Gone are the days when architecture exhibitions were displays of plans and models. Increasingly inventive, exhibitions about architecture combine exhibition design with specialized curatorial approaches, giving spatial form to concepts and bringing audiences closer to contemporary debates about cities.
Good examples of this shift are the 12th São Paulo Architecture Biennial and the exhibition Conversas na Praça – o urbanismo de Jorge Wilheim.
Everyday: the 12th São Paulo Architecture Biennial
The Architecture Biennial takes everyday life as its theme and is divided into two sections, one at Sesc 24 de Maio and the other at CCSP. At Sesc the exhibition ended on September 29; at Centro Cultural São Paulo it runs through December. Plan a visit. The exhibition design for both venues was by architects Martin Corullon and Gustavo Cedroni.
It is fascinating to see how not only display methods have changed, but also the nature of the works, which take on the character of installations, blurring the boundaries between art and architecture.
A good example was the work of Belo Horizonte architects Renata Marquez and Wellington Cançado, who transformed the ramp at Sesc 24 into a data-visualization mechanism. Using inexpensive colored strips, they assembled a display that helped visitors understand global warming, following annual average temperatures through the panels’ colors as they climbed the ramps.
Conversas na praça: o urbanismo de Jorge Wilheim
The exhibition at Sesc Consolação, which seeks to recover the legacy of one of the urban planners most present in São Paulo’s daily life, architect Jorge Wilheim, focuses on how to imagine and build more humane, just and sustainable cities.
This marriage of the past—Wilheim’s archive—with the present and the future—the invitation to reflect offered by curator and colleague Guilherme Wisnik, also a columnist here at Rádio USP—is achieved through the bold exhibition design conceived by Pedro Mendes da Rocha.
Wilheim was responsible for several São Paulo landmarks, including the redevelopment of Vale do Anhangabaú in the 1980s and Pátio do Colégio, as well as the construction of the Anhembi center. Let me pause here to draw your attention to the impressive photographs of Anhembi’s construction.
The exhibition pavilion’s metal structure, covering more than 60,000 square meters, was built entirely at ground level in eight hours and then raised. This avoided a potentially staggering budget problem: erecting temporary scaffolding for such a large space would have cost more than the permanent structure itself.
Although it includes some display cases, the exhibition is dominated by projections, park benches and a modular space that accommodates debates but also invites people to linger. With no walls or partitions, it encourages conviviality, with both the building and other people.
I visited on a weekday and can say it works very well. Many people were sitting on the benches: some reading, others chatting, and several using the place, of course, to contemplate and experience the exhibition.
Go and see it. It runs through December 14.
Transcript of Giselle Beiguelman’s Ouvir Imagens column, broadcast every Monday at 8 a.m. on Rádio USP (93.7 FM).
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