CFP - International Symposium - Paris 2019 - DEA Exhibition_Design

CIHA 2024 LYON - 26 June 2024

This session focuses on the materiality of exhibition devices and their role in shaping knowledge. It is interested in examining the changing ontology of exhibition design, arising today from new curating approaches, such as hybrid installations, speculative narratives and aesthetic experience. Expanding existing scholarship and research on exhibition design studies, this session considers exhibition-making processes, materials and structures, and explores how the materiality of the exhibition (the curatorial and exhibition design practices) can spatialize aesthetic experience, foster spatial perception and, importantly, reposition the individual at the centre of newly-created social and spatial narratives.

Curatography, 2023

And so, I was trying to ask the question again, ask it anew, as if it had not been asked before, because the language of the historian was not telling me what I needed to know…-HORTENSE SPILLERS The more possibilities are suggested, the more possibilities exist, the more possibilities are taken in by the imagination, the more the imagination's possibilities are defined, the more the possibility of more possibilities can be recognised. The possibilities of more possibilities lead to the imagination itself, immediately and to me.-Madeline Gins If you have curatorial experiences, you might be familiar with the moment when something happens in the realm of an exhibition-the moment the exhibition transcends to become more than just the sum of individual art works in a specific space or site. Exhibiting is alchemy. Alchemy of all sorts of consciousness and entities-invisible histories, memories and projections into the future that curators, artists, technicians, installers and the beholders bring in; matters, objects, both animate and inanimate; knowledge, space and environment etc.-which dissolve their boundaries and synchronise to become inseparable and indistinguishable as individual beings. In this sense, the exhibition itself is not simply exteriorised memory or experience, or a collection of art works and their contextualisation, but also a specific attentional form, into which social, psychic, collective, and technological instances of un/consciousness are capacitated and merged.

Contemporary art exhibits are complex operations that offer a considerable wealth of design knowhow. The many fragile, ephemeral forms concerning them, their importance and what they were to become had already encouraged reflections upon critiques and art theory during the final three decades of the 20th century. A number of useful debates were of great use to the rethinking and reassessment of outfitting areas in order to open up essential regions. These regions were to carefully construct the story of art and critiques; a story which is placed at the crossroads of many stories like an exchange and a dialogue or like the privileged junction of a scenario related to art and its context as well as to places and names, facts and dates.

EXHIBITION SPACES IN THE CONTEXT OF REPRESENTATION OF ARCHITECTURE: TRANSFORMATION OF WAREHOUSE 5 OF ISTANBUL, 2018

It’s believed in the modern ages that the existence of architecture date back to first human who needs to take shelter and creation of architecture belongs to a natural human instinct. Although architecture is born from natural human needs, architectural intellection which is shaped by aesthetic thoughts is formed for a long time in the history. Architectural productions which are shaped with various physical environments and communities are probably the most tangible productions that represent the community in the physical environments over the context. From the ancient history to present, architecture represents social classes, economic and cultural structures, rulerships and beliefs. Before the modern ages, architectural production’s representation is formed by architectural needs with the context. With the modern ages, its changed into representation of architectural production itself and its architect beyond the context. One of these architectural productions are museums which are exhibition spaces. It’s known that modern museums are started to build in 18th century. In the 19th century, museums are designed and differentiated by the common approach “specific spaces for specific objects”. In 20th century, exhibition spaces have become exhibition object itself beyond the “only” exhibition space. Istanbul Painting and Sculpture Museum which is still under construction, could seen as one of these cases. In the frame of the study, transformation of representation of architecture over the exhibition spaces is researched and compared with the similar historical spaces’ transformations. With the relations between representation and the city is researched with literature views on global cases. Istanbul Painting and Sculpture Museum which is the case of the study is examined with site observations and photographs. The aim of the study is to scrutinise and understand that exhibition spaces’ representation of itself and transformation beyond-context with making comparisons between similar global cases.

