Exhibition: The Latest Architecture and News

Andrew McGregor, Robert Miller, Raymond Bourraine, and Teresa Cacho were recently named as the second prize winner in the Sukkahville Design Competition in Toronto. Organized by the Kehilla Residential Programme, five finalists were given the opportunity to build their designs for an exhibition with the challenge to design a temporary structure constructed for use annually during the week-long Jewish festival of Sukkot. Representing many conceptual themes surrounding the essential nature of dwelling, this proposal for an innovative Sukkah design delicately balances the inherent dichotomies of new/old, open/closed, and temporary/permanent. More images can be viewed after the break.

Beginning on October 16th, 2012, Galeries Lafayette in Paris, France, will be celebrating the 100 year anniversary of the Dome designed by architect Ferdinand Chanut and glass artist Jacques Gruber in 1912. 100 years under the Dome will be held at the flagship store of the boulevard Haussmann, a true Parisian symbol. In addition, the gallery will launch an exhibition called 1912-2012. Chronicles of a Creative Itinerary by architect Rem Koolhaas and his studio OMA, along with a collaboration called Chrysalide between visual artist Yann Kersalé and Djuric Tardio – Architectes.

Join us after the break for more stunning images for the anticipated celebration.

The Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts will be hosting an exhibition on Russian Modernist Architecture starting October 11 through February 16, 2013. Featuring a wealth of rarely published material on architecture that spanned the empire of the Soviet Union, the 80+ large-scale photographs – documented by British photographer Richard Pare – provide unique insight into the movements of the Soviet revolutionary period. More photos and information after the break.

Born in Finland, Eero Saarinen (1910 – 1961) is recognized today as one of America’s most influential architects of the 20th Century. The exhibition Eero Saarinen: A Reputation for Innovation, opening tomorrow at the A+D Architecture and Design Museum in Los Angeles, will highlight his short but brilliant career bookended with two iconic buildings: the unbuilt Smithsonian Gallery of Art which was to be Washington, DC’s first museum of modern art and Dulles International Airport which was designed as the nation’s first jet airport.

What is the connection between sex, architecture and design? Opening tomorrow, September 29, Playboy Architecture, 1953-1979 explores the role of architecture in the famous men’s magazine Playboy. Colomina, along with the curators of NAiM/Bureau-Europa in Maastricht, The Netherlands, centers the exhibition around the research of Beatriz Colomina, a professor at the Princeton University School of Architecture and founder of their Media and Modernity program, who has been studying the connection for the past three years.

Playboy Architecture, 1953-1979 illustrates how cities, buildings, interiors, furniture and products have always played an important role in the fantasy world of Playboy. Ever since Hugh Hefner launched Playboy in 1952, its erotic spreads have featured the likes of Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies van der Rohe, Buckminster Fuller, Moshe Safdie, and Paolo Soleri. As Colomina’s program argues, “sexual revolution and architectural revolution are inseparable.” The exhibition reveals how Playboy reshaped masculinity with the influence of architecture and design.

Taking place September 30-March 3 at the Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck in Remagen, Germany, the ‘Richard Meier. Building as Art‘ exhibition illustrates Richard Meier’s complex design process using prominent buildings and projects from his entire work history. The main focus will be on his museum buildings, as well as on the residential projects created at the start of his career in the USA. The works on display included in the exhibition explore the concept of an architecturally composed space on the basis of five aspects: site, proportion, light, route and color. The exhibition includes a selection of models, original sketches, renderings and photographs. More information after the break.

Opening October 12th, the ‘Pleated Shell Structures’ Exhibition consists of a short term, site specific research prototype designed by Pritzker Architecture Prize-winning architect Zaha Hadid and her firm. Presented by the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) in their gallery, the exhibit positions itself within the argument of parametric design research to focus its efforts on design methods that encompass an operative pathway from design intent to manifestation. The exhibition will be on display until December 2. More information after the break.

C+S Architects‘ contribution, Facecity, for the 2012 Venice Biennale, gives form to the idea of the curator, Fulvio Irace, of continuity in architecture. The exhibition reconsiders the architecture of Milan in the 50s and 60s, where architects, belonging to different generations and with different positions, built the identity of the city without giving up their personal poetics.

The central topic of this thought is the facade, commented by Alberto Savinio in Ascolto il tuo cuore città, 1945: ” …On the facade of buildings is not only written their date of birth, but also written the moods, the manners, the most secret thoughts of their time…, together with the flat window, theorized by Gio Ponti as the way to shape modernity.”

Continue after the break for more. 

Álvaro Siza. Viagem sem Programa, on display at the Fondazione Querini Stampalia through the duration of the Venice Biennale, narrates the most personal aspects of Álvaro Siza’s work in architecture and his concept of life. In response to Siza being announced as the recipient of the 2012 Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, curators Greta Ruffino and Raul Betti, along with organizer MedicinaMentis Cultural Association, began to work closely with the Portuguese master to put together this one-of-a-kind retrospective.

The exhibition features an exclusive collection of 53 works, personally selected by the architect himself, that were developed from travel notes and sketches, along with a 38-minute video interview.

Continue after the break for more images of Álvaro Siza. Viagem sem Programa and check out our previous coverage for more information.

