Audience of Objects

BplusU featured in exhibition at the SCI-Arc Library Gallery

February 4th, 2011

Audience of Objects- Designed and curated by Eric Owen Moss for the Venice Architecture Biennale 2010 Austrian Pavilion.

Participants include Herwig Baumgartner and Scott Uriu, B+U; Hernan Diaz Alonso, Xefirotarch; Craig Hodgetts and Hsinming Fung, Hodgetts + Fung; Elena Manferdini, Atelier Manferdini; Alexis Rochas, I/O; and Marcelo Spina and Georgina Huljich, PATTERNS.

Opening Reception: Friday, Feb 4, 7–9pm
Discussion: Wednesday, March 16, 7pm
W. M. Keck Lecture Hall

The curatorial objective at the Austrian Pavilion was to use an imaginative design means to communicate the most imaginative prospects for contemporary Austrian architecture and urban design around the world, as well as to represent Austria as both a unique repository of architectural talent, and an attentive welcomer of a new spirit of foreign architectural invention. Design works of international architects who have taught in Austria were displayed in the "Audience of Objects" exhibition inside the 2010 Austrian Pavilion.

The exhibition in the SCI-Arc Library Gallery includes six projects previously "seated" in the Austrian Pavilion of the 2010 Venice Architecture Biennal.

In September 2010, Eric Owen Moss Architects, led by SCI-Arc Director Eric Owen Moss, presented the work of 65 international architects in the Austrian Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, marking the first time a country was represented by a foreign architect. One portion of the exhibit utilized standard scaffolding to construct a stepped seating system. Typically such an arrangement accommodates audiences observing games, plays, concerts, and so on, presented by performers who face the audience from a staging area in front of the seats.

In this exhibit the seats were used to mount multiple models designed for the event by faculty/student teams from schools of architecture around the world. The Audience of Objects transposed the conventional positioning of observer [seated attendees] and observed [performers on stage].

On view in the Library Gallery are six projects by SCI-Arc faculty members, minus the scaffolded bleachers.