Exhibition: The Latest Architecture and News

Marking the second edition of Design Shanghai, this year’s exhibition will take place March 2015 and will include over 300 exhibitors across three halls; Contemporary Design, Classic Design, and Collectible Design. Featured among the confirmed installations is Jean Prouvé’s Demountable House, a rare early example of prefabricated housing.

French architect Jean Prouvé is regarded as one of the twentieth century’s most influential designers, and is known for combining bold elegance with economy of means in a socially conscious manner. He is also recognized for his manufacturing firm, Les Ateliers Jean Prouvé, where he designed and produced lightweight metal furniture in collaboration with some of the most well known designers of the time. One such designer was Pierre Jeanneret, a Swiss architect and furniture designer who often worked with his more famous cousin, Le Corbusier.

Read on after the break to learn more about this year’s featured exhibition.

BSA Space, home to the Boston Society of Architects and the BSA Foundation, is currently accepting proposals from all designers interested in becoming a guest curator. The selected curator would be responsible for conceiving, fabricating, executing, and installing all aspects of a major exhibit within the BSA's 5,000 square foot gallery space. Proposals should take into consideration a diverse audience and seek to capture the imagination of the public by conveying the power of design as an instrument of change within Boston. All major exhibitions will run four to six months and guest curators will receive a budget of $30-70K. The deadline for submissions is Friday, November 14 at 4:00PM. More details can be found, here.

As part of the Dylan Thomas in Fitzrovia festival, The Building Centre is examining the space Dylan Thomas and other writers depend on to create their work. A Shed of One's Own is a photographic exploration of unique sheds with architectural significance and literary connections. From award-winning studios in Central London to weathered bothies in Scotland, this exhibition explores the importance of space for creativity and inspiration.

Waves of golden light appear to shimmer and float from the ceiling in “Breaking the Surface” a new interactive installation from Scandinavian Design Group, ctrl+n, Abida, Pivot Product Design and Intek. The kinetic sculpture is composed of an array of acrylic plastic tubes extending through the floor of a two-story mechanized matrix, gracefully moving above and below the surface to evoke abstract images of the undersea geography. Read more about the interactive installation after the break.

Pier Vittorio Aureli's collection of thirty 'non-compositional' drawings, exhibited as part of a series entitled The Marriage of Reason and Squalor, will open at London's Betts Project architecture gallery tomorrow (8th October 2014). The drawings, in development since 2001, are part of an ongoing investigation into "what, in the absence of a better definition, Aureli has described as ‘non-compositional architecture’." This term, referring to the work of art historian Yve-Alain Bois who was himself prompted by the ambitions of the constructivist artist Alexander Rodchenko, is used to describe works that "aspire to the abandonment of composition and even the self of the artist." This will be Aureli's second recent exhibition in London following Dogma: 11 Projects, which was presented at London's Architectural Association in 2013.

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In this video from the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art's Lousiana Channel, three acclaimed writers - Sjón, James McBride and Daniel Kehlmann - talk about their experience of Olafur Eliasson's Indoor Riverbed at the Danish museum. Sjón describes how he felt when he saw 180 tons of rock from his home country of Iceland filling the room, saying "It was like a moment in a dream, when you enter a room and something is not right, but familiar."

The soaring glass roofs of London's Alexandra Palace are about to receive a major overhaul thanks to a £23.8m ($38.6m USD) fundraising project focused on the revitalization of the 139 year old palace. Images of Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios 2014 revitalization are on display for the first time in an exhibition showcasing the upcoming changes to the public palace, including extensive renovations to reopen derelict sections of the building. Find out more about the exhibition after the break.

Currently on exhibition at Barbican Art Gallery in London is Constructing Worlds, an exploration of architectural photography from the 1930s to now. The exhibition brings together over 250 rarely seen works by 18 leading photographers who have demonstrated the medium’s ability to look beyond simple documentation of the built world and reveal wider truths about society. Learn more about the exhibition after the break.

