''Speak! Listen! Act!'' Exhibition at Strauss Gallery by Greek Architect Zenovia Toloudi

September 20 – November 13, 2016, Strauss Gallery presents Speak! Listen! Act!

A kaleidoscope of architectural elements for public space, an exhibition of 20 projects by Zenovia Toloudi and students. 

 

Public space has been vital to people and cities since ancient times as the designated space for dialogue, participation, collective activities, interaction and exchange, and essentially democracy. However, due to various social, political, and economic complexities, as well as technological advancements, public space has gradually transformed to less open, less democratic, less comfortable, less enjoyable, less “ours.” From one hand, codes, policies, and regulations reinforce limited use and accessibility, uncomfortable surfaces and furniture, and ubiquitous surveillance. From the other hand, the web culture has absorbed much of the dialogue and participatory practices that now occur more often in the digital realm. Public space is essentially not so “public” and not so “spatial.”

 

Speak! Listen! Act! exhibition and research presents a taxonomy of projects at the intersection of architecture, art, and urbanism, investigating how design can act as agency to instigate or reinforce for the public a series of actions, such as communication, interaction, collaboration, playfulness, and empathy. Speak! Listen! Act! exhibition introduces new typologies for the public space, communication interfaces, and terrains for unpredictable activities where the citizen becomes an active participant. Through responsive designs, ephemeral interventions, participatory events, collective experiences, and happenings, architecture can serve the commons, and therefore can become the catalyst for social space and public action. 

 

The main curatorial element the Speak! Listen! Act! exhibition is the presentation of the 20 projects through a wall installation at a form of a periodic table of light boxes. Each light box contains a project, represented by one axonometric drawing and one verb. The “x-ray” drawings and the verbs together they constitute a language of types and actions to transform public space to be more communicative, interactive and democratic. In a similar way of how Richard Serra’s Verb List (1967–68) has served as a guide for his practice and future operations, these projects together with their verbs function as a thinking device for architectural, artistic, and civic operations within public sphere.

 

Speak! Listen! Act! projects are organized in three main categories. They emphasize the presence of adaptive structures, the actualization of tectonics of democratization, and the materialization of playful micro-tectures:

 

Adaptive structures can transform themselves based on needs and desires. They have flexible programs and can customize themselves to serve social life for multiple audiences and situations. They are user-driven; they can be occupied and personalized by citizens. Due to their small size, and being consisted of repetitive elements they can be implemented with low cost and high customization.

 

Tectonics of democratization challenge architecture to reinforce civic responsibility through the integration in the design of instability, balance and movement. The expression of fluctuation is captured in the elements, materials, details, and forms of these structures. The constant newly defined situations affect the interactions among the citizens, who (now) need to arrange, discuss, and negotiate among each other.  And vice versa, users steadily re-shape and evolve them. 

 

Playful micro-tectures encourage the dialogue, information exchange, and public-ness by integrating ephemeral events, participatory happenings and performances. They often become temporary spectacles that foster the community. The events’ instigators may often be architects that co-participate with the citizens to inspire and produce them.

 

These ephemeral and participatory architectures become “hackers” that intervene in the public arena through inventiveness and playfulness to alter the social and political conditions. Speak! Listen! Act! projects act as strategic site-, program-, or audience-specific designs for the public space forming an architectural activism.

 

 

Micro-Ceasefire Under Shadow, Zenovia Toloudi

Blanket, Zenovia Toloudi

Modular Tectonics, HAEF design-build workshop

Poly-Platform, Magda Billis

REimagining the SCAR, Katherine Mendez

A World of Spectators, Nicholas Dyer

Parrhesiastic Play, Zenovia Toloudi

The Theater of Moving Furniture, Caitlin Horan 

Free See Saw, Zenovia Toloudi

Collective Multipurpose Furniture, Jake Weed

Street Warrior, Adenrele Adewusi

Solitent, Zakios Meghrouni-Brown

Spiral, Zenovia Toloudi

Pop-up IC-cream Store, HAEF design-build workshop

Fan, Zenovia Toloudi, Maria Stefanidis

Agora Display, WIT Athenian Agora Studio

Optical Ruin, Matthew Rowell

Urban Venetian Blind, Zenovia Toloudi, Maria Stefanidis

The Cage, Zenovia Toloudi, Maria Stefanidis, Chrysa Lekka

Converse/Construct, Patrick Brady