdam—or they disclose a building’s inner workings, like at the Centre Pompidou. In the Transgas building in Prague, the computer headquarters of the Soviet gas pipeline Brotherhood (Bratstvo), pipes formed the railings, the interior design of the reception, or the proposed seating in the auditorium.

Transgas anticipates the topic of a new exhibition, “Critical Infrastructures,” at Vi Per Gallery in Prague. The show highlights “nurturing tissues—structures we construct that feed us, without noticing, how they enslave us,” note the curators. Three artists elaborate on presences, absences and ghosts of oil infrastructure. Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas capture the psychogeography of the Friendship (Druzhba) pipeline. The largest Soviet infrastructure project opened in 1964, transporting Siberian oil to Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Germany. It upheld economic control over the Soviet Bloc and is still in operation today. A storyboard, and a travel diary are an attractive medium: Oil drops form comic bubbles, connecting historical, popular and political strands in a matrix of references—Russian and American businessmen characters, children’s film tutorials, or the Yalta Druzhba Sanatorium, formally an assembly of gears, possibly a semiotic architecture hint. Tytus Szabelski-Różniak photographs the emerging and disappearing pipeline, a predominantly invisible human intervention into landscape. He denotes the limits of an investigation of critical infrastructures—they are often physically invisible and inaccessible. Rado Ištok and Jiří Žák narrate the story of an unrealised Czechoslovak oil raffinery in Daura. Surprisingly, Czechoslovakia built up Iraq’s oil infrastructure from 1960s. The tipping point came with 1989, as the companies left the market. An illusion technique, Pepper’s ghost, makes the model of the Daura raffinery, its destillation towers and pipelines, appear in front of the viewer, along with the unresolved Czech–Iraqui oil business. The artworks leave one wondering, is there a way to mine the topic further?

hhd.

16/07/2024

The novel Moncada by French writer Robert Merle is a fictious retelling of Fidel Castro’s failed insurgence in Santiago de Cuba and full of heroic, gun-toting comrades hiding out in the rainforest. For some reason it is etched on my memory. Perhaps because it brought to life a lost collective mythology during my own post-Soviet-bloc upbringing. If you wanted to read this monument to the early days of the Cuban revolution your only option would be in either French, Spanish, Italian or German. There doesn’t appear to be an English translation—not surprising considering Cold War politics.

“A Modernist Regime: Cuban Mid-Century Design” at the Cranbrook Museum lifts the veil of another previously inaccessible aspect of post-revolution Cuba for a North American audience. It assembles the output of two state-owned Cuban manufacturers, Dujo Muebles and EMPROVA, through a display of chairs, two buildings (the Cuban pavilion at the 67 Montreal Expo and a 60s asbestos panel house that never went into widespread production), and a reconstructed particleboard system, FURNITUREWALL, made with a byproduct from sugar cane extraction. The show is a classic museum exhibition. Furniture sits on white pedestals and on a central catwalk. Small objects are under bonnets. This is not a showroom but an arrangement of unseen originals. Many are effigies for wider practices in the island’s design circles, grappling with indigeneity, colonial history, nepotism, modernism and mass production.

Design and politics can be hard to pair in an exhibition. There is no “communist” chair. Context is brought in through auxiliary means: posters and leaflets. But the works on show and the biographies of their designers, from exile to political activism, do tell of the country’s complicated and changing relationship to world politics: Dujo’s chairs were the only Latin American representation at the 67 Paris furniture show, at a time when communism’s popularity in Europe had a stronghold in France. And despite more recent Obama-era relaxations in the US-Cuba relationship, even today, a show on Cuban design in a North American museum still feels like a remarkable novelty.

tf.

10/07/2024

Aside from a slew of mean-spirited reviews there is perhaps nothing more demoralizing to curators than having (parts of) a show canceled last minute. It almost happened to me once. And it is something that occurs with astounding regularity. The public rarely ever gets wind of it. But behind the scenes shows get the axe for manifold reasons. One that has become increasingly common in recent years may be surprising: self-censorship.

In 1958, at the Brussels World Expo, a case of political rope pulling derailed a courageous curatorial experiment. As part of the American team’s contribution a pesky small three-part carbuncle was built next to the Edward Durell Stone’s drum-shaped main pavilion. “Unfinished Business,” the theme of this form-follows-function tunnel, was meant as a preemptive strike at criticism of America’s inequity and racial discrimination. It illustrated the 1950s status quo in three segments. A whirlwind of graphic newspaper collages gave way to photos of political initiatives for change toward a utopian image of children holding hands in a meadow. On the outside the colorful boxy volumes symbolically moved from an abstracted crumpled paper ball to a smoothed out surface: a simple metaphor. The kinks got ironed out. Shortly after the opening Southern congressmen managed to derail the exhibit as they felt that old Dixie was falsely painted into a corner. The federal government caved and a redesigned exhibit opened weeks later with mandatory exhibition guides.

