The Architecture Foundation's new exhibition 'SHIFTS: The Economic Crisis and its Consequences for Architecture' is now open in our Southwark Project Space until 9 June. Book now for it's exciting events programme, featuring provocative critic Owen Hatherley, the UK premiere of Christian Von Borries' The Dubai in Me, and the opportunity to hear Hans Ibelings and Nanne de Ru (Powerhouse Company) debate and present the exhibition and its research, as they join us specially from Rotterdam for one night only.
Showing against the backdrop of Britain’s first double-dip downturn since the 1970s, the acknowledged onset of an imminent housing crisis in London, and the continuing shrinkage of the architectural profession in the UK, SHIFTS illustrates the far-reaching impacts of new economic circumstances on architecture’s recent past, troubled present and unknown future.
Architects Powerhouse Company (Rotterdam/Copenhagen) and critic and architectural historian Hans Ibelings (the Architecture Observer, Rotterdam) present a polemical exhibition examining the seismic social and economic shifts that have befallen the world over recent years, to provoke questions about the fundamental changes the cultures and practices of architecture may consequently undergo.
The exhibition emulates and inverts the formats of a traditional architectural exhibition – diagrams, films, text and, in particular, models – to illustrate the relationships between economics, architecture and property; using the tools of architectural representation to make visible instead hidden patterns influencing development, design and political decision making; the shifting socio-economic contexts in which architecture is intrinsically intermeshed.
For more information please visit our exhibition page.