The Museum of Modern Art in New York has announced the opening of an exhibition focusing on early realized and unrealized projects that address environmental concerns.
The exhibition features works by architects who practiced mainly in the United States from the 1930s through the 1990s.
The exhibition, titled “Emerging Environments: Architecture and the Rise of Environmental Protection,” will be held from September 17, 2023 until January 20, 2024.
Uncovering the rise of the environmental movement through the lens of architectural practice and thought
The fraught relationship between the natural environment and the built environment became an important topic starting in the 1930s.
Where many architects such as Emilio Ambas, Charles and Ray Eames, and Frank Lloyd Wright,
By exploring this new interest through innovative and bold architectural projects.
Many of these projects have predicted and predicted the environmental impacts of overpopulation, depletion of natural resources, and the effects of pollution.
The projects are arranged into five thematic groups:
Environment as information; environmental packaging; Multi-type design; counterculture experiences; And green noodles.
During the beginning of the environmental movement, architects played an important role in developing metrics and analytical tools;
To understand and monitor the environment, and turn it into an element that can be worked with through design.
In 1967, R. Buckminster Fuller envisioned the World Game, a computerized system designed to illustrate the flow of basic raw resources,
Such as cotton, gold, coal and wood, to make environmental management more visible to a larger population.
Early computer-generated prints by Beverly Willis dating from 1971 are also on display in the “Environment as Information” section,
It displays drainage maps, site geology, and soil data derived from Willis’s innovative computerized approach to residential land analysis (CARLA).
Environmental Attachments Department projects
The “Environmental Attachments” section displays projects that have attempted to create their own ecosystems.
Among these early works is a set of hand-drawn illustrations by NASA titled “Space Settlements: A Design Study.”
Conceived in 1975, this project aims to conserve Earth’s resources by envisioning a self-sustaining closed ecosystem in outer space.
The project includes a variety of studies, tracking charts, resource flow analyses, and evocative images.
The exhibition also highlights countercultural architectural experiments that sought to challenge the consumerist lifestyle in the United States.
These projects included participatory projects where individuals can generate their own energy and food, and off-grid structures that support populations in self-contained ecosystems.
Ant Farm’s dolphin embassy project expanded on the counterculture ethos, envisioning a multi-species community in 1975 inspired by advances in dolphin research.
Aesthetic dimensions of environmental architecture
At the same time, architects such as James Wines and Emilio Ambas explored the aesthetic dimensions of eco-architecture.
Their projects blended natural forms and traditional design, presenting innovative methods that harmonize architecture and nature to create a meaningful environmental living experience.
The exhibition was organized by Carson Chan, Director of the Emilio Ambas Institute for the Joint Study of the Built and Natural Environment and Curator of the Department of Architecture and Design,
With Matthew Wagstaff and Dewey Tan, research assistants at the AMBASS Institute, and Eva Lavrano, a 12-month intern at the AMPASS Institute.
Several other exhibitions opening this year also explored the intersection between history and architecture.
The exhibition held at the Warsaw Museum entitled “Warsaw 1945-1949: Rising from the Ruins” explores
Reconstruction and rebuilding efforts in the Polish capital after the devastation caused by World War II,
It provides clues about possible reconstruction efforts that will take place in Ukraine.
Earlier this year, the Danish Architecture Center (DAC) announced the opening of the first permanent exhibition of Danish architecture in Copenhagen,
While the Center Pompidou in Paris has launched the largest retrospective of Norman Foster’s work over the past six decades.
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