On the occasion of the centenary of Finland's Independence (Suomi 100), Rome’s Casa dell’Architettura is to host the “Architecture in Finland. From Alvar Aalto to new generations. Talk with Avanto Architects and Design Office KOKO3” conference on Tuesday 17th October 2017.
“Global Architectural Political Events” are a series of public debates organised by Alejandro Zaera-Polo & Guillermo Fernandez-Abascal that continue the investigation about the political re-engagement of the discipline, as analysed in the essay “Well into the 21st Century” and the “Global Architectural Compass”.
Challenging the outlined categories, their relationships and their featured protagonists, the expected outcome of the series is a new iteration of the diagram. The discussions will take place across different cities around the world throughout 2017 with the participation of several of the offices featured in the map.
Aerial Futures: Leading Edge is lively, provocative and interdisciplinary symposium examining the architecture, technologies and cultures of the contemporary airport. Curated by PLANE—SITE and free to attend, this two-day event understands the airport as a choreographed topography of hypermobility, information and cultures, defining how we travel, trade and connect with each other. It marks the threshold between land and sky, as well as sovereign territories. The airport — what the philosopher Giorgio Agamben describes as a ‘zone of exception’ where the ordinary rules no longer apply — is where the definitive issues of the 21st century play out.
The International Specialized Exhibition Astana EXPO 2017 dedicated to the theme "Future Energy" was an expositional and recreational event that took place between June 10 and September 10, 2017 in the capital of Kazakhstan. The exhibition lasted 93 days and became one of the most spectacular cultural venues in 2017. Overall, 115 countries and 22 international organizations took part in the event.
Archmarathon Awards - Faena Forum, Miami - 13-14 October 2017
ARCHMARATHON 2017 is an event dedicated to the world of design that focuses attention on architecture and interior design in Canada, USA, Central and Latin America.
In 2017 the objective is to identify a selection of 42 works in this geographic region that make people think about the most important relationship in architecture and interior design: that between design and human beings.
Before being a client, a user or broker, human beings are individuals who use, enjoy and experience the end result of the design and construction process, whether it be aimed at giving shape to a chair, an apartment, a building
The exhibition presents around 50 drawings which can be grouped into three categories: the Tallinn School, Paper Architecture from Moscow and that from Novosibirsk. It includes works by renowned artists such as Leonhard Lapin, Yuri Avvakumov, Alexander Brodsky and other architects. Although the artists belong to different architectural groups and come from three diverse cities, they were united by the impulse to break out of the routine of late Soviet planning bureaus, dare something new, develop bold projects and confront the issues of environmental change, authority and technology.
Building of the Day: The George Washington Bridge Bus Station (Credit: The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey)
During the month of October, a host of events will take place throughout the five boroughs of New York City as part of the month-long architecture and design festival, Archtober. The well-known Building of the Day series of walking tours continues with highlights including the Sea Glass Carousel, Freshkills Park, and the George Washington Bridge Bust Station.
Image: Kibera Hamlets School by SelgasCano, Helloeverything, and studio.14, photo credit: helloeverything
Scaffolding curated by Greg Barton, examines the extraordinary applications of scaffolding as a kit-of-parts technology to provide novel forms of inhabitation and access. Through an installation designed by Shohei Shigematsu and OMA New York with graphic design by MTWTF, Scaffolding will disrupt the architectural space of the Center for Architecture, instilling a new appreciation of scaffolding and its transformative potential.
Of particular interest to our local New York City audience, scaffolding is a flexible and accessible system hiding in plain sight. Despite its indispensable link to architecture, scaffolding is too often maligned as a necessary nuisance. The exhibition demonstrates how this
Amanda Williams, Flamin’ Red Hots from Color(ed) Theory Suite, 2014–16. Courtesy of the artist/ McCormick Gallery
The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago presents the first-ever museum exhibition of breakout Chicago artist Amanda Williams, featuring a new addition to her highly acclaimed project, Color(ed) Theory, which debuted at the first Chicago Architecture Biennial. The bright, monochromatic houses painted as part of Color(ed) Theory bring attention to the overwhelming number of vacancies on Chicago’s South Side, reflecting Williams’ perspective that architecture serves as a microcosm for larger social issues. Together with new works such as A Dream or Substance, a Beamer, a Necklace or Freedom? -- where Williams invited Englewood-based collaborators to gild a room in imitation gold leaf in the same proportion of a Chicago lot, and then sealed off the room with just a small gap for viewing the gleaming interior -- Williams’ solo debut creates an experience that comments on race, class, and urban space. Chicago Works: Amanda Williamsis organized by MCA Curatorial Assistant Grace Deveney and is on view from July 18 to December 31, 2017.