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Starting October 18th, the Tchoban Foundation will be showing 65 art works of Hôtel particulier buildings – prestigious town houses, which were built in the first part of the 18th century and characterize Parisian architecture until today - in the exhibition “Lʼhôtel particulier à Paris.” After Sergei Tchoban, architect and founder of the Tchoban Foundation for Architectural Drawing, showed his collection of 24 drawings at the École des Beaux-Arts in 2011 with the exhibition “À la source de l’ Antique. La collection de Sergei Tchoban”, the two institutions now continue their collaboration, this time with a selection of works from Paris that will be displayed in Berlin.

The evening of October 6th marks the grand opening of UNStudio's new exhibit, Motion Matters 4.0 at the Architektur Galerie in Munich. The opening ceremonies will coincide with the first day of the Expo Real International Trade Fair for Property and Investment and include a welcome speech by the Dutch Consul General Peter Vermeij, followed by an introductory talk about the exhibit from UNStudio co-founder and principal Ben van Berkel.

Today, Olson Kundig Architects’ first-ever retrospective Anthology opened its doors at Omaha’s KANEKO. Spanning five decades of Olson Kundig work, the site-specific exhibition will focus on the Seattle-based firm’s unique creative process, showcasing the many influences and design explorations that have shaped the practice over the years. Follow us after the break for more information and a sampling of the firms work.

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On September 3, 2014, urban design consultancy URBED was announced winner of the 2014 Wolfson Economics Prize. The competition has spurred unprecedented conversation and debate over the concept of Garden Cities in the UK, while the finalists call for the development of theoretical ideas and implementation of practical solutions. ArchDaily brought you the winning proposal earlier, and The Building Centre, an independent forum of the built environment, teamed up with the Wolfson Prize organizers to bring you an exhibit further exploring the broad range of design solutions from over 200 brilliant entries.

An exhibition celebrating one of North America's foremost postmodern architects will open this October, marking 50 years of Michael Graves' practice. Past as Prologue maps the evolution of Graves' work in architecture and product design through an array of media including sculpture, painting, furniture, drawings and models. The comprehensive exhibition will begin with Graves' work from 1964 and conclude with works currently in progress. The exhibition will be hosted by Grounds for Sculpture with a mission to provide insight into the five-decade progression of Graves' unique design process. More on the exhibition after the break.

On Thursday, the Aedes Network Campus Berlin (ANCB) Metropolitan Laboratory hosted a symposium to mark the opening of the exhibition "Seoul: Towards a New City," in collaboration with the City of Seoul. The city has identified three key objectives to help them strike a balance between restoration and change when moving forward with future development: revival of history, restoration of nature, and renewal of people's lives. Seven projects that reflect these goals are on display at the exhibition. For more details, continue reading after the break.

Thomas Heatherwick is set to expand his international reputation in the coming year, thanks to two exhibitions that will tour the United States and East Asia, reports the Architects' Journal. The US exhibition, titled "Provocations: The Architecture and Design of Heatherwick Studio" will tour Dallas, LA and New York from September 2014 to October 2015. The Asia exhibit is yet to be formally announced, although it is believed it will begin in Singapore in Spring 2015. Read on after the break for more details of the exhibitions.

To coincide with the opening of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA)'s new Architecture Gallery at their headquarters in London's Portland Place, the first major retrospective of Edwin Smith will open next month. Smith, one of Britain's foremost 20th century photographers, was considered a master of capturing the essence of the places, landscapes and buildings he documented over an extensive career. The exhibition, entitled Ordinary Beauty, will display over a hundred carefully curated black and white images from a collection of over 60,000 negatives and 20,000 prints donated by Olive Cook, Smith's widow and collaborator, to the RIBA Library.

Videos

How could hermit crabs teach us a lesson about world peace? In her project, titled, "Why Not Hand Over a "Shelter" to Hermit Crabs?" Japanese media design artist Aki Inomata is inspired by hermit crabs' peaceable exchange of their shells, a metaphor for the peaceful exchange of land between countries. Exploring the theme further, she designs new shelters in the shape of world cities, and provides new homes for the crabs which represent the abstract perception of changing nationalities and identities.

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Japanese artist Katsumi Hayakawa's "Paperworks" exhibition explores the impression of architectural density through delicate three-dimensional installations. The intricate sculptures were all hand-crafted piece by piece out of paper and glue, creating an awe-inspiring assemblage of multi-layered urban conditions at different scales. For more information and images, keep reading after the break.

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