“Resident Alien Austrian Architects in America” Exhibition
Austrian Cultural Forum NYC
This event has ended.
Architects & Designers on view:
Raimund Abraham, Herwig Baumgartner, Herbert Bayer, Ella Briggs, Elizabeth Close, Matias del Campo & Sandra Manninger, COOP HIMMELB(L)AU, Josef Frank, Paul T. Frankl, Victor Gruen, Erwin Hauer, Haus-Rucker-Co, Hans Hollein, Christoph Kapeller, Frederick Kiesler, Hubert Klumpner, Julia Koerner, Duks Koschitz, Christoph a. Kumpusch, Andrea Lenardin, LIQUIFER Systems Group, Adolf Loos, Mark Mack, Richard Neutra, Charles Paterson, Carl Pruscha, Bernard Rudofsky, Rudolph Schindler, Axel Schmitzberger, Friedrich St.Florian, Peter Trummer, Joseph Urban, Bettina Zerza, Liane Zimbler, Susanne Zottl
Curated by Stephen Phillips (SPARCHS) & Axel Schmitzberger (domaen)
The Austrian Cultural Forum New York’s fall exhibition explores the cultural contributions of Austrian-American architects since the modernist period. Framed into five categories – Primitive Domains, Aggregate Families, Urban Terrestrials, Cloud Natures, and Media Atmospheres – Resident Alien investigates the concept of bicultural heritage and its construction in the global spaces of the in-between, alongside other formal, technological, atmospheric, and psychoanalytic architectural dialogues.
On display from September 25, 2019 to February 17, 2020, the show examines the significant innovations and impact Austrian-American architects had on modern, postmodern, deconstructivist, digital, and post-digital design culture over the past century in the United States. The ACFNY’s gallery will be divided into five themed spaces. The first, Primitive Domains, considers buildings formed of geometric primitives set in the landscape. On the lower mezzanine, the section Aggregate Families explores more modular and complex algorithmic compositions. The main gallery is dedicated to two categories – Urban Terrestrials, which is interested in the contextual placement of buildings within the urban environment, and Cloud Natures, which examines environmental and ecological advocacy in architecture and its design. The fifth and final space, Media Atmospheres, located on the upper mezzanine, highlights architecture’s atmospheric effects on the human condition, including the way we interact and communicate.
In this context, the ACFNY’s iconic building by Austrian-American architect Raimund Abraham appears simultaneously as a showcase and a case study for this exhibition. Described by the curators as a series of primitive trapezoidal geometric forms aggregated into a complex urban tower, it continues to reiterate the significance of works by Austrian-American architects in the global discourse.
Resident Alien is curated by Stephen Phillips, an architect, historian, scholar, and founding director of the Cal Poly Los Angeles Metropolitan Program in Architecture and Urban Design alongside Axel Schmitzberger, an architect, graphic designer, and educator who is principal of domaen Inc., an architecture and construction company in Los Angeles.
Media
Schedule
from September 25, 2019 to February 17, 2020