Architecture works hard to keep up to speed. In environments that are quickly changing, on borders that are stealthily shifting, and among publics that are increasingly more than human, the discipline swings between representation and agency until it becomes hard to see. A quick look around suggests that its oscillation has either sped up beyond useful limits or ceased altogether. In other words, architecture is somehow both too fast and too slow.
To help architecture find its rhythm again, AWP asks 11 designers: can architecture be made to move lithely with the present in an effort to remain an agile and relevant agent of social and cultural production?
In the search for agency, the projects respond to this question by slipping between visual and material contexts, synced to their pace and situated in unusual places—in the middle, along the edge, over water, out there, in the shadows, through the air, amidst data, on unstable ground—in a critical display of architecture’s versatility. In the search for representation, the work moves between image and material, circulating through time-consuming genres and formats to slow down—or speed up—architecture’s incorporation into visual culture at large.
Following these themes, the exhibition is organized in two parts: Environments and Apparatuses. Environments bring exterior worlds into the gallery, simulating the effects and affects of sites and atmospheres. They are built up and take you places. Apparatuses sample, mediate, and image materials to demonstrate that the difference between architecture and environment is not a thin line, but a space held wide open for interaction. In a field with differences too uncoordinated to make a difference, AWP asks ‘when’ rather than ‘how’ in the search for shared criteria.
Location
New York, NY
Commissioner
Agency for Work and Play
Princeton University School of Architecture
Agency for Work and Play
José Ibarra
Deborah Garcia
Kenny Chao
E. Ece Emanetoğlu
Jessica Leung
Rami Kanafani
Erik Tsurumaki
Zherui Wang
Ece Yetim
Sophia Zhu
Zhonghui Zhu
