Critical Formations: The Latent Aspirations of Architectural Installation

From prominent curricular positioning to increased visibility in architectural journals to this academic conference, design/build has been increasingly foregrounded in architectural discourse partially due to an expansion of its physical domain. By embracing topics positioned at the periphery of professional practice such as computational design, industrial production, and social agency, and coupling them with its core interest in the tacit learning inherent in physical production, design/build has expanded its pedagogical definition to include allied methods of physical exploration such as furniture making, physical computing, and installation. By increasing the conceptual and scalar territory of design/build it has become more accessible to a larger audience and more valuable to to the academy.Installations inhabit a specific area within that territory due to their directness, expediency, and ephemerality. First gaining value as an artistic medium during the 1960s and 1970s due to its ability to integrate emerging technologies (such as photography and videography) and hybrid artistic-spatial mediums (such as performance, landscape interventions and urban engagement) into the traditional categories of the fine arts, installations call into question the premise of art itself, resulting in a dramatic shift in the way that artists engaged their craft, the physicality of space, and the participatory agency of the audience.[1] The medium has proven similar value to architecture, allowing for the spatial condition to respond to and incorporate new technology, cultural/social agency, material experimentation, and theoretical agendas with a freedom which challenges traditional connotations of architecture. But does the architectural installation carry with it the same potential for reinvention (both professionally and conceptually) prompted by its artistic equivalent, or is it simply a means to an end without loftier aspirations? While it is arguably too soon to espouse the former, it has become evident that installation’s utility to the larger discourse of architecture may lie in its proven ability to transition academic research into the built environment through incremental controlled experimentation and full-scale making. A truly spatial medium less constrained by budget and liability than larger design/build projects, architectural installation provides a format sympathetic to the needs of researchers looking to further their understanding through its tacit engagement and translation into built form.Through the study of architectural installation projects that have evolved out of critical academic research such as Stuttgart University’s ICD/ITKE Research Pavilions and Jenny Sabin’s My Thread Pavilion, this paper endeavors to establish installation as an entry in the design/build lineage uniquely positioned to couple the tradition of tacit learning with contemporary architectural research. Positioned within the context of the expanded pedagogical definition of design/build, such work stitches together oft-disparate components of architectural curriculum such as computation, theoretical discourse, and construction methodologies into a feasible and cohesive project that furthers its core research agenda while demonstrating its inherent architectural possibilities. [1] Rosenthal, Mark. Understanding Installation Art From Duchamp to Holzer. New York: Prestel Publishing, 2003. Print.

Volume Editors
Sergio Palleroni, Ted Cavanagh & Ursula Hartig

ISBN
978-0-935502-94-7