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AuthorKazys Varnelis

Published

14 May 2012

Location

New York

SectionsInterviews

Keywords

Architecture, criticism, Curatorial practice,

MoMA, Pedro Gadanho

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In appointing Pedro Gadanho Curator for Contemporary

Architecture at the Department of Architecture and Design, theMuseum of Modern Artmade a bold step toward architecture

after the building boom. An architect, curator and writer, Pedro

Gadanho is a leading figure in a new generation interested less in

Pedro Gadanho: curating isthe new criticism

MoMA's new curator for Contemporary Architecture discusses his program and

practice, and expands on his first show, opening in September.

Interviews / Kazys Varnelis
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getting as much built as possible and more in experimental ways

of thinking and practicing. A central figure in the architecture

fiction movement, Pedro was the editor-in-chief ofBeyond, Short

Stories on the Post-Contemporary and the co-organizer of the 1st

International Conference on Architecture and Fiction Once

Upon a Place. He taught at the Oporto Faculty of Architecture,

and from 2000 to 2003 he was a co-director of

ExperimentaDesign. He was the curator of international shows

such as Space Invaders, for the British Council, London, and

Pancho Guedes, An Alternative Modernist, for the Swiss

Architecture Museum, Basel, is the author of Arquitectura em

Pblico(Dafne, 2011), and maintains a blog at Shrapnel

Contemporary.

Kazys Varnelis: One of your most remarked-upon statements

is "curating is the new criticism."How do you set about thisin curating?

Pedro Gadanho:There are several critical issues in that phrase.

One is the demise of criticism itself. Now that we spend our time

reading over the Internet, criticism faces a visual culture and has

trouble getting its messages across.

Curating uses the same tools as the Internet and television to

communicate. An exhibition is an audiovisual operation. We can

mobilize materials to which the general public can react to more

effectively than criticism can.Criticism is a matter of getting the critical function of

architecture, of how architects reflect on the world, to a wider

public while also bringing critical ideas to bear on the discipline.

As an activity, curating can be layered to include both,

communicating about a practice like that of architecture at a

surface level at the same time as it provides deeper levels of

critical content through the texts it originates, either in the space

of the exhibition or in the catalog. I am influenced by Umberto

Eco's notion of the "open work" in which he suggests that in onework you can address different audiences with differing cultural

baggage, allowing them to respond to what is there in their own

ways. In MoMA most of the audience is not architectural but you

still have to respond to the discipline. So here there are two

levels, one with regards to the discipline and one directed at the

function of architecture within society.
http://blog.biarch.eu/mbiarch/gadanho-interview/http://shrapnelcontemporary.wordpress.com/http://www.dafne.com.pt/catalogo2.php?menu=3&id=38http://www.merianverlag.ch/buecher/detail.cfm?ObjectID=12BEA8B0-1422-0CEF-B4869B53F11AC431&language=ENhttp://experimentadesign.pt/index-en.htmlhttp://www.onceuponaplace.fa.utl.pt/http://www.sunarchitecture.nl/catalogue/categori/architecture/beyond_no_1___scenarios_and_spectulations_9789085066958.html


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Top: Pedro Gadanho in his office. Above: Foreclosedat the MoMA, installation view

Concurrent with the obsession with building during

the boom, architectural curating in museums became

identified with the display of buildings or elements of

buildings. But the emerging generation of architects and

curators seems to be involved with more experimental

ideas, for example, architecture fiction. What is the role of

buildings in curatorship for you?

In my earlier work as a curator, I focused on practice more than

buildings and practice is still more interesting to me than its

finished product. By analyzing practice you are analyzing

attitudes, you are analyzing culture, you are analyzing the very

issues that reveal the profession of architecture as it is today. So I

was always interested in what originates practice, what

characterizes practice, what are the problems of practice, what

are its urban consequences?

By focusing on practice rather than on the end product, you are

able to reach all these emerging aspects that reflect different

ways of understanding architecture. If in contemporary art,artists are no longer characterized by the medium they use and

navigate across different media easily, then maybe in

architecture we are also coming to recognize that we could use


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different approachesnot just the traditional built structureto

contribute to society through critical reflection, questioning or

rebuilding that society. As with artists today, the results might

appear in video or in drawing, used metaphorically. I am more

interested in the outcome of different practices, and not in being

tied to the idea of building.

I am interested in architecture becoming more of a cultural field

than a service profession. I sense a split between a part of the

profession dedicated to technical service and a part operating in

ways more similar to what has been going on in art lately. Now

this is not to say that architecture equals art or that architecture is

artistic. That is an old discussion and it leads to some very

uninteresting dead ends.

