Emerging Ecologies: Architecture and the Rise of Environmentalism
Emerging Ecologies: Architecture and the Rise of Environmentalism
The Museum of Modern Art announces Emerging Ecologies: Architecture and the Rise of Environmentalism,
an exhibition dedicated to both realized and unrealized projects that
address ecological and environmental concerns by architects who
practiced in the United States from the 1930s through the 1990s. On view
from September 17, 2023, through January 20, 2024, in the Museum’s
Third Floor North Galleries, Emerging Ecologies will feature
over 150 works that reconstruct how the rise of the environmental
movement in the US informed architectural practice and thought.
Models,
photographs, diagrams, and sketches will be placed in context with
archival materials such as posters, flyers, and articles to showcase
innovative, fantastical, dystopian, and daring architectural projects
that sought to navigate the fraught relationship between the built and
natural environment. Seven newly commissioned audio recordings that draw
inspiration from these little-known projects will feature contemporary
practitioners—Mae-ling Lokko, Jeanne Gang, Meredith Gaglio, Charlotte
Malterre-Barthes, Amy Chester, Carolyn Dry, and Emilio Ambasz—sharing
their thoughts on what contemporary architects can do to mitigate
against climate change. By highlighting projects that both foreshadowed
and anticipated the ecological effects of overpopulation, the depletion
of natural resources, and rampant industrial pollution, the exhibition
looks to the past to suggest solutions for the future.