Such a failed attempt at tackling a contested societal issue through the medium of an exhibition seems like an ominous foreboding of today’s tactics of curatorial censorship. The mere prospect of dissent or unfavorable reviews is often enough for a project to kick the bucket. And if a potentially controversial topic does get the go ahead it is usually museum-educated to death. The audience’s unfiltered opinions are too much of a risk. What is lost is the magic of discovering an exhibition—a full-scale walk-in story—as a powerful medium with a distinct voice and attributable authorship. Who would go to the movies if an interpreter talked over the entire film?

tf.

25/06/2024

The Disney universe has become a universal reference. Loved by some and contested by others, it draws its inspiration from a North American retelling of European fairy tales. From the thatched cottage in “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” evoking traditional Norman cottages, to the automatons in Geppetto’s workshop in “Pinocchio,” inspired by the Strasbourg Cathedral, France has become an inexhaustible inspiration for the world dreamed up by Walt Disney. It was also in France that Disney’s imprint took on a political dimension with the construction of EuroDisney in Marne-la-Vallée, inaugurated in 1992 under Jacques Chirac. It was part of a policy to urbanize the outskirts of Paris on hitherto little-used farmland. The American visionary’s first pied-à-terre in Europe became one of France’s most popular tourist destinations, guiding the development of an area known as Val d’Europe. Mickey’s Clubs are another pillar of Disney’s tradition in France. They quickly gained popularity as must-visit summer institutions for families looking to entertain their children. “Poisoned apple” or cultural heritage, Disney’s world invites with its distinctive codes, bright colors, fanciful shapes and enchanted atmosphere.
After celebrating Disney’s artistic heritage in Rotterdam in 2021, the exhibition now incorporates elements rooted in French culture. This intelligent approach appeals to an audience that is often critical of Disney because of its deep attachment to its own culture, language and identity, and is sometimes wary of the perceived pervasive American culture. The exhibition tells its story in nine spaces: from the creation of Disney characters to its worldwide expansion. On entering the gallery, visitors are captivated by a subdued space where cartoon shadows are projected onto the walls. The ambience is distinguished by curved walls seducing with a carefully selected color palette, a winding path and sober exhibits. Included are a model of Ludwig II’s Bavarian castle Neuschwanstein, the inspiration for Sleeping Beauty’s famous castle; porcelain by Dutch designer Bas van Beek; and photos and maps of Walt Disney’s travels in Europe: sources of his inspiration.

mpm.

18/06/2024

I used to work for an institution where the recreation of life-like, full scale models was a no-go. This is not a rare case. Stagings have a bad reputation: They are perceived as gaudy, theatrical, too pedagogic, at least in the curators’ eyes. Once you take on the role of the observer, this perspective is—as so often—relativized.

On the 7th floor of the Osaka Municipal Housing Corporation the “Osaka Museum of Housing and Living” spreads over two floors. Residing on top of a railway station and several layers of city bureaucracy, visitors enter the world of Edo period Osaka. A small neighborhood—a standard slice of Osaka in the first half of the 19th century—invites exploration. Decorated for festivities, the shop windows on the ground floor of the Machiyas (traditional Japanese city houses) display artfully arranged sculptures of merchandise based on an original publication from the period. Here, a day lasts 45 minutes, and during nighttime, fireworks explode as a light show on the exhibition hall’s high ceiling.

All this is, at worst, amusing, and at best truly informative, precisely because it is so engaging and immersive. This exhibition is no theme park. It is true to form, to every detail of construction and display of everyday practices and cultural traditions. Take off your shoes and dive in: elegant sliding door constructions next to explanations of differentiated toilet etiquettes, plastic food on real tatami mats.

Once the circuit neighborhood tour is finished, a model and object exhibition on the lower floor offers even more context. Diving into older and younger moments of Osaka building histories, the miniature depictions provide no less detail. All models show construction in action rather than simply described as text. Here, animation travels through all scales and provokes feelings forgotten in exhibition making: the scandalous delight of being entertained first, and informed anyway.

sba.

