PRE-ARCHITECTURES

Once I thought the world was somewhere else <br> © Mariana Castillo Deball
Once I thought the world was somewhere else
© Mariana Castillo Deball

Envision a world without architecture, a world-tecture without arche, the latter meaning not only beginning or origin, but also the authority to arrange and subordinate persons, objects, and processes into an identifiable power structure.

Pre-architecture is not simply "not architecture"–it is what architecture could have become, but ultimately disavowed. The same unfulfilled potentialities haunt not only the distant past but also architecture's anxious present in a time of environmental crisis, energetic transformation and related social challenges.

With the participation of a transdisciplinary field of architects, artists, sociologists and archeologists, the exhibition pre-architectures critically unveils how the study of prehistory might uncover not only causes of modernity’s present crisis, but also signs of architecture’s future past. Referring to the beginnings of human habitat and the “birth” of design, the exhibition speculates about the cultural, social, economic and political foundations of spatial organization.

With works by: Kader Attia, Mariana Castillo Deball, Jacques Gillet, Hans Hollein, Frederick Kiesler, Gianni Pettena, Ettore Sottsass, Anton Vidokle & Pelin Tan, Paulo Tavares, David Wengrow & Eyal Weizman with Forensic Architecture

Dates
Wednesday, November 6, 2024Sunday, March 30, 2025
Opening
05.11.2024 - 7pm
Place
CIVA, Rue de l'Ermitage 55, 1050 Brussels
Curator(s)
Silvia Franceschini, Nikolaus Hirsch & Spyros Papapetros
Scenography
Pauline Clarot
With the support of
Instituto Guimarães RosaEmbassy of Brazil in Brussels Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation
© Frederick Kiesler, Magic Architecture, Plate 24 (III 4), collage: typewriter and
© Paulo Tavares, Des-Habitat, published by K.Verlag, 2019. Courtesy of the artist
© Mariana Castillo Deball, Once I thought the world was somewhere else, installati
© Kader Attia, Hypomnemata, papier-mâché sculpture on four plywood tables, cabinet
© Anton Vidokle & Pelin Tan, Gilgamesh: She who saw the deep, film, 2022. Courtesy
© David Wengrow and Eyal Weizman with Forensic Architecture and The Nebelivka Proj
© Jacques Gillet, Maison sculpture à Angleur, gelatin silver prints, undated. Cour
© Gianni Pettena, About Non-Conscious Architecture, photograph, 1972. Courtesy of
© Ettore Sottsass, Metafore. 2. Architettura virtuale. 1973 (Seo de Urgel), photog
© Hans Hollein, Stadtstruktur (City Structure), ink on paper, 1960-1963. Courtesy