Architecture Exhibitions: The Latest Architecture and News

“Sick Architecture” opened on May 5^th at CIVA in Brussels. Co-curated by Beatriz Colomina, the exhibition investigates the intrinsic relation between architecture and sickness. The architectural discourse always weaves itself through theories of body and brain, constructing the architect as a kind of doctor and the client as the patient. Architecture has been portrayed as a form of prevention and cure for thousands of years. Yet architecture is also often the cause of illness, from the institution of hospitals to toxic building materials and sick building syndrome. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic further highlighted this topic.

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As part of the London Festival of Architecture, French-Lebanese architect Annabel Karim Kassar and her award-winning studio AKK have unveiled a new installation at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London titled The Lebanese House: Saving a home, Saving a city. The installation explores the aftermaths of the Beirut explosion, and the rebuilding of the city with a life-size replica of a typical Lebanese home, one of the few remaining classic Ottoman-Venetian houses left in old Beirut, along with documentary films.

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This article was originally published on Common Edge.

The problem with being a deliberative writer is that pretty much everything has already been penned by the time you’re ready to write about something. Such is the case with the 2021 Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB): The Available City. There have been several well-written, insightful essays about the CAB by Zach Mortice, Anjulie Rao, Marianela D’Aprile, and others, so it would be foolish to travel the landscape they have so expertly traversed. Instead, I’m offering a trip through this edition of the CAB, which concluded a successful and significant run on Saturday, down a road less traveled.

Alterity is essential to human development. If deprived of a variety of stimuli, the brain is unable to develop, losing plasticity and deteriorating like an atrophied muscle. This reasoning is widely accepted when it comes to social relations or cognitive and physical activities. But what about the stimuli promoted by the built environment?

Since 2007, Lisbon Architecture Triennale has been developing its mission as a non-profit organization fostering debate, thinking and practice in Architecture. The large number of activities initiated throughout its 10 years of existence is the best witness to this commitment.

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The Fundació Joan Miró presents Lina Bo Bardi Drawing, the first exhibition to focus specifically on the role of drawing in the life and work of the Italian-born Brazilian architect.

The exhibition features a carefully selected collection of a hundred drawings from the Instituto Lina Bo e P. M. Bardi, bearing witness to the importance of drawing in all the stages of Bo Bardi’s multifaceted career. The project has been curated by another architect, Zeuler Rocha Lima - also an artist, researcher, and international expert on Bo Bardi - with support from the Fundació Banco Sabadell.

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Videos

Since July 2018, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) has hosted an exhibition exploring the architecture of the former Yugoslavia. “Concrete Utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia, 1948-1980” became the first major US exhibition to study the subject, through over 400 drawings, models, photographs, and films.

With the exhibition soon coming to an end, Martino Stierli (Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at MoMA) and Vladimir Kulic (Guest Curator and Architecture Historian) have presented a 7-minute-long video guiding viewers through the highlights of the exhibition.

Snarkitecture’s “Fun House” has opened at the National Building Museum in Washington DC, an interactive exhibition forming part of the museum’s Summer Block Party series of temporary structures created inside its historic Great Hall.

More than 1500 people visited Fun House at its July 4th opening day, which comes three years after Snarkitecture’s installation at the 2015 Summer Block Party, titled "The BEACH." Other noted collaborations for Summer Block Party include Studio Gang in 2017, James Corner Field Operations in 2016, and Bjarke Ingels Group in 2014.

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As part of our 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale coverage we present the proposal for the Finnish Pavilion. Below, the participants describe their contribution in their own words.

Finland’s representation at the 16th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia responds to the theme "Freespace" by transforming the Alvar Aalto Pavilion of Finland into a temporary library space.

Queens, NY is one of the most diverse places in the world, so it should be no surprise that it’s residences reflect that diversity. From the Architectural League of New York comes Rafael Herrin-Ferri’s exhibition “All the Queens Houses.” An architect and artist, Herrin-Ferri compiled 273 photographs of homes in Queens. The ever growing photographic survey conveys themes of identity, differentiation, and adaptation.

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