“Infrastructure in a Time of Flux: Methods, Conditions, and Situations”, on view at the GSD through December 20, examines how architecture, engineering, urban design, and planning might respond more effectively to a world increasingly defined by environmental disruption, political instability, technological transformation, and rapidly changing patterns of habitation.
Introducing the exhibition are curators Rahul Mehrotra, John T. Dunlop Professor in Housing and Urbanization, and Dan Borelli, director of exhibitions at the GSD.
Although the design disciplines have traditionally emphasized permanence, stability, and enduring form, architects, engineers, builders, and communities have also developed sophisticated ways of constructing spaces that are lightweight, adaptable, mobile, materially efficient, and capable of rapid assembly. The exhibition brings these two histories into conversation, asking why innovations designed to achieve more with fewer resources have so rarely been applied to the places and populations confronting the greatest uncertainty.
Across the globe, refugee settlements, disaster zones, informal markets, construction sites, military encampments, religious pilgrimages, festivals, and other temporary gatherings accommodate populations ranging from a few hundred people to many millions. Some appear for only a day; others remain in place for decades. Despite their significance and complexity, these environments have often remained peripheral to architectural discourse.
Bringing together historical precedents, speculative proposals, artistic practices, and contemporary examples, “Infrastructure in a Time of Flux” considers how the knowledge embedded in lightweight construction might be redirected toward these emerging spatial realities.
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