Pamphlet Architecture
Visions and Experiments in Architecture
September 4–October 16, 2022
As part of the Pamphlet Architecture 37 open call, ‘T’ Space hosted an exhibition showcasing the work of the five finalists: Catty Dan Zhang, Mark Laverty, Alec McCulloch, Lawrence Blough, and Valeria Herrera. The exhibition collected the 40-year history of Pamphlet Architecture in honor of publisher Kevin Lippert.
The theme, “Visions and Experiments in Architecture,” invited participants to address the following: How to look into the future while preserving the landscape? How to imagine new light, air, and spatial energy? How to design new architecture for a new consciousness?
Pamphlet Architecture was founded in 1978 by architects Steven Holl and William Stout to promote the work of emerging architects, often working outside established boundaries of professional practice, exploring theoretical ideas, documenting building and urban and rural building types, and providing manifestos calling for the architectural world to think broader and design deeper. Many of today’s best-known architects were first published in the Pamphlet format, including Holl himself, Lebbeus Woods, Zaha Hadid, Lars Lerup, Mark Mack, Livio Dimitriu, and Alberto Sartoris.
Catty Dan Zhang’s Active Atmospheres explores applied visual techniques that challenge conventional definitions of tools, measurements, and material forms, and foregrounds atmospheres as active systems that hybridize physical and computational mediums. Part technical operations, part theorizing technology through architectural logics–these works serve as design manifestos probing the paradigm shift into possible futures.
Mark Laverty and Alec McCulloch’s The Haunting of Number 12 is comprised of processes of forensic investigation, allegory, and the Derridean theory of haunting that are then utilized to excavate hidden narratives within the Victorian terraced house that we found ourselves confined to within Covid-19 lockdown.
Lawrence Blough’s Domestic Mutations investigates new types of collective living spaces influenced by emerging social and economic paradigms. The project explores the scale between house and housing to question how typology, form, and aesthetics can address the contemporary intersection of private property and shared commons.
Valeria Rachel Herrera’s work explores the complex territory of spatial interplay that resides in contrast to notions of the ideal, the reductive, and the singular and instead constructs visually saturated and topographically layered environments that are characterized by conditions of fragmentation, distortion, contradiction, and instability.
Catty.
Image captions:
1. Catty Dan Zhang: Digital Air: Donuts, 2020.
2. Mark Laverty and Alec McCulloch, The Fall, 2021.
3. Valeria Rachel Herrera, Suspended Reflections, I, 2017.
4. Lawrence Blough, Clustering model, 2018-2019.
Pamphlet Architecture: Visions and Experiments in Architecture is curated by Steve Pulimood and Eirini Tsachrelia with coordination by Marisa Espe.
