PITTSBURGH, PA.- Carnegie Museum of Art announces The Fabricated Landscape, a new exhibition exploring some of the most innovative minds working in contemporary architecture today, on view through January 17, 2022. Highlighting the fields growing diversity and ingenuity, The Fabricated Landscape presents projects from ten international practices. From single houses to large-scale infrastructure and public spaces, all participating practices many of which are debuting new work for the first time in the United States look at architecture and design as they relate to local communities and the natural environments in which they exist. The exhibition is being staged in Heinz Architectural Center, one of the nations foremost institutes for the study of architecture.
The Fabricated Landscape transports visitors across the globe with representations of cutting-edge spaces from Japan and Scandinavia to Zimbabwe and Latin America. Each practice is represented by three projects that showcase its approach to creating lasting, sustainable solutions by embracing traditional craft alongside digital technologies. Many of these projects are located in postindustrial communities or in the Global South. Objects on view include assemblages, paper reproductions, textiles, models, and architectural photographs by Bas Princen, Iwan Baan, and Luisa Lambri. Lambris new series of photographs detailing Go Hasegawas chapel in central Italy were recently acquired for the museums permanent collection.
What does it mean for architecture to have a civic consciousness? Raymund Ryan, Curator-at-Large, Heinz Architectural Center, asks. In The Fabricated Landscape, each of the architects, all of whom were born from 1975 and onward, explore the fundamental role that architecture and design play in our lives. Each of their projects has within it the seeds of potentially bigger and multiple projects, and they embrace a new sense of urgency regarding nature and the planned environment from how and where we live to how we engage with the world around us.
The exhibition brings a fresh perspective to the dialogue surrounding contemporary architecture through presenting work by architects and designers from underrepresented groups within the sector. Over half of the featured design practices are woman-led or include a woman principal, including Frida Escobedo; Anna Heringer; Maria Charneco and Anna Puigjaner at MAIO; Charlotte Hansson at LCLA; and Jing Liu at SO IL. While global conversations about architecture have historically focused on European, Asian, and North American design studios, The Fabricated Landscape spotlights a number of Latin and South American studios playing a significant role in their communities. These include Frida Escobedo in Mexico; LCLA in Colombia; and UMWELT in Chile.
This generation of architects, born in the 1970s and 1980s, looks anew at ways that architecture communicates with and engages the public realm. These projects form a temporary landscape within the museum galleries for visitors to explore and encounter in their own way.
The 10 participating practices are:
Assemble (London, England)
Frida Escobedo (Mexico City, Mexico)
Go Hasegawa (Tokyo, Japan)
Anna Heringer (Laufen, Germany)
Anne Holtrop (Muharraq, Bahrain)
LCLA office (Medellin, Colombia & Oslo, Norway)
MAIO (Barcelona, Spain)
OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen (Brussels, Belgium)
SO IL (Solid Objectives Idenburg Liu) (New York, USA)
UMWELT (Santiago, Chile)
A publication in three parts, distributed by Carnegie Museum of Art and Inventory Press, will be available free of charge for visitors in Fall 2021. Organized around the themes of domestic, civic, and territorial, each part will include several newly commissioned texts. The first issue, Domestic, features contributions from Emilio Ambasz, Eric Crosby, Go Hasegawa, Luisa Lambri, MAIO, and Raymund Ryan, as well as Franz Kafkas unfinished parable The Burrow.
The Fabricated Landscape is organized by Raymund Ryan, Curator-at-Large, Heinz Architectural Center, and designed by IN-FO.CO in Los Angeles.