Futures of the Architectural Exhibition

Architecture and design exhibitions have long been important public sites of broadcasting, experimentation, position-taking, and the interrogation of fundamental aspects of the designed environment. Just as individual exhibitions have constituted key benchmarks within the disciplinary history of architecture, the representation and display of space through exhibitions has operated historically as a crucial medium for shaping and embodying broader cultural attitudes toward the design of the built world. In recent years, the specific formats and challenges of exhibiting architecture and design, both built and speculative, have often been used as critical devices for identifying, communicating, and convening publics around shared matters of concern. These have increasingly included urgent questions of equity and justice, labor, gender, race, class, community, and lifestyle in relation to spatial issues of density, economy, policy, infrastructure, climate, and sustainability.