Now on display at the Jaroslav Fragner Gallery as part of the third Prague Experimental Architecture Biennial is “ZHA: Unbuilt,” an in-depth look into some of the firm’s best projects that could have been.
Arranged within the space by typological concepts (towers, atriums, stadiums, shells, masterplans, ribbons, and bubbles), the exhibition serves as an exploration into the evolution of the work of Zaha Hadid Architects, showing how earlier research and innovations have become the foundations of the firm's architectural projects currently in development.
By God, don’t walk by me, I am an architect. I am trying to show you something. Look at it! - Morris Lapidus
Never before there were so many distinctive and original voices and visions in architecture. Multiplicity of voices is the defining feature of architecture’s current moment. Architecture of distinction and originality is being produced all around us. Our built environment is growing ever more diverse and complex. Is architecture oversaturated with ideas? How many architectures do we need? How can we remain critical by being exposed to such a proliferation of voices? Do architects need common ground? Should architects’ voices be amplified? Should architecture be ego-driven? Is iconic and signature-style architecture still relevant?
The exhibition Social Construction: Modern Architecture in British Mandate Palestine, tracing the influence of international Modernism on the architectural vernacular that developed in Palestine during 1917–48, is on display at the Yale Architecture Gallery from August 31to November 18, 2017. Originally organized by the Israel Museum, in Jerusalem, the show draws inspiration from the extensive research of architects Ada Karmi-Melamede and Dan Price, whose accompanying book, Architecture in Palestine during the British Mandate, 1917–1948, explores not only the functional aspects of this new architecture but also the social values that shaped the defining language of this new architectural style. The original exhibition was curated and designed by Oren Sagiv, chief of exhibition design at the Israel Museum, with Eyal Rozen.
The city of Los Angeles manufactures the myth of its own aspirational promise with cult-like fervor showcasing both spectacular virtuosity and deep social myopia - at once its glory and its menace, as Frank Lloyd Wright might have said. LA often stands apart as the urban sing-song of denial replete with clenched eyes and muffled ears. Thus, an illustration of homeless architecture which draws from the same artistic tools and idealism that typically supports the other end of the housing spectrum satirizes the ubiquity of the illusion machine and asks viewers to consider their place on the assembly line of fantasy.
How long-term should urban planning be? Munich’s Oktoberfest, the Kumbh Mela pilgrimage in India (or the largest gathering of humans on the planet), the Burning Man Festival in Nevada, and other major events demonstrate that flexible architectural configurations are temporarily deployed around the globe to provide medium-term shelter, often to enormous crowds. Such structures fulfill a range of functional tasks and are used in religious and cultural festivals or can take the form of military camps, refugee camps, or even temporary mining towns. This show traces a global phenomenon that has become increasingly topical given today’s current state of mass migration triggered by climate change, political strife, and natural disasters.
Entrance to the Visitors Center at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS), formerly known as the Prince of Wales Museum, Mumbai. Photo: Rajesh Vohra
As a point of entry and exit, a threshold has a dual coding in society as both a physical and symbolic marker of separation and connection. Thresholds are often explicitly hard-edged or even brutal in their expression, demarcating rigid boundaries, as in the definitive lines of walls, barricades, and security checkpoints in buildings, around cities, or across larger territories. Too often, thresholds also divide human activity or communities according to social, ethnic, national, or economic characteristics. Architecture and planning can unwittingly contribute to these different forms of physical separation, especially in ways made visible through their practitioners’ interpretations of culture, religion, or legislation. As the academic disciplines that inform spatial practices, architecture and planning are themselves often similarly separated by disciplinary thresholds, inhibiting porosity between fields of research. By definition, an individual discipline necessarily is organized around a self-referential center of discursive production, but this often happens at the expense of the richness found at the intersection of multiple disciplinary perspectives. Is architecture, in its compulsive drive to create the autonomous object, inherently hardening the thresholds separating it from other disciplines and, by extension, reproducing those schisms within the built environment? Can architecture and planning intentionally construct soft thresholds―lines that are easily traversed, even temporarily erased―thereby allowing for multiple perspectives across different modes of research and practice and catalyzing disciplinary and social connections? What, then, is the physical expression of a soft threshold―a space that is visually and physically porous, plural in spirit, encompassing of its context, and yet rigorous in its expression?
2017/2018 Hyde Lecture Series opens another exciting chapter for the design and planning disciplines as speakers take a fresh, in-depth look at the latest developments in their respective fields.
What is the relationship between art and architecture? What makes a great space for art? How do buildings inform what and how we see? Leading architects will be in conversation with museum directors, gallerists and artists to discuss major international projects and the role of architecture in shaping the cultural landscape.