Motion Matters

Info & photography: Courtesy UNStudio

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UNStudio's site specific installation-exhibition called ‘Motion Matters’ involves the public in a dynamic debate…

The exhibition is a response to the traditional architectural exhibition in which rescaled representations of architectural designs are presented. In ‘Motion Matters’, the object exhibited is not in a display case, or merely an object to be looked at, but instead interacts with the visitor and commands his active participation. The exhibition investigates ways in which movement, spatial considerations and perspective inform space and how the visitor physically experiences the effects of these three determinant architectural parameters.

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For many years UNStudio has been investigating the potential of temporary installation as an experimental testing ground for manifold architectural concerns and it is these investigations that form the basis of this exhibition. The concept for the Motion Matters installation has recently been nominated for the International Space Design Award (Shenzhen, China) in the category ‘Exhibitions’.

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Says Ben van Berkel, principal architect UNStudio, “When we talk of ‘motion’ within architecture, we not only refer to buildings and their potential effects, but also to shifts, or twists in the whole, integrated practice of the profession; we talk of the mobile forces that engender change and where the future of architecture may lie. ‘Motion’ therefore also encapsulates the past, the present and the possible future of the profession.”

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The effects of situation, light, colour, and material on viewer perception are tested in this spatial installation of shifting perspectives. Within a trajectory of transitional spaces, optical illusions and trompe l’oeil effects are brought to contemporary structures, generating an experience that negotiates the ideal and the relational.

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The exhibition presents ten of UNStudio’s milestone projects. At an almost 1:1 scale the visitor can, as it were, step into the projects on display: these include the Burnham Pavilion (Millenium Park, Chicago, USA), the Ponte Parodi Harbour development (Genoa – Italy),  the Theatre Agora (Lelystad, The Netherlands), the Galleria Centercity (Cheonan, Korea), Mercedes-Benz Museum (Stuttgart, Germany) and many more.

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In addition to the primary focus on these key projects, a more detailed view is generated by means of five thematic threads that bind the projects together along a three-dimensional ribbon, which meanders through the exhibition space. These threads consist of numerous small images that facilitate the reading of the various relationships between the exhibited projects within a larger context of inspiration, debate and realization processes and provide insight into the knowledge driven nature of UNStudio’s practice.

The Exhibition is curated by Alessandro D'Onofrio MAXXI National Museum of XXI Century Arts. 

Dates: 6^th Dec.’13 – 13^th April’14

Venue: Gallery 2a, MAXXI Museum, Rome