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Blank Spaces Blank Pages

Part 2 Dissertation 2013
Anna Barbieri
Mackintosh School of Architecture | UK
Blank Spaces Blank Pages examines the relationship between the curating of architecture and the editorial processes for architectural publications. Exhibitions and publications have become vital parts of the professional landscape in architecture today. Nevertheless in both forms of architectural communication the real work of architecture – the building – is mostly far away, not on display and not ‘on site’. Ever since, publications and exhibitions rely on representational methods and techniques. Only rarely can exhibitions profit from an immediate context that transforms the exhibition’s container space into an extended part of the curatorial narrative. In contrast, publications overcome this detachedness and benefit from their portable character as reflected in early ideas of the ‘personal portable museum’ or paper museums like sketchbooks and encyclopaedic drawing collections.

Analysing the history of architectural curating and current curatorial strategies, the dissertation highlights similarities between the activities of curating exhibitions and editorial processes for publications with a particular focus on their potential relations to context. What advantages does it have if the context in which architecture is exhibited becomes part of the curatorial narrative? Can the activity of curating exhibitions be compared to compiling publications and can publications be considered as curated objects?

Looking at theoretical conceptions as well as examples of publication processes and exhibitions the dissertation presents the vicinity of editorial tasks to curatorial activities. Furthermore, Blank Spaces Blank Pages provides a perspective on an upcoming architecture exhibition at the Mackintosh Museum, Glasgow, and broadens the understanding of curatorial strategies through a reflection of enforcing factors such as context, experience and physical encounter in architectural exhibitions and publications.

Anna Barbieri

Tutor(s)
Florian Urban
2013
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