small architecture

BIG  LANDSCAPES

 

 

February 5 - March 13, 2010

Swope Art Museum, Terre Haute, Indiana  

 

opening reception

     Friday, February 5, 6:00-9:00

small group of architects

BIG PUBLIC DISCUSSION roundtable

     Saturday, February 6, 1:00-2:30

 

curated by Wes Janz

onesmallproject and Ball State University

 

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Every person thinks and acts in relation to the landscape. We have some understandings of these dynamics, as studied by leading visual and literary artists: Ansel Adams’ photos as inspired by the Yosemite Sierra, Frank Lloyd Wright’s design for Fallingwater, Jane Jacobs’ insights into urban life, the New York City of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and Chase County, Kansas as portrayed by William Least Heat Moon in PrairyErth, and Maya Lin’s monuments, installations, and buildings.

 

That said, there is much we do not know about many lives and landscapes. One billion informal settlers occupy slums, twenty-six million people are displaced by war or natural disaster, and every night in Indianapolis three thousand citizens need a place to sleep. All of them claim space and make their way, every day. 

 

Wes Janz is curating the "small architecture BIG LANDSCAPES" show at the Swope Art Museum. The Swope is best known for its American Regionalist group, which includes works by Edward Hopper, Thomas Hart Benton, and Grant Wood's last painting (Spring in Town). Janz's show pivots from this core to consider some of our most extreme and, simultaneously, most common architecture and landscapes. With it, he suggests that we have much to learn from those generally considered to be the most disadvantaged. 

 

 

“small architecture BIG LANDSCAPES” will feature full-scale installations by: 

 

     Ana de Brea + Paul Puzzello (Ball State) + Wil Marquez (A2SX), "Dialog"  

     Azin Valy + Suzan Wines, I-Beam Design (+ Brian McCutcheon)

     Maria Vera (SIUC) + Shai Yeshayahu (df_lab@SIUC) + Giulia Fiocca, Rome

     Olon Dotson, Ball State, Midwess Distress Tour & Distress Too Tour

     Scott Shall, Temple University & International Design Clinic 

     Timothy Gray of Gray Architecture & Ball State

 

Smaller constructions by Ana de Brea; Janice Shimizu + Josh Coggeshall, architects/educators, Ball State University; and Roberto Frangella, artist/architect/activist, Buenos Aires. 

 

Flatworks (paintings, photographs, collages) by:

 

     Alan Frakes, designer/artist, Tulsa  

     Chelina Odbert & Jen Toy, Kounkuey Design Initiative, Nairobi

     Craig McCormick, architect/photographer, "Economic Entropy"

     Daniel Miranda, architect/educator, Buenos Aires

     Derek Mills, architect, Indianapolis  

     Marjetica Potrc, architect/artist, Ljubljana

     Richard Saxton, artist, UC-Boulder; MuncipalWORKSHOP; M12

     Rufina Wu + Stefan Canham, Hong Kong informal rooftop settlements

     Santiago Cirugeda, architect, "recetas urbanas" website, Seville

     Steve Jessmore, "Sense of Community" photocolumn, Flint Journal

  

Tools used by self-builders will be displayed; they will be further considered through profiles of a self-builder. The cities represented and the contributors of the tools and profiles are:

  

     Bangkok, Thailand:  Chamnarn Tirapas    

     Dharavi, Mumbai, India:  Nishit Somaiya

     El Ocotillo, Honduras:  Katrina Mitchell

     Izmit, Turkey:  Ozgur Guz 

     Panama City, Panama:  Gabriela L. Valencia Mestre

     Samagaon, Nepal:  Gaurab Kc

     Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada:  Lancelot Coar  

 

Essayists include:

 

     Brian Willingham, Soul of a Black Cop, life-long Flint, MI resident

     Bryan Finoki, freelance writer, subtopia blog, Woodbury adjunct

     Craig Wilkins, author, The Aesthetics of Equity

     David Stairs, Design Altruism Project & Designers Without Borders

     Gordon Young, journalist, San Francisco, and Flint Expatriates blogger

     Jerome Daksiewicz, architect/designer/strategic defaulter, Phoenix

     Linda Samuels, PhD candidate @ UCLA, cause of the week blogger 

     Mariana Amatullo, founder, Designmatters, Art Center College of Design

     Nihal Perera, Ball State, professor & director, CapAsia field study program 

     Tara Sumrall, Teach for America, Rosebud Reservation, South Dakota

     Thomas Fisher, Professor & Dean, College of Design, U of Minnesota

     Tulay Gunes, gecekondu ("overnight apartment") builders in Ankara 

     Zachary Benedict, architect, Morrison Kattman Menze, Fort Wayne

 

A book is being designed by Kurt West of General Acres.

 

Matt Groshek, public scholar of exhibition planning and design at the IUPUI Herron School of Art and Design and owner of Exhibition Design Link, is consulting on the show's design. In Spring 2009, students working with Young Bok Hong, an associate professor of visual communications at Herron, advised on conceptual approaches that the show might take; process books by her students Steven Musngi and Cullen Nance can be seen on-line.

 

An exhibition of complementary work by Wes Janz and colleagues opens Thursday, January 21, 2010 at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College, five miles northwest of Terre Haute, Indiana. The show, "Leftover: Spaces, Materials, and People," runs through February 17 in the Hulman Hall Gallery. For more information, contact Rebecca Mollenhauer, Assistant Professor, Graphic Design, and Art Gallery Director at (812) 535-5141 or mollenhauer@smwc.edu 

 

Work is posted on this wiki for your consideration, engagement, and comment.

 

More to follow . . .

 

 

Wes Janz, PhD, RA is the founder of onesmallproject, which exists as an

integrated internet presence with web, blog, deli.cio.us, flickr, issuu, and

wiki sites, and he is an associate professor of architecture at Ball State

University in Muncie, Indiana where he was the recipient of the university’s

Outstanding Teaching Award in 2006. In 2008, he was a finalist for the

Curry Stone Design Prize, which is awarded to breakthrough projects that

have the “power and potential to improve our lives and the world we live in.”

In the past seven years, he’s been in the air and on the road--to Argentina,

China, Finland, India, Panama, Russia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Turkey, UAE, and

Uruguay; to the Gulf Coast four times post-Katrina; and to a dozen cities of

the U.S. Rust Belt--documenting the lives, living conditions, and buildings of

some of the world’s poorest people and their neighborhoods. Along the way,

Wes shifted from a curiosity in the power held by the world’s richest people and

most prominent designers, to a belief that people in the world, in general,

no matter how poor or apparently disadvantaged, are fully capable of making

their way in the world, and that it is often the case that interventions of

well-intentioned people bring both opportunity and harm to the lives of locals.