Temporal Installations: The Latest Architecture and News

The fourth edition of the Bruges Triennial: Spaces of Possibility, curated by Shendy Gardin and Sevie Tsampalla, will be held from Saturday 13 April to Sunday 1 September 2024. This event promises to transform the streets and historic center of Bruges, Belgium, into a showcase of contemporary art and architectural interventions. With a focus on exploring the latent potential of this UNESCO World Heritage Site, the festival raises questions about how concepts like change and sustainability can interact with preservation.

The 12 selected artists and architects have been prompted to challenge the existing spaces within Bruges. Among the invited names are Boonserm Premthada’s Bangkok Project Studio, Mona Hatoum, Studio Ossidiana, and Sumayya Vally, founder of Counterspace and curator of the first Islamic Arts Biennale, among others. Until September 1^st, they are presenting temporary interventions and large-scale installations that seek to reveal the hidden potential of the city, echoing the festival's theme. Against the backdrop of Bruges' rich history, this edition of the Bruges Triennial underscores the importance of adaptable urban spaces in today's ever-evolving world.

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As Milan Design Week begins, the Italian city is transformed into the grounds of one of the most expansive celebrations of global design, with its streets and venues brimming with cultural events, exhibitions, large-scale installations, talks and conferences. At Rho Fiera, the 62nd edition of the Salone del Mobile.Milano brings together designers, architects, producers and leading figures of the design world, featuring over 1950 exhibitors which will remain open for the next 6 days. Additionally, across the city Fuorisalone opens up locations across the city with an engaging and varied cultural program.

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Happening between November 7 and 12, Dubai Design Week 2023 brought together over 500 designers, architects, and creative practitioners to explore the relationship between traditional practices and emerging technologies in an effort to create more environmental sustainability and design-led social impact solutions. As one of the most important cultural events in the Middle East, the festival brings forward a wide offering of installations, artworks, and immersive experiences, all exploring important topics of eco-friendly design.

This year’s interventions and installations drew inspiration from the region’s natural ecosystems as well as local traditions and craftsmanship while merging these practices with innovative technologies, biomaterial explorations, and reimagined ways of practicing. Across the interventions, a recurring motif emerges, that of celebrating Middle Eastern heritage and engaging productively with vernacular practices.

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Alsar Atelier, led by Alejandro Saldarriaga, is an architecture and design studio based in Boston and Bogotá. Their practice focuses on the planning and creation of public facilities with an emphasis on social benefit, as well as small-scale residential projects. The studio employs a design approach that prioritizes the use of sustainable materials, cost-effective strategies, and active community collaboration.

For these reasons, Alsar Atelier was selected by ArchDaily as one of the best new architecture practices of 2023. Below, we bring you an interview with Alejandro Saldarriaga to get a closer look at his inspirations, working processes, and future projects.

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Burning Man, the annual festival taking place in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, has opened on August 27th, with thousands of festivalgoers gathering to create the Black Rock City, a ‘temporary metropolis’ complete with numerous installations, artworks, and pavilions that celebrate “community, art, self-expression, and self-reliance.” This year, however, the festival experience has been different, as heavy rains inundated the desert and festival site, creating thick, ankle-deep mud. The roads to and from the festival have been closed as large vehicles risk remaining stuck in the mud. While some people have left the site by walking out, the majority of the 70,000 campers remain stranded, as reported by CNN.

Architecture design firm Buchan was selected to lead the design for the Australian Pavilion at Expo 2025 in Osaka, Japan. Under the theme "Chasing the Sun," the installation will encapsulate Australia's connection to the land and the Cosmos, displaying its rich culture and diverse arts scene. From 13 April 2025 to 13 October 2025, more than 150 countries will participate in a single location, anticipating 28 million visitors from across the globe.

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Staged stories on community and identity, ephemeral architecture showed that in 2022 it doesn't have to be permanent to be powerful. A direct and popped-up public installation can shift from preparation to action, reclaiming and defining what makes a community unique. Highlighting installations to acknowledge linguistic diversity in NYC, a giant table to celebrate culinary in Barcelona, and a large-scale net in Dubai to represent the local culture, among others, these initiatives seek to understand ways in which local and regional expressions can help cities to be more equal and diverse.

