ane Drew and Maxwell Fry with a model of one of their many buildings for the Gold Coast, 1945. / Tropical Modernism - Architecture and Independence at the V&A South Kensington . Image Courtesy of RIBA
Reflecting on 2024, numerous architectural exhibitions have opened worldwide, addressing various themes, exhibition formats, and featured architects. Architectural design and architecture practice influence our daily lives in subtle and often unnoticed ways, where the end-users embrace built environments as they are. This reaction may arise from a combination of factors, such as a sense of powerlessness to enact significant change after a building is constructed or the experience of growing up in environments over which individuals had little or no agency in shaping. For these reasons, architectural exhibitions serve an essential purpose, offering society a chance to pause, reflect, and critically examine the myriad issues that surface during designing and building. These issues are often overlooked or need to be acknowledged, as practitioners may prioritize delivering projects within strict timelines over exploring more profound reflections.
In 2024, museums, galleries, and curators responded to the evolving challenges within the built environment with various approaches. Some exhibitions questioned the ethics of building materials and the practices behind supply chains, drawing attention to the broader implications of material choices. Others focused on documenting architectural movements worldwide, emphasizing their cultural and historical significance and the urgent need to preserve and adapt rather than replace them with entirely new builds. These efforts highlight the role of exhibitions in raising awareness about pressing issues while fostering a more critical dialogue about the architectural discipline.
The Lindau Art Museum is hosting an exhibition titled “Christo and Jeanne-Claude - A Lifelong Journey.” Running from April 13th to October 13th, 2024, this display marks the first comprehensive museum exhibition on Christo and Jeanne-Claude in southern Germany, created in collaboration with the Christo and Janne-Claude Foundation. Featuring artistic drawings, detailed collages, early objects, and photographs, the exhibition documents the lifelong journey that led the artists to their famous large-scale temporary projects.
Two years ago, on September 18, 2021, Christo and Jeanne-Claude's L'Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped, 1961–2021, was inaugurated. The monumental public artwork wrapped the Parisian monument in over 25,000 square meters of silvery fabric tied in place with 7,000 meters of red rope. The materials, all made out of woven polypropylene, a type of thermoplastic, are now being reused, upcycled, and recycled, following the artists’ vision. Most of the materials will be transformed to serve practical uses for future public events in Paris. The Christo and Jeanne-Claude Foundation is also collaborating with Gagosian to bring Christo’s early works to London’s East End for an exhibition open from October 6-22, 2023.
Artists are frequently inspired by land — be it painter Robert S. Duncanson’s renditions of American landscapes, or William Kentridge’s subversions of colonial-era British paintings depicting African vistas. Some artists, though, have preferred to work directly with the land, creating structures that sit on landscapes, or carving into the land itself. This art style — formally termed as Land Art — gained prominence in 1960s and 70s United States, in the context of the rise of the environmental movement amidst civil rights and antiwar protests, and as artists looked to separate themselves from the art market.
Hexton Gallery has announced the opening of “Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Ephemeral Nature,” a curated exhibition that showcases never-seen-before works from Christo and Jeanne-Claude's private collection. The exhibition will feature an extensive selection of original drawings, collages, and wrapped objects from the couple's private collection, many of which have never been shown to the public until now. The gallery, in collaboration with the Aspen Institute and the Christo and Jeanne-Claude Foundation have also launched a year-long program focused on the artists’ pioneering impact on environmental art, celebrating the 50th anniversary of their 1972 Valley Curtain project in Rifle, Colorado.
Gagosian Gallery Parishas announced an exhibition dedicated to Christo, presented in collaboration with the artist’s estate. Featuring sculptures made in Paris between 1958 and 1963, the exhibition features the earliest examples of Christo’s wrapped objects and barrel structures, many of which are exhibited for the first time, along with key works from his rarely shown Surfaces d’Empaquetage and Cratères series. The exhibition is open to the public on June 10, displayed across two floors of Gagosian’s rue de Ponthieu gallery, near Christo’s first Paris studio.
Conceived in 1977, and currently, in progress, The Mastaba, Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s largest permanent artwork in the world, is designed for Abu Dhabi, to be built in a proposed location approximately 160 kilometers south of the city in the desert of Liwa, in the United Arab Emirates. Made from 410,000 multi-colored barrels, the installation will create “a colorful mosaic, echoing Islamic architecture”. 150 meters high, 300 meters long at the vertical walls and 225 meters wide at the 60 degrees slanted walls, the duo’s final project will take at least three years to be built, once it receives governmental approval.
Andreas Ruby, Director of the Swiss Architecture Museum shares his thoughts on the wrapped Arc de Triomphe installation by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, in a 3 part essay, converting a monument glorifying war into a monument of decolonization. The temporary installation opened to the public on September 18, 2021, and will be dismantled starting October 3, 2021.
