Out of the Box, is the general name of the three exhibitions presented by the Canadian Centre of Architecture in Montreal. Conceived as a innovative ongoing research that explores the architectural studio Ábalos & Herreros legacy through the investigations and the invited curators’ interpretations OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen (Brussels), Juan José Castellón (Zurich) y SO-IL (New York).
The first exhibition in the series, “Industrial Architecture: Ábalos & Herreros” is directed by OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen is displayed in the CCA’s Octagonal Gallery until 17 May, 2015.
The studio knew how to combine the practice, the theory and the teaching, it opened all the time a new architectural speech and defended a language that not only show the changes in the political, social and economics fields in a country in modernization in post-Franco era, but also demonstrated an increasing interest in technological optimism as they entered their international phase.
The eclectic nature of their work lets them to broaden the references vocabulary, the constructive typologies and the building techniques, as the Plaza de Castilla’s regional development (1986-1987), the Usera’s Public Library, Madrid (1994-2003) and the Valdemingómez’s Recycling and Urban Wastes Plant, Madrid (1996-1999).
Description of the exhibition by CCA
Industrial Architecture
The exhibition revisits the work of the architects Ábalos & Herreros through their interests in new building techniques and mass-produced materials as means to achieve better energy efficiency, but also in the minimal architectural expression of the buildings, facades and building elements. The guest curators Kersten Geers and David Van Severen
describe their work as:
“an exaggeration of architecture as industry, a conscious understanding of the fragile balance at the outer edge of worn-out modernism. Their modernism is reduced to a set of signifiers rescued from the debris of metropolitanism and post-formal architecture of the nineties: fucked-up pragmatism, a full economy of means.”
Included is a series of CAD drawings showing over thirty projects from the Ábalos & Herreros digital archive, so as to foreground the contrasting spatial qualities, subtleties, and differences of the varying “industrial” schemes which range in scale and use, from small sports – halls to skyscrapers, offices to universities. The exhibit also includes photographic slides used by the architects as referential material for their teaching, which will be displayed in a reproduction of a viewing device (tripod) referencing Ábalos & Herreros’ scenography for the Third Bienniale of Spanish Architecture (1995). To reflect on the relationship to the physical archive, the installation also features a specific photographic commission titled Proofs of Relevance by invited artist Stefano Graziani highlighting selected objects from the archive. These physical documents are captured in their archival contexts and include sets of drawings in their original folio, crated models as well as textual material such as manuscript corrections to Ábalos & Herreros's Tower and Office and collages of the AH Houses or Tenerife (PIRS) structure. Stefano Graziani is a photographer, architect and co-founder of the architecture magazine San Rocco. He serves as a guest lecturer at the School of Architecture in Trieste.
As a result of the exhibition project, his photographic series will be gifted to the CCA Collection.
Text.- CCA.
CREDITS.-
Curators.- Kersten Geers and David Van Severen.
Venue.- Canadian Centre for Architecture, 1920 Rue Baile, Montréal, Canada.
When.- Out of box – from 12 March until 13 September 2015.
Industrial Architecture: Ábalos & Herreros - 17 May 2015.
