Departure: Vienna Architekturzentrum’s Farewell Exhibition for Dietmar Steiner
newsdepo.com
Vienna’s Architekturzentrum (AZW) is biding its retiring Founding Director Dietmar Steiner farewell this fall, with an exhibition dedicated to failure and new beginnings in architecture. Irritating as this thematic focus may appear at first—after all Stei
Departure: Vienna Architekturzentrum’s Farewell Exhibition for Dietmar Steiner
Vienna’s Architekturzentrum (AZW) is biding its retiring Founding Director Dietmar Steiner farewell this fall, with an exhibition dedicated to failure and new beginnings in architecture. Irritating as this thematic focus may appear at first—after all Steiner is also the president of the International Confederation of Architecture Museums—the show could in fact prove an insightful and inspiring historical survey, when it opens in October.According to the AZW, “In the End: Architecture” will aim at illustrating how architecture has succeeded in reinventing and improving itself time and again in periods of turmoil and crisis. Intended as a tribute to seminal projects that influenced Steiner in his formative years as an architect, the show will also make reference to the industry’s current challenges and crises around the globe, not unlike the approach Alejandro Aravenna has chosen for the Architecture Biennale in Venice this year.“In a globalized world with continually renewing technological and digital possibilities, the rapid developments of recent decades have plunged architecture as a creative discipline and a social phenomenon into a crisis,” the exhibitions organizers argue in a statement. “Large offices with global operations, star architects, industry 4.0, ever more standards to be met, and the legal and economic weakening of the profession are impacting increasingly on the role of architecture. In the midst of the discussion on the crisis, which appears to be paralyzing what is happening in the architecture sector, new and initially hardly perceptible undercurrents started to attract attention—with socially engaged, historically aware or regionally anchored approaches—and breathing new life into the discipline while counteracting the ostensible stagnation. The proponents of these currents—initially met with derision as niche phenomena or flashes in the pan — have long taken over the theoretical debate.”According to the authors “In the End: Architecture” will present a “journey back into the future” highlighting how such ‘undercurrents’ can promote and initiate change, starting with the dissolution of the International Congresses of Modern Architecture in 1959—a major rupture for the international industry. Organized by Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier, the Congrès internationaux d’architecture moderne (CIAM), as it was officially titled, was an international think tank of architects, landscapers, urban planners, industrial designers and thinkers, who regularly convened across Europe to discuss architecture as a “social art.” Leading theoreticians and creators from around the world, including Alvar Aalto, Josef Frank, Walter Gropius, Harwell Hamilton Harris, André Lurçat, and Gerrit Rietveld, contributed to the format, aiming to induce social change through architecture and urban planning.The end of the CIAM in 1959 was considered the official “failure” of modernism in architecture, plunging the industry into what at the time seemed a deep crisis—even though effectively, it helped lay the groundwork for the development of younger, highly influential movements such as Alison and Peter Smithson’s New Brutalism in the UK, and Aldo van Eyck and Jacob B. Bakema’s version of Structuralism in the Netherlands.It is from this angle and perspective, that the show in Vienna aims to revisit seminal movements and moments in architecture with stations dedicated to themes such as the critique of functionalism, soft urban renewal, New Urbanism and the Revision of Modernism, signature architecture, the bottom-up movement and global business, ending with the fictional dystopian future of 2019, as illustrated in Ridley Scott’s sci-fi classic “Bladerunner”, as its final chapter.Projects presented in the process will highlight various aspects of innovation in architecture, from iconic projects such as Moshe Safdie’s revolutionarily stacked model housing complex “habitat 67” in Montréal Canada (1967), and Kisho Kurokawa’s modular Nakagin Capsule Tower in Tokyo (1972), or Zaha Hadid’s fire station on the Vitra Design Campus in Weil am Rhein, Germany (1993) to younger, inventive projects such as Rural Studio’s Lucy House, a charity house built largely from carpet [sic!] in Mason’s Bend, Alabama (2002) by a group of students sponsored by a carpet company.“Just as the failure of the modern movement in the postwar years stimulated architecture to take a new direction, the current stakeholders in the profession are also trying to overcome a crisis and in doing so often are deliberately or unintentionally referencing historical situations, “ the exhibition organizers write in their statement. “The dialog between the two levels of the exhibition is intended to show that every ‘End’ harbors a critical new beginning […] making current, inspiring movements for change palpable.”“In the End: Architecture. Journey’s through Time, from 1959-2019” will run from October 6, 2016 to March 20, 2017 at Architekturzentrum Wien, Vienna, Austria. Click here for more information.See more projects presented at the exhibition in the slide show. Read more