In continuation of their exhibition program on architectural photography taking place in New Delhi, Photoink is currently presenting Chandigarh: Portrait of a City by French photographer, Manuel Bougot until October 27th. Bougot’s interest in Le Corbusier’s architecture began in the 1980s when he worked on Caroline Maniaque’s thesis in architecture–on the Jaoul Houses built in 1954 in Neuilly, France. Since 2006, Bougot renewed his interest in Le Corbusier, attending talks on Chandigarh and photographed the only building the architect ever built for himself – a cabanon (a summer cabin) in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin. Photographing Chandigarh was therefore necessary to further any understanding of Le Corbusier, the urban designer and his philosophy about architecture and modernism. More images and information on the exhibition after the break.

Speculating on the potential and possibilities to develop culture in the Gold Coast, professor Sir Peter Cook and Gavin Robotham, directors of CRAB Studio, investigated this idea through the making of a large hanging sculptural piece: The WRAP, and a set of drawings and watercolors. The result is a public art exhibition, ‘Speculator’ in collaboration with Bond University, in Contemporary Temporary Gold Coast Arts Gallery, Surfers Paradise, Australia. The ‘WRAP’ aims to inspire that architecture can be the catalyst for transformation. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Inspired by a reaction to the tsunami, the proposal for the Istanbul Disaster Prevention and Education Center is symbolically and practically rising above the streams. Designed by CRAB, the studio of Sir Peter Cook and Gavin Robotham, the building sits with its blades resting into the ground, ready to divide the streams of water if and when they come. Organized as a series of five clusters, it meanders along the site as a chain of events and somewhat in the manner of a chain of flowers. More images and architects’ description after the break.

The Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI) will host the exhibition Louis Kahn, The Power of Architecture from September 8 to January 6, 2012. Louis Kahn is known to be one of the most influential architects of the 20th century and has inspired generations with his masterful use of space, light and material.

Storefront for Art and Architecture is opening up its fall exhibition season starting September 25th with ‘Past Futures, Present, Futures’. The exhibition, which will be up until November 17th, presents 101 unrealized proposals for New York City, with 101 reenactments by invited artists, architects, writers, and policy-makers to create alternative visions for the present and future of the city. The exhibition is curated by Eva Franch and designed by Leong Leong. An opening reception will take place on September 25, 2012 from 7pm to 9pm. For more information, please visit here.

This year’s Croatian pavilion at the 13th International Venice Architecture Exhibition presents different struggles currently taking place in various Croatian cities. The exhibition, Unmediated Democracy demands Unmediated Space, interprets the topic of common ground by directly asking the protagonists of those collective conflicts how they imagine a common future across and beyond market or state, private or public mediation. The “desires, constrains and potentials expressed in these sites of conflict” are a part of the wider wave of international protests that are demanding a real direct and unmediated democracy. The demands, gathered on the ground through a series of investigative interviews, form the basis for a possible planning strategy, while their resistance tactics become patterns that could shape a common territory.

The Croatian pavilion focuses on how these demands could allow us to imagine the configuration of possible unmediated spaces. It is organized around three sections: Context, Map and Devices.

Continue reading for more details.

Invited by David Chipperfield, director of the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale, FAT has contributed an exhibition to the Arsenale titled The Museum of Copying. Responding to the curator’s theme of “Common Ground”, The Museum of Copying explores the idea of the copy in architecture as an important, positive and often surreal phenomenon. The exhibit will be centered around FAT’s installation, “The Villa Rotunda Redux” – a five meter high facsimile of Palladio’s Villa Rotunda that explores the Villa as both a subject and object of architectural copying.

Sam Jacob, a director of FAT said: “There is a history of copies of the Villa Rotunda that have been important staging posts for architectural culture. We hope to extend this history and explore how copying something is, strangely, a way of inventing new forms of architecture. It also seems sweet to return a bastardised form of the Villa to its original home in the Venito.”

Alongside this, the London-based practice will also present San Rocco’s “The Book of Copies”, an investigative look into four architectural doppelgängers (remember this fake Austrian village in China?) , and Ines Weizman’s “Repeat Yourself”. Continue after the break to learn more.

The Estonian exhibition for the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale investigates the relationship between time and space by discovering how venues once important have been abandoned and how these tendencies may carry on today and in the future. The exhibition poses a question as its title: “How long is the life of a building?”. The answer is sought based on the example of Linnahall – a dignified Modernist legacy in the heart of Tallinn that only a few decades ago was a renowned and requisite construction, yet is closed today. What’s happening to Linnahall speaks volumes in a more general context as well – similar tendencies are becoming prominent everywhere in the world where multitudes of architectural masterpieces less than 50 years old stand unused.

Continue after the break to learn more.

Join the authors and editors of Lars Müller Publishers for a rare book signing opportunity with architects Wang Shu, Sou Fujimoto, and Steven Holl on August 28th at the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale! This event will kick off the exhibition Lars Müller Publishers – Book Fever, which will feature sixty publications – new releases, bestsellers, milestones from the past, and rare treasures – for the public to explore.

Founded thirty years ago, Lars Müller Publishers’ carefully edited and designed publications on architecture, design, and contemporary art has lead them to become a renowned international publisher. One milestone you may remember was their release of Peter Zumthor’s Works (1998), which was the first survey of the oeuvre of the architect now known worldwide that set new standards for the monograph as a book genre.

Continue after the break for more details on the book signing and exhibition.