The Other Architect

Through 23 case-studies from the 1960s to today, the exhibition at CCA emphasizes architecture’s potential to identify the urgent issues of our time.

Twenty-three case studies dating from the 1960s to today, on view at CCA, illustrate how international and often multidisciplinary groups invented and adopted new methods outside of traditional design practices.

The various groups sought to expand the role and responsibility of architects in society by working outside of traditional design practices and pursuing collaborative strategies, new tools and experimental attitudes. Their ingenuity showed the ability of architecture to shape the contemporary cultural agenda, a lesson that remains critically relevant today.

CCA Director Mirko Zardini stated, “Some of CCA’s past exhibitions have demonstrated that architecture and urban design are too important to be left to architects. This new exhibition presents architecture as more than building – architecture as the production of ideas. These ideas can contribute to changing the world.”

Curated by Giovanna Borasi, the exhibition presents architects whose work challenged the concept of individual authorship in favor of establishing networks and partnerships with permeable roles.

“To find another way of building architecture, we have to be willing to broaden our understanding of what architecture is and what architects can do,” said exhibition curator Giovanna Borasi. “The groups represented in ‘The Other Architect’ remind us that architecture has to do more than just resolve a given set of problems – it has to establish what requires attention today.”

“The Other Architect,” like the case studies it examines, is a research project, concerned in its own way with contributing to a new reflection on the role of the architect, and inspiring and proposing unexpected ways of practicing architecture today. It is a way of responding to the question of how we can position architecture as an original site for the production of ideas.