20180108

about A Temporary Museum

A TEMPORARY MUSEUM OF IDEAS IN THE MAKING
Jan 9, 2018 - April 29, 2018 
opening reception: January 9 
Strauss Gallery, Hanover, NH

A Temporary Museum of Ideas in the Making is an exhibition of 36 architectural models by Dartmouth students. 

The architectural model is the ultimate tool to explore, showcase, and test an idea from its concept to realization. It is a step before the building, or even the building itself. It is tangible, real. But it is also a seductive device that allows you to insert a miniature world, observe its habits, and imagine the new possibilities. 

Varying in materials, scale, and purpose, the architectural models presented in the exhibition explore ideas that relate to topics such as the public sphere, utopia/dystopia, work/live conditions, sensory apparatuses, wearables and prosthetics, and the future of food. Students have designed not only buildings and structures to host activities, but also mechanisms that question individualism and isolation, bureaucracy, detachment from the natural world, sociability, democracy, and equality, our ecological futures, empathy, diversity, and other neglected conditions. Through originality, imagination and invention, and under the umbrella of liberal arts education, Dartmouth students have produced a collection of ideas and projects, which essentially explore a new type of architecture, extraordinary but thoughtful, and definitely more relevant to its time. 

The models of the exhibition have been produced between 2014-2017 as part of the architecture courses of Zenovia Toloudi at Dartmouth College Studio Art. They have been collected temporarily in the office #310 - establishing professor’s office as both an archive and a display of these architectures, and the bodies of knowledge produced by these young creators. 

The architecture curriculum within Studio Art Department of Dartmouth College critiques the current condition within architectural education, which remains competitive, and the practice, which has become a mere service for the client. It explores architecture foundations through the lens of the art (re)turn in architecture. By emphasizing creativity, critical thinking and experimentation, the pedagogical model equips students and young designers with skills to envision and produce a more social and more public architecture that integrates the world’s larger concerns. The artistic approach contributes to reconfigure the core essence of architecture whereby creating a new tradition.

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about Technoecologies

TECHNOECOLOGIES 
Zenovia Toloudi / Studio Z 
February 2 – March 2, 2018
Storrs Gallery | College of Arts + Architecture | UNC Charlotte 

Technoecologies exhibition reconceives the relationship between humans and their environment in architecture through prototypes and models that explore emerging forms of bioarchitecture, living systems, and evolving environments. The exhibition critiques the performance-driven corporate architecture of “sealed” envelopes and controlled environments, which disconnects users from natural air, light, and exposure to public activity, while contributing to spatial homogeneity, dullness, and possibly triggering psychobiological disorders. 

On the contrary, Technoecologies exhibition proposes a metabolic architecture as a provocative alternative approach, being manifested by speculative yet tangible ways. Metabolic architecture is contemplated here both literally, and metaphorically. Literally, it deals with material transformations caused by either growth or decay of organic matter. Metaphorically, it relates to immaterial transformations of light or sound caused by environmental or artificial stimuli. Through these processes, metabolism within architecture becomes an apparatus that produces constant changes in form, space, and in user perception. 

Technoecologies exhibition bridges the gap between technophilia and technophobia. While anchoring to the speeding technological changes Technoecologies projects root into tradition and society to reinterpret in contemporary terms past history, culture, and traditional habits. With examples ranging from artificial sonic gardens and living wall prototypes to interactive models of seed banks, 

Technoecologies projects examine processes of material transformation, eventually generating a series of themes for architecture to consider, such as laboratory experimentation, objectification of nature, temporality and theatricality, the vernacular and cultural, modular and infrastructural elements, vulnerability and voyeurism, autonomy and complexity, as well as user participation. This exploration forms both a theory and a design approach, which subsequently advocate how art, technology, and architecture might progressively transform the environment, society, and culture.

A Temporary Museum


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20180106

Technoecologies up in the air