A Temporary Museum of Ideas in the Making

January 9 - April 29, 2018 - Reception: January 9, 5.45pm, Strauss Gallery, Hopkins Center, Dartmouth College.

A Temporary Museum of Ideas in the Making is an exhibition of 36 architectural models by Dartmouth students. The architectural model is the ultimate tool to explore, showcase, and test an idea from its concept to realization. It is a step before the building, or even the building itself. It is tangible, real. But it is also a seductive device that allows you to insert a miniature world, observe its habits, and imagine the new possibilities.

Varying in materials, scale, and purpose, the architectural models presented in the exhibition explore ideas that relate to topics such as the public sphere, utopia/dystopia, work/live conditions, sensory apparatuses, wearables and prosthetics, and the future of food. Students have designed not only buildings and structures to host activities, but also mechanisms that question individualism and isolation, bureaucracy, detachment from the natural world, sociability, democracy, and equality, our ecological futures, empathy, diversity, and other neglected conditions. Through originality, imagination and invention, and under the umbrella of liberal arts education, Dartmouth students have produced a collection of ideas and projects, which essentially explore a new type of architecture, extraordinary but thoughtful, and definitely more relevant to its time.

The models of the exhibition have been produced between 2014-2017 as part of the architecture courses of Zenovia Toloudi at Dartmouth College Studio Art. They have been collected temporarily in the office #310 - establishing professor’s office as both an archive and a display of these architectures, and the bodies of knowledge produced by these young creators.

The architecture curriculum within Studio Art Department of Dartmouth College critiques the current condition within architectural education, which remains competitive, and the practice, which has become a mere service for the client. It explores architecture foundations through the lens of the art (re)turn in architecture. By emphasizing creativity, critical thinking and experimentation, the pedagogical model equips students and young designers with skills to envision and produce a more social and more public architecture that integrates the world’s larger concerns. The artistic approach contributes to reconfigure the core essence of architecture whereby creating a new tradition.

PARTICIPANTS - In alphabetical order

Angelina Choi / Anne Muller / Ashley Dotson / Austin Heye / Edward Kim / Jessica Colin / Jing Ting Zhang / Julia Dressel / Kaviraj Krsnadas / Laura Jeliazkov / Liam Grace-flood / Mourad Boumlik / Phoebe Novello / Quang Dang / Samuel Gochman / Si Kyung (Stacey) Lee / Sophie Sheeline / Spring Yu / William Allan / Xinhao (Leo) Lei / Yifan (Yvonne) Fang / Zakios Meghrouni-Brown

CREDITS

Curated by: Zenovia Toloudi, Gerald Auten

Exhibition Design: Gerald Auten


Models produced during the period of 2014-2017 in architecture courses taught by Assistant Professor Zenovia Toloudi

A Temporary Museum of Ideas in The Making would like to thank: Barbara Will, Associate Dean of the Faculty for the Arts and Humanities; Enrico Riley, Chair of Studio Art; Gerald Auten, Exhibition Director; George Athanassopoulos and Tim Olson, Digital Workshop Instructors; Colby Styskal, Sophie Sheeline, and Benas Burdulis, Architecture Fellows; Ryan Hueston, Malika Khurana, Jennifer Ontiveiros, and Dondei Dean, Teaching Assistants; Greg Elder and Jeff Georgantes, Hopkings Center for the Arts Workshops; and Studio Art Faculty and Staff, Dartmouth College.