The exhibition “Into the Open: Positioning Practice” highlights America’s rich history of architectural experimentation and explores the ways spatial practices are working collaboratively to invigorate community activism and environmental policy.
The installation of the exhibition is itself designed as a space of productive community engagement.
Visitors are invited to cross the border ( Estudio Cruz: “50 Mile Border”) into a Garden (Alice Waters: Edible Schoolyard) which reorganizes the traditional divided axial symmetry of the building’s circulation into a circular flow, guided by an elliptical conference table running through each of the galleries.
Each of the 18 exhibited spatial practices has a seat at the elliptical table, where the visitor sits to read a key to the practice’s images on continuous storyboard above…displaying “how to” implementation techniques for the community transformations exhibited.
In the short flurry of professional interaction that is the Biennale, domestically scaled seating groups in each room provide comfortable interaction areas, and serve as settings to view the video and print material produced by the practices exhibited.
In the Pavilion’s rotunda, visitors to the exhibition are invited to join the project’s blog to add their own critical views on the social, economic and political issues that Into the Open explores.
Credits:
Presenting Organizations:
Slought Foundation and Parc Foundation
Curators:
William Menking, Aaron Levy, Andrew Sturm
Design and Curatorial Consultant: Julie Ault
Exhibition Consultant: Leanne Mella
Exhibition Graphics: Perrin Studio, with Mikhail Iliatov
