The three European architecture firms in this exhibition—Cero 9 of Madrid, Rahm Architects of Lausanne, and R&Sie of Paris—seek out new strategies to reconfigure human beings relationship to a broadly conceived “environment.” Unlike recent ecological design that attempts to completely rectify or balance human beings relationship with nature, these architects combine robust architectural forms and innovative building systems, developing environments that challenge social conceptions of a stable natural order.
Exhibition Details
Anxious Climates: Architecture at the edge of environment
- October–December 2008
- HGA Gallery
The architects in this exhibition do not attempt to relate architecture to nature per se; rather they envision new forms or new strategies for interacting with nature. Thus, it is unclear in many of the projects if nature precedes or is produced by technological systems, building forms, and/or planning strategies. Because of this, the resulting work is both unsettling and exhilarating. It neither mollifies our fears of environmental crisis nor does it add to the construction of crisis. Rather, the work in Anxious Climate uses the site of contemporary environmental uncertainty as the site for the production of more socio-natural uncertainty, revelation and surprise. Whether developing building skins that incorporate mosquitoes or street lamps that emanate moonbeams, these architects take us to the anxious and confusing edge of what we understand an environment to be.
Exhibition Images
