Last week an online call was put out by Rome'sMAXXI museum promising the first five architecture students to respond a chance to travel to Rome and build a model of Sou Fujimoto's latest project. The five selected entrants started on their work at MAXXI on Monday and their experience is being broadcast over the course of this week in a series of photos and videos detailing the ups, downs, opinions and thoughts of the students as they work.
Read more about the model and exhibition after the break...
Currently on display at the Portland Museum of Art until May 19, 'Voices of Design: 25 Years of Architalx' showcases the power of design through an interactive exhibition featuring work of some of the world's leading architects and designers. The display, designed by architects Tim Ventimiglia and Jennifer Whitburn of Ralph Appelbaum Associates, includes a 17-foot-tall tower with three levels of images that alternately reveal themselves and disappear. A dynamic image projection will light up two sides of the tower by using projectors embedded in the interior of the tower and will feature infrared light sensors, creating touch interactivity for visitors. More images and information on the exhibition after the break.
Housing Prototype Systems; Courtesy of Pedro Alonso
Pratt Institute's School of Architecture will present "COLD war COOL digital," an exhibition of 20 scaled prototypes of modernist, pre-fabricated, and globally-distributed Cold War era housing systems that were created using contemporary 3D printing technologies (opening reception 2/18 at 6:15, details below). The exhibition will investigate architectural modernism and its global influence and will connect with contemporary prototype pre-fabrication methods and digital research in housing and skyscraper design. A symposium that explores the technical, aesthetic, and political aspects of prototyping and pre-construction in architecture will be held tonight in conjunction with the exhibition.
The Architecture Foundation has recently launched a month-long initiative named The Open Office. The scheme, which is described as “part 'Citizens Urban Advice Bureau', and part functioning practice” is the brainchild of London-based practice We Made That and will take place in the offices of The Architecture Foundation in Southwark, London until 22nd March. Operating on a walk-in basis, and displaying all work openly, The Open Office aims to engage and educate local communities on issues of architecture, urbanism and planning.
Read more about The Open Office scheme after the break.
Going on now until March 31, the Olympiades, Paris exhibition at the Pavillon de l'Arsenal revisits the Olympiades district and its half century past rich in architectural thought, controversy, citizen debates and engagement at the heart of the city of Paris in general and the 13th arrondissement in particular. About 40 years after the construction of the first buildings, the historian and exhibition curator, Françoise Moiroux, explores the urban, political and social elements of vertical urban planning and platform architecture through the prism of the Olympiades area. More information after the break.
Opening tonight, February 20, at 6:00pm PST at the Perry Rubenstein Gallery in Los Angeles, Iwan Baan's 'The Way We Live' exhibition features captivating large-scale images of urban, architectural, and home environments that capture Baan’s singular vision. Baan’s artistic practice examines how we live and interact with architecture, focusing on the human element, which brings buildings, intersections, and public gathering places to life. Running until April 13, this is Baan's first solo exhibition at the gallery. More information after the break.
Taking place February 20-March 15, Grimshaw Architects will be holding their first exhibition staged in Asia, titled 'Equation'. The exhibition will explore how the natural environment provides inspiration for innovative architectural projects around the world. These projects adopt biomimicry for greater efficiency, acknowledge the importance of connecting building users to nature and work to harness natural systems which ensure that buildings conserve and replenish natural resources. Located at the Urban Redevelopment Authority in Singapore, this marks the sixth major exhibition of work from Grimshaw which continues on from this tradition. More information after the break.
This exhibition coincides with the expansion of Grimshaw’s portfolio in Asia. The practice has unveiled its latest project in the region, a biome centered development which is inspired by the world renowned Eden Project. The project will provide an innovative and immersive environmental experience that uses nature and, in particular, the world’s diverse ecosystems as a recreational and teaching tool forming a unique visitor attraction and multi-day experience. The scheme is located to the North-East of Beijing, in an area of great cultural significance and unsurpassed scenic beauty, and is situated on an existing tourist site currently under regeneration from one of China’s most progressive tourism development groups.
Now on view at the Yossi Milo Gallery through March 2, rarely-seen images by modernist architectural photographer Ezra Stroller (American, 1915-2004) captures a Post-War American landscape with stunning images of industry, technology, transportation and working class Americans.
Beyond Architecture covers the full range of Stoller’s work, including photographs commissioned by Fortune, Architectural Forum, and House Beautiful magazines in the 1940s and for commercial projects for IBM, Upjohn Pharmaceuticals and CBS in the 1940s and 1950s. Included are photographs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s John Hancock Building, Chicago, and the United Nations Headquarters, designed by an international team of architects led by Wallace K. Harrison and including Oscar Niemeyer and Le Corbusier.
The Getty Trust is partnering with Pacific Standard Time to present 11 individual exhibitions throughout LA's museums that will explore the history and heritage of the city's modern architecture and its influential designers. As musician, photographer and architectural blogger Moby boasts that "LA has the most diverse architecture of any city on the planet". Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in LA will explore this diversity that covers post World War II architecture through today through specific points of view ranging in architectural style, influence and decade. The exhibitions, which will run from April through July 2013, are a follow-up to last year's Pacific Standard Time: Art in LA, 1945-1980. The focus of the exhibitions will range in scale and cover the monumental and everyday architectural moments that make LA unique. Exhibitions will present iconic modernist homes and cultural landmarks as well as coffee shops, car washes, and the freeways in addition to the un-built architectural fantasies of modernism and post-modernism.