SHS Web of Conferences 64, 03006 (2019) EAEA14 2019, 2019

The terms 'Performative' and 'Performance' are more and more emerging in the spatial design discourses, from exhibition, to interior, arriving to urban design. These notions are not clearly defined yet. They are characterized by a semantic width and multiple applicative possibilities. Between the different interpretations and uses of 'performance' and 'performative' in architectural discourses, this paper will focus on two main dimensions of a particular importance: The first refers to the concepts of the scenic, the narrative, and the theatrical qualities in architecture. The second relates to the 'event-character' of spatial interventions, and the relation between event, and soft intervention, which tackles the concept of the 'transformative power of the performative', which indicates to the capacity of architecture to activate spaces and processes. Exhibitions, pavilions and installations are all concerned with changing the performance of the existing space, and therefore they are able to illustrate what a 'performative-oriented architecture' could be or mean. The Italian architect and thinker Andrea Branzi, in his essay "L'Allestimento come metafora di una nuova modernità" (exhibitions as a metaphor of a new modernity) (Lotus, n.115, December 2002), invites architecture to learn from the sub-categories of architecture. Architecture can learn from the practice of exhibition (displaying and installing). Architecture is invited to learn design approaches and strategies from performance-oriented spatial disciplines such as exhibition design, scenography, art-installations, and events, with a particular focus-in this paper-on: 1) Soft interventions and the transformative power of the event-intervention, 2) The aesthetic of experiencing and the narrative approach. Therefore, it is in the sub-disciplines of architecture that we can 'rehearse' a 'performative understanding' of the spatial project, in the sense of studying and designing spaces basing on performative criteria, and performance perspectives. The repertoire of the performative is large; it includes the concepts of the flexible, the event, the transformative, the theatrical, the narrative, etc. The aim of this paper is to explore and rehearse this kind of performative analytical tool for the architectural project (taking the case of Nevicata14, a project of refurbishment of the pedestrian Piazza Castello in Milan, 2015). A performative understanding of architecture is proposed as an alternative to a general theory, and as a new dramaturgy to analyse and design spaces.

The research explores and maps the emerging phenomena in exhibition design, assuming that architecture—as a spatial issue and technology—as tool of expansion of multimodal experiences—is giving way to more intangible assets and values to redefine its methodology and culture. That means knowledge convergence among material and digital culture, design and humanities, ux and designer intention, bottom-up and top-down approaches. This implies to open a laboratory of transition from a planning/spatial vision to a storytelling approach that reads the metanarrative of an ostensive route like a script and to elaborate the digital revolution deeply impacting on the show-machine of an exhibition bringing the mobile web in the space staged. That means to assume that people are no more passive but interact and perform their own experience, giving personal meanings and interpretative perspectives. The paper illustrates this hypothesis reviewing some emerging and outstanding case studies in the contemporary field of exhibition design to identify and infer the emerging trend in experimental and professional practices. The cultural transition suggest an evolution of the designer role, from a conceptual and projective act of ideation and reification to a directing act involving transcultural knowledge to shape a performing environment.

in Places and themes of interiors. Contemporary research worldwide. Milano: Franco Angeli_ISBN 978-88-464-9975-2, 2008

The topic of this paper is to find a possible trend for exhibition design, starting from the observation of new codes and needs emerging in contemporary culture. The observations emerge from the analysis of the world of artistic events and performing arts (where space is used in an extemporary and abnormal way), but may be transferred and applied tout court to other fields, significantly contributing to guide the practice of interior designers. In fact, each place that contains multiple functions and that needs to be continually re-configured, must be conceived as a «plausible» space . And for these reasons it is possible to test a design approach to interiors which may work on setting and in a non-exhaustive way. In this context exhibition design can be seen as a specific approach in the interior design discipline; consequently, interior designer's practise must work with a new systemic logic. He has to be able to shape material containers in order to support always in fluxus relational configurations (linked to action/function expected), which would take place inside them.

Architectural Theory Review, 2019

Changing demands of society and the art market have directly shaped exhibition space over the years, leading to its contemporary formal 'crisis': the 'white box' vs. 'building as object,' a rigid dichotomy that poses either the sacrifice of architecture or art at the expense of the other. This essay has found that contemporary trends in the art market have brought about the emergence of several new exhibition strategies, and seeks to evaluate these strategies as a means to move beyond the contemporary 'crisis' of exhibition space. This essay defines exhibition space as the physical setting of a public display of art work, including museums, galleries, fairs, and emerging typologies. The essay will focus on typology as opposed to detail, for the sake of eliciting the most meaningful relationships between exhibition space and the art market. These typologies will be referred to collectively as “exhibition space” throughout the essay, specifying between them only when necessary (the term gallery is often used interchangeably for galleries and museums). This is to promote a cross-sectional analysis of typologies in order to elicit commonalities, and because the developments of these typologies have great overlap. This essay is structured by three main sections: The Historical Development of Exhibition Spaces, Contemporary Exhibition Spaces, and The Future of Exhibition Spaces.

2014

The exhibition design has always been -among other design disciplines -one of the most innovative field of experimentation both for languages and projects improvement. Moreover in the recent years the use of digital technologies, on one hand, and the further more active participation of the public -or, better to say, of the user -on the other hand, are making exhibition design a promising and rising laboratory of advanced innovation. This evolution is shaping itself around the co-participation and the increasing value of trivial things as fundamental presence of experience and proof deep-rooted both in the artistic experimentation and in the daily life. The public assumes consequently a dual role: viewer and witness of the revealed memory -the exhibition subjectsand subject himself of the show -due to the belonging to/of the objects and the story told in the scenical space. The paper presents a critical point of view on the mapped scenario of approaches and case studies in an increasing scale of design actions, starting from the more traditional projects to the most advanced in innovation and people involvement.