Newsletter of the College of Architecture at Texas A&M University
A traveling photo exhibit, designed to address critics of contemporary architecture, took over three floors of the Langford Architecture Center’s Building A at Texas A&M University in December.
Sponsored by the College of Architecture, the exhibit, “Extra Muros, Architectures of Delight,” was originally produced and designed from a catalog of photographs and criticisms of contemporary architecture co-ordinated by the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine/Institut Français d’Architecture.
The exhibition, specifically tailored for international presentation, focuses on architecture in tune with current urban situations, territorial or program-related issues that are relevant throughout the world. Through a critical mass effect, the 40 projects presented show that “good” architecture is not as rare as it seems, and that if we do not see it, it is because it is not where we expect it, or because it’s simpler, more modest or simply less preoccupied with its durability than we might imagine.
Sophie Berthelier, a designer at the French architecture firm Berthelier Fichet Triboullet, kicked off the exhibit Dec. 5 with a public lecture on contemporary architecture in the Preston Geren Auditorium.
Berthelier’s firm, founded in 1992, has tackled a diverse range of projects including high schools, wine cellars, town squares and private residences.
“The environment into which a project will fit,” she said, “is a determining element: the project plays with scales, perceptions of frame and tracking, and it also uses the location to divert it, to dramatize and poeticize the real and the everyday life. Architecture also has to do with our senses; it is part of our inner selves.”
The exhibit, “Extra Muros, Architectures of Delight,” was co-curated by Brigitte Borsdorf, director of the French Institute of Dusseldorf, and Patrice Goulet, an architecture critic. The show employs images of contemporary French architecture to combat what the curators identify as architecture’s big perception problem.
“Architecture,” Borsdorf said, “seems to have become an unavoidable calamity, irreparably damaging all landscapes and turning towns and cities into unmanageable monsters. Each new construction is sensed as something that disfigures our environment a little more or, worse, as adding to the destruction of the very balance of the planet.”
Not since the 1950s, said the curators, has contemporary architecture captured the enthusiasm, or even the interest, of the general public.
“Compared with the past,” said Borsdorf, “the present always loses out: a real catastrophe and, apparently, one without any hope of escaping from.”
In “Extra Muros,” the curators demonstrate that a great deal of excellent design is taking place. Their case is supported with photographs of compelling structures in France, some in public locations, such as transit stops and schools, as well as residences both urban and rural.
Palesa Brown of Black Rage Productions in Johannesburg, South Africa, said the traveling exhibition “gathers exceptional photographs of master architects’ buildings such as Jean Nouvel’s Justice Court in Nantes, as well as other constructions that make the exhibition a visual tribute to diversity, freedom, a certain taste for adventure, generosity, integrity, lightness and forms of enchantment.”
“Extra Muros, Architectures of Delight,” will be exhibited along the railings on two floors of the Langford A atrium, using an innovative display system developed by Marcel Erminy, a senior lecturer who leads Department of Architecture design studios. The system was fabricated at the college’s Architecture Ranch, at Texas A&M’s Riverside Campus by Chuck Tedrick, digital fabrication manager, and Jim Titus, the shop supervisor.