How are you embodying this in your curation at MoMA?

In September, my first perspective on the collection takes placein the form of a show on political attitudes in architecture. I think

it embodies some of the critical questions I was referring to

earlier. We have to recognize how architects are still able to

reveal and offer a political position at a moment when the

profession at large seems subsumed by economical power, just as

in general, political decision making seems dominated by the

economy. By looking back at the collection and adding some new

acquisitions from a younger generation, I hope to reveal that

architects do not just represent power but rather have theopportunity to make critical commentaries on reality. Consider

that in the 60s there was radical architecture, in the 70s there

were architects like Tschumior Koolhaasusing fiction as a way to

embody dystopia, and coming to our present moment there are

so many young people trying to engage again with social issues,

questions of community, and the ability to generate meaningful

architecture under of very low budget conditions.

For me, these are all possibilities of the political. I want to show

how this relationship of architecture and the political changesover time and is always an open situation. By the mere fact that

you have a position, even if it is to refuse the architectural

intervention, like Lacaton & Vassaldid at a given moment, you

are being absolutely political.
http://www.lacatonvassal.com/http://oma.eu/http://www.tschumi.com/


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Foreclosedat the MoMA, installation v iew

Perhaps the current generation's political stancecomes out of disgust with that the building boom, and the

apolitical, or rather neoliberal approach to architecture

associated with it.

Yes, since the new generation was taught right in the midst of the

star system, they felt they had to react to that, to architecture as a

signature game, a branding device for the corporate world. This

generation felt that they would have to do something else.

I remember always hearing from people, like my father, outside

the profession who saw it as a totally cannibalistic profession thatwas always backfiring against itself. If you run your offices with

unpaid and exploited interns, they will either grow to hate the

system or will wind up replicating the system. It's constantly

destroying architecture from within because professionals don't

seem to have self-esteem towards their own activity. But now

young people are refusing the star system and the whole route of

working for a star, and instead are working through different

channels.

Is starchitecture a complete misstep then?

It's not that starchitecture doesn't have a value. In fact I would

love to have an exhibit that showed the public how the stars

become stars. Starchitecture is a complex machine that responds

to a large-scale global demand. Twenty years ago it would be

difficult to imagine. These architects that became stars were

great at creating something new and unprecedented, producing

an imagination of limitless newness.However, this system also creates expectations of rapid

obsolescence. Everything is weirder than what came before. At a

certain point, however, you know that the next project is going to


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be just another extravagant shape that adds on to the catalog of

extravagant shapes that comes before. Just as soon as you settle

into a formula, even when the formula is diversity, and you

respond in the same way around the world, people start getting

bored with it. First the younger architects get bored, then the

clients, then you're through. The system eats its own.

That's the system of consumption. It's no accident that the rise of

the star system is parallel to the rise of the consumption system

in western society over the last twenty years. In the 1990s and

the 2000s, we reached a peak of consumption as individuals. If

this is coming to an end, and I hope it is, then we will have to find

other ways of looking at architecture instead of the endless

production of new built structures. Which, by the way, is not

saying that we should take on a conservative attitude, either

I think that it is important that you are bringing up therelation of the market to the star system. TheForeclosedshow

now at MoMA places at the single family house at the

epicenter of the housing crisis, but suggests starchitecture

was complicit as the public face of the delirious boom. The

endless proliferation of the new was a kind of economic

exuberance, a promise that the good times would never end.

It's finally starting to hit a wall: the New York Times recently

published an article about how apartments in starchitect-

designed buildings are no longer selling so readily.As I was saying, the system of consumption chews something up

and spits it out when its on to the next tasty morsel. After it has

been chewed, something is not so much dated but rather it is

useless. In speaking of trends in architecture, we have to be

aware that they are part of this consumption system, always

looking for something new.

At a public venue like MoMA, of course, there is a danger of

falling into that. We have to be aware of the risks involved, but

we can find ways to get the most of it. That's where the criticalmessage is most important. For example, over the last ten or

fifteen years, artists have been able to reach bigger audiences

with critical approaches. In this sense, it is also fundamental to

architects to destabilize the system of consumption that is in

place.

In September, my first perspective on the collection

takes place in the form of a show on political

attitudes in architecture. We have to recognize how
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/realestate/starchitect-buildings-test-the-value-of-a-name.html?pagewanted=all


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architects are still able to reveal and offer a political

position at a moment when the profession at large

seems subsumed by economical power, just as in

general, political decision making seems dominated

by the economy

Author

Kazys Varnelis

Sections

Interviews

Keywords

Architecture, criticism, Curatorial practice,

MoMA, Pedro Gadanho

Location

New York

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