10/06/2024

“Is that you on one of these photos? If you don't want to appear in this exhibition, please contact us via e-mail.” That’s what the sign says in this nightmare for all those who like to write precise photo credits below their images. Which would be impossible here. On display are around 5000 photos of ordinary and anonymous people, of whom a professional photograph was taken in the Hiller family’s photo studio, mostly at an important moment in their lives: As a baby, when they were drafted into the army, at their wedding, on their deathbed. Yes, this was still common in the 1920s in this Catholic, rural area of Austria: Death is part of the life cycle and was captured in photographs. The negatives remained with the Hiller family, so they could be reordered at any time. A total of 100,000 are being digitized since 2020 (the studio closed in 1995) and can now be seen for the first time in the new Vorarlberg State Museum and on the “volare” photo portal of the Vorarlberg State Library.

The exhibition gives the rather trite term “immersion” a refreshing meaning. The thematically arranged photo series are printed in high quality on textiles that completely cover the walls. This creates a hallowed atmosphere reminiscent of Christian Boltanski’s artworks. And rightly so. Because no matter how happy the occasion may have been, the sheer endless repetition creates a feeling of deep anxiety. That’s how similar we all are with our so-called differences! In many cases, these images are probably the only thing that remains of a life.

The singularity of history sometimes breaks through such infinitely varied typical situations: One of the Hiller sons took photographs in the First World War, another in the Second. The war series are inserted through projections—and everyday life dominates there too, only this time at the front. Here curator Arno Gisinger dares a harsh confrontation with greatly enlarged postcard motifs from tourist advertising. Despite everything, it is not an unsettling, solemn exhibition. At four stations, visitors can take a selfie with a few props and professional studio lighting, a split second of individuality among 5000 other individuals.

oe.

04/06/2024

Anyone who claims to be an art lover today is likely familiar with interactive media arts, yet often finds that these works are not genuinely “interactive.” Merely swinging arms or walking before a screen for moments does not suffice. However, a work created by Jihoon Byun in the exhibition “Humming Froths, Breathing Silence” at the Bucheon Art Bunker B39 in Bucheon, South Korea, transcends typical experiences of media technology in art. Set within a repurposed garbage incineration plant, it challenges and redefines interactivity. In a former incinerator that is 39 meters tall, visitors are not just passive observers but integral to the artwork. Standing still or moving slowly, every gesture of the visitors is mirrored on the wall. Their silhouettes are accurately projected and interact dynamically with the graphics cascading from above, breaking the graphical mass into millions of particles, reminiscent of froths. This seamless interaction generates such a palpable experience that visitors feel they can almost touch it, even without physical contact. The remnant odor and the lingering chill of the space intensify this feeling, raising questions about bodily experience and sparking a dialogue between virtuality and reality. Although visitors do not physically reach anything, they blend into the mirrored figure’s experience, reminding one of the discovery of mirror neurons by neuroscientist Vittorio Gallese—beings can perceive and imagine as if they are acting, just by seeing others act. Here, Byun’s work further shows that these perceptions can merge, becoming indistinguishable and enhanced by virtual technology within a physical environment. This realization astonishes audiences, suggesting that the tactile world is expanding into the virtual world, redefining our notion of touch. Pushing the boundaries of media art, the unique fusion of history, technology, and artistic expression within this gigantic architecture highlights the potential of virtual physicality, a concept we may increasingly confront in the future.

hl.

28/05/2024

The world’s first biennial where art is only realized as a model, which makes things a little easier: this idea was born two years ago in Düsseldorf. There, as at 19 other German train stations, is a model railroad installed on which up to four trains can be set in motion at the same time for a price of 1 euro. The glass boxes were placed around 1970 by the Ehret company, whose main business was to operate vending machines at train stations. The company, which ran 36 model railroad stands at peak times, closed down recently. A full-time railroad manager has adopted them as a hobby and is planning to modernize the models that stalled during the years of the German “economic miracle.” During this transition period, artist Alexander Janz and cultural studies scholar Felix Koberstein have succeeded in launching a biennial: every two years, another city will host a show featuring new works by different artists. The second venue is Frankfurt am Main. Curator Klara Hülskamp has joined the team there.

Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller are among the best-known artists at the 2024 Model Biennial, as is performer Tim Etchells. A drive-in movie theater was built especially for the group Total Refusal, where a video work with NPCs (non-playable characters) from a computer game can be seen. The tremendous charm of the exhibition lies in the fact that the contrasts between art and non-art, between the idiosyncrasy of the regular model city and the artistic manipulations turn the visit into a quiz: Can you find all 12 works? Is the harshly lit encounter between two 1:87-scale people on a small bridge part of the artwork that consists of scattered teeth—or has this strange (love?) scene always been like this?

oe.

The Architectural Exhibition Review

08/10/2024

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19/08/2024

12/08/2024

05/08/2024

30/07/2024

23/07/2024

16/07/2024

10/07/2024

25/06/2024

18/06/2024

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