After almost 60 years of its initial ideation, Artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s temporary installation, the complete wrapping of L’Arc de Triomphe in Paris has opened to the public on September 18th, attracting thousands of tourists and locals. In this new photoseries, photographer Jared Chulski captures the wrapped monument, focusing on the details of the temporary intervention and how it compliments the city's urban fabric.
Artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s temporary installation, the L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped, opened to the public on September 18th. Twenty-five thousand square meters of recyclable silvery-blue fabric held together by 3,000 meters of red rope currently cloak the Parisian landmark transforming the urban setting, and photographer Jad Sylla captured the completed installation.
Work has just begun on the late Christo's unfulfilled intervention for the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. The first images by architectural photographer Jad Sylla highlight the wrapping up of the famous monument with 25,000 square meters of recyclable polypropylene fabric in silvery blue, and with 3,000 meters of red rope. Scheduled for September 18 until October 3, 2021, the temporary artwork ‘l’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped’ will only remain on display for 16 days.
Architecture is defined by its permanence. While the discipline's most celebrated works are often those that were built to last, there's inherent beauty and value in an architecture of impermanence. Moving beyond conventional buildings and considering environmental and social impacts, temporary structures hold the potential to push the boundaries of architecture and the categorization of art.
Christo Vladimirov Javacheff, best known as Christo, has passed away at 84 years old of natural causes, in his house, in New York City. The Bulgarian artist, best known for wrapping The Pont Neuf in Paris and the Reichstag in Berlin, has created along the years, with his late wife Jeanne-Claude, large-scale architectural interventions in urban and rural environments.
The Bulgarian artist Christo will wrap the famous Arc de Triomphe in Paris with recyclable blue fabric in his next work. The work, which will open on April 9 and last for two weeks, coincides with the artist's large exhibition at the Center Pompidou, which brings together works done in partnership with his late wife, Jeanne-Claude, during the period in which they lived in Paris.
The “London Mastaba” has opened in Hyde Park. A temporary sculpture floating on the Serpentine Lake, the project is the first major public outdoor sculpture in the United Kingdom designed by the artist Christo. The opening comes as new photographs by Wolfgang Volz are released which chart the construction and completion of the striking art piece.
Featuring 7,506 horizontally-stacked barrels floating on the Serpentine Lake, the Mastaba coincides with an exhibition of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s work at the Serpentine Galleries featuring sculptures, drawings, collages, and photographs spanning more than 60 years.
Artist Christo has released images of his proposed temporary sculpture for Hyde Park, London, to become his first major outdoor public sculpture in the United Kingdom. Titled “The Mastaba (Project for London, Hyde Park, Serpentine Lake)," the sculpture will consist of 7,506 horizontally-stacked barrels floating on the Serpentine Lake throughout the summer of 2018.
“The Mastaba” will coincide with an exhibition of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s work at the Serpentine Galleries, featuring sculptures, drawings, collages and photographs spanning more than 60 years. Supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies, the exhibition will be the artists’ first in a UK public institution since 1979 and will showcase their long-running exploits with barrel forms, chosen initially for their sculptural effect and low cost.
March 22 is World Water Day, an annual international celebration launched and organized by the United Nations. The goal of the day is to raise awareness about a wide range of water-based issues from around the world. This year’s theme is “Nature From Water”, which invites everyone to think about how nature can provide solutions to the water challenges we face today.
To celebrate World Water Day this year, we’ve rounded up 20 of our favorite projects that utilize water as a central design feature. Whether it be Zumthor'sThermal Vals or Chritso and Jeanne-Claude'sFloating Piers, water has been playing an important role in architectural design and in demarcating the boundaries of nature against our built environment.
Until July 3rd, you can experience the latest and last work of artist duo Christo and Jean-Claude. Called The Floating Piers, the floating dock extends over the water of Italy's Lake Iseo.
The work consists of a three kilometer walkway wrapped in 100,000 square meters of yellow cloth, which is supported by a floating dock system composed of 220,000 high-density polyethylene cubes. These elements naturally undulate with the movement of the waves at Lake Iseo, which is located 100 kilometers east of Milan and 200 kilometers west of Venice. The floating yellow roads extend from the pedestrian streets of Sulzano, connecting the islands of San Paolo and Monte Isola.
The Floating Piers is the first large-scale work of Christo for more than a decade after making The Gates in 2005 with Jeanne-Claude, who passed away four years later. Due to the importance of Christo and Jeanne-Claude's work and the inspiration they have given to many architects, we wanted to investigate the process of building this spectacular project, which makes the dream of walking on water a reality.
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_-_The_Mastaba_(Project_for_London__Hyde_Park__Serpentine_Lake).jpg?1522848242 "Courtesy of Christo")
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_-_The_Mastaba_(Project_for_London__Hyde_Park__Serpentine_Lake)_(5).jpg?1522848162 "Courtesy of Christo")
_-_The_Mastaba_(Project_for_London__Hyde_Park__Serpentine_Lake)_(4).jpg?1522848063 "Courtesy of Christo")
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