Globalization has connected the world boundaryless. While it has also made information more accessible, it has led to homogeneity and identity crisis at melding unique societies and cultural expressions. Cultural differences are undeniable as globalization grows. Hence, as architecture produces common living standards, it can also highlight singularities. Festivals, installations, and pavilions, 2022 was the year to express local memories to be recognized and celebrated, setting Community and identity as central topics in ephemeral architecture throughout the year.

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One of the most significant cultural events in the Middle East, Dubai Design Week represents a platform that offers individuals and companies the opportunity to showcase their design experience and to open conversations about the most pressing issues of our times. Developed in a strategic partnership with Dubai Design District (d3), the event presents a series of immersive, large-scale installations that highlight the festival’s theme: Design with Impact.

This year’s program is focused on designing a sustainable future. To promote this, Dubai Design Week has invited international and regional architects and designers to create installations that demonstrate creative design thinking, to introduce innovative materials, and spark conversations about the ways in which design can have a positive impact on the environment.

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On the 4th of October, the temporary installation "Mass is More", a project designed by Daniel Ibáñez and Vicente Guallart, from the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC), together with Alan Organschi from Bauhaus Earth (BE), was presented at the Barcelona Pavilion. It was open to the general public from the 1st to the 9th of October.

The first full-size London Design Festival (LDF) for three years, and the event’s 20th anniversary year, this was meant to be a celebration. But life, as the saying goes, had other plans. Rocked by the news of HRH Queen Elizabeth II’s passing, the country, and indeed the world started the London Design Festival in a period of mourning. Having reigned over the densest period of design innovation in human history, however, her majesty was no stranger to change.

With long-running themes like sustainability, materials, economic crises, and digital futures never higher in the public’s consciousness, LDF ’22 wasn’t just a professional meet and greet, but a chance to share some much-needed positivity with design enthusiasts, as well as locals, just passing by. Here are the most interesting and talked-about installations and talks from nine days of reflection on the past and hope for the future.

Initiated by EXMURO arts publics and the Ville de Québec, the 9th edition of Passages Insolites, or Unusual Passages, is open from June 25 to October 10, 2022, in the city of Québec. During this time, 17 works by 18 local, Canadian, and international artists will be placed along a 2.5 km circuit in the historic sectors of Place Royale, Petit Champlain, and the Old Port. This year’s edition creates spaces for artistic encounters and reflection on the environment, decolonization, and geopolitics. In the words of Vincent Roy, EXMURO’s executive and artistic director, this year’s programming will “help put Quebec City on the global art map as a venue for exhibiting art and promoting artists, both locally and internationally.”

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André Ricard and Daniel Giralt-Miracle, the member responsible for ADI/FAD, proposed the island of Ibiza as the venue for the ICSID Biennial Congress in 1971. That's how the story began. At that time, the so-called "Urquinaona Open Design Group" already existed in Barcelona. From the group, and with Carlos Ferrater at the head, they offered their help to the organization of the congress. They refused, as everything seemed to have already been organised. Together with Fernando Bendito, Ferrater asks about accommodation for the students. They still had nothing. They get the opportunity they were waiting for. Thousands of invitations are sent out to students all over the world. The number of replies was greater than the number of registered students.

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In 1929, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich design the German National Pavilion for the 1929 Barcelona International Exhibition. The official reception for the exhibition was held there, presided over by King Alfonso XIII and the German authorities. From then on, the story is well known to everyone. A symbolic work of the Modern Movement, the Pavilion has been extensively studied and interpreted, and has inspired the work of several generations of architects.

The ceiling is an important element in architecture and interior design, combining functionality with aesthetics through different materials that add layers of texture and color, providing quality and comfort in interior spaces as well as a protective surface for other building systems. 

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As we have seen throughout the history of architecture, ephemeral installations and pavilions are important tools for talking about specific moments in architecture in an almost immediate way. While it is true some pavilions have been so relevant that they broke with their ephemeral quality to become permanent, such as the German Pavilion in Barcelona, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich, most are documented in photographs, plans and experiences to be rewritten in future projects.