EXTERNAL 6
(DIS)ASSEMBLIES
28.02.2025 - 25.04.2025
COLLABORATION: HYPERLOCAL Y PROYECTOR
In exploring the outskirts of the official spectrum of the discipline, a turn toward intersectionality has promoted confluences between environmental, social, gender and other-than human justice work in architecture. The results expand the methods of how architecture can structure a practice: from material cultures, and social histories, to techniques of site analysis and visual representation, broadening the modes of making architecture. The specific outcomes of these practices however, prove to be difficult to pin down, as they continuously focus more on how things are produced than the products themselves. To understand how these explorations come into being and start thinking how they could be reproduced, it is necessary to go back to the experiments that preceded them.
(dis)assemblies presents the act of ‘dismantling’ as a pedagogical method that explores contemporary discourses and practices in architecture. The exhibition recreates the unfolding exercise of disentangling processes into parts. The work presented explores conditions, ideals and modes that answer the questions of today’s society as they experiment with different materials, tools and techniques, modes of making, by means of disrupting institutional embedded hierarchies in their search for new methods of production.
Through explorations that ask for progressive inclusivity, diversity, transparency, responsibility and accountability from all parties involved, the act of undoing creates a moment to reconsider how things could be done. Instead of trying to fabricate a model that is to all likings, this collection of essays extends an invitation to reflect upon the parts and the messy contexts these processes have been placed in, and present the possibility of their reassemblies into new experiments, expanding the ways in which architecture can be seen, produced and taught today.
The projects presented in the exhibition were developed during the 2023-24 Watkin Sequence held at the Rice School of Architecture led by Tania Tovar Torres and Zhicheng Xu.
CREDITS
CURATORS:
Tania Tovar Torres y Zhicheng Xu
STUDENT CLASS OF 2024:
Valeria Aguirre, Grace Andrews, Harper Bo, Joshua Chiang, John Curylo, Valerie Elizondo, Ekene Emekine, Tammy Feng, Anne He, Rafe Hessekiel, Zichuen Huang, Madeline Ju, Lily Li, Neha Nayar, Kexuan Shang, Than Van Phan, Amber Wang, Tiffany Wu, Wendy Yao, Liufei Zhu.
CURATORIAL DEVELOPMENT:
Proyector
CURATORIAL TEAM:
Ricardo Betacourt Buelna, Yousif Giyo, Aaryn Ijames, Mayela Pérez Dimas, Camila Ulloa Vasquez.
EXHIBITION DESIGN:
Hyperlocal
EXHIBITION DESIGN TEAM:
Fenghua Lin, Qile Gao, Lehan Zhang
EXHIBITION MANAGEMENT: Bryan Miller
EXHIBITION PRODUCTION AND INSTALLATION: Eric Hester, Chris Humphrey and Justin Hughes
VIDEO: César García Aldape
(dis)assemblies is possible thanks to the generous support of the Rice University Office of Research Creative Ventures Fund and the Rice University School of Architecture curatorial program: Exhibitions at Rice.
EXHIBITIONS AT RICE.
As a curatorial program of the Rice School of Architecture, Exhibitions at Rice uses the lens of design research to look at the world differently. Mobilizing a full spectrum of architectural representation—including drawing, imaging, making, and prototyping—this program weaves together scholarly inquiry, visual experimentation, and public engagement. Across all scales, from objects to buildings, cities, and the planet, Exhibitions at Rice engages the discipline of architecture as a cultural practice with a civic mandate, creating new discourses for both local and global audiences.