The ‘I Love, Love, Love : to Build’ Exhibition, which will be on exhibit from February 10 – March 24, offers architects the opportunity to exhibit and share their private thoughts on their production. This series of invitations is in line with the Villa Noailles‘ querying on architects’ roles in our society, on the issues on which they work. Curators Jean-Pierre Blanc and Florence Sarano have simply decided to query each creator on his work: yesterday, today and tomorrow. The lecture by the architects will take place February 10th at 10:00am. For more information, please visit here.
The Innovation Forum MIPIM recently announced that it will feature the “Porous city – Open the tower” exhibition presented at last year’s Venice Biennale for the first time. Held in Cannes, France from March 12-15, the exhibition uses Lego towers to explore futuristic concepts of urban design imagined by the professor and architect Winy Maas, founder and director of the MVRDV architectural practice in Rotterdam and director of The Why Factory, a research institute for the city of the future. Nine three-meter high skyscrapers will rise up during the four days of the show, acting as visual support to debates on the new processes and the role of research in Europe’s urban future. For more information, including a complete program, please visit here. More images after the break.
MoMA's upcoming exhibitionHenri Labrouste: Structure Brought to Light celebrates the impact of this 19th century architect on space, materials, luminosity and on great places of assembly. The exhibition will run from March 10th to June 24th, 2013 and will be the first solo exhibition of Labrouste's work in the United States.
Opening February 14, and on view until May 4, Yale School of Architecture‘s ‘White Cube, Green Maze: New Art Landscapes’ exhibition will examine emerging trends in museum design through six new art sites that share the common thread of moving beyond the traditional “white cube” gallery space, and that juxtapose the experience of culture, art, architecture, and landscape. Featuring newly commissioned photography of these sites by Iwan Baan, each site represents a unique expression of the ambitions and collaborations of patrons, architects, landscape architects, artists, and curators. For more information, please visit here.
Iwan Baan's name may ring a bell for all those following Hurricane Sandy's devastation across New York City and New Jersey's coast. The photographer's iconic photograph made headlines when it was featured on New York magazine's front page days after the storm, showing lower Manhattan in complete darkness, set against its vibrant counterpart uptown, as the United States' east coast was recovering from the extensive damage left in Sandy's wake. The image not only brings to mind the absolute helplessness that New York City faced during the storm, but also lends a hand in a social commentary that is notably pervasive in Baan's work. The Perry Rubenstein Gallery in Los Angeles will feature the photographer's work in a two-month exhibition entitled The Way We Live, honing in on the images that encapsulate the world of architecture, urbanism and human engagement.
Opening tomorrow, January 17, at the Danish Architecture Centre (DAC) in Copenhagen, Denmark, the ‘In Dialogue with the World’ exhibition, which runs until March 10, will show how architects today engage far beyond aesthetics when designing buildings. schmidt hammer lassen architects, along with Henning Larsen Architects, and ADEPT will invite visitors to listen to their accounts of what it is like to work in the field of architecture in the 21st century. With the title Give more, the schmidt hammer lassen architects’ part of the exhibition uses eight selected projects as examples of how buildings, aside from being beautiful, give more. More information after the break.
SFMoMA will highlight the legacy of Lebbeus Woods in an exhibition that will run from February 16 through June 2, 2013. It will include 75 works from the past 35 years of his career. Lebbeus Woods is often categorized as an architect, but always as an artist and visionary. His career has been filled with imaginative leaps through the concepts of space and form, exploring politics, society, ethics and the human condition. He was a great influence on architects, designers, filmmakers, writers and artists. The exhibition will celebrate his untimely death late last year and the breadth of influence that his work had on the art and design community.
Following the conclusion of David Chipperfield’s 2012 Venice Biennale, the British Pavilion has brought its investigations back to the UK to expand upon ten exceptional research projects that illustrate how architecture has shaped the culture and economy of countries around the world.
Should Amsterdam-style floating homes be built in London’s Docklands? Could the UK learn from Brazil’s successful identikit school-building program? Could Belfast be redeveloped by following a Berlin model? These are just some of the fascinating questions that will be addressed in a series of lectures, debates and events hosted by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) in collaboration with the British Council and the Architectural Association.
Mark your calendars for the following special events, which will run from February 26 through April 27, 2013.
Celebrating the ninetieth anniversary of the birth of Harry Seidler, the leading Australian architect of the twentieth century, the ‘Architecture, Art and Collaborative Design’ traveling exhibition will take place January 10-February 10 in Sofia, Bulgaria at the VIVACOM Art Hall. The exhibition traces Austrian-born Seidler’s key role in bringing Bauhaus principles to Australia and identifies his distinctive place and hand within and beyond modernist design methodology. The exhibition was developed by curator Vladimir Belogolovsky of Intercontinental Curatorial Project in New York with Penelope Seidler and Harry Seidler & Associates in Sydney and sponsored by Seidler Architectural Foundation. More information on the exhibition after the break.