The inaugural exhibition at the Rice University School of Architecture’s new William T. Cannady Hall explores how architecture and design can participate in a more sustainable world.
An Oct. 28 opening and lecture event kicked off the exhibit titled “The Sixth Sphere,” curated by Brittany Utting, assistant professor of architecture. The exhibition provides an in-depth look at how the built environment operates at a planetary scale and imagines the effects design could have on our environment.
“This is the first exhibition in the new gallery space for the School of Architecture,” said Igor Marjanović, the William Ward Watkin Dean of the School of Architecture. “It looks at a concept of planetary care and engagement from the scale of a building, an individual, an object all the way to the city, the region and the planet at large.”
At the opening, Marjanović introduced the exhibition as a testament to architecture’s evolving responsibilities amid planetary crises.
“It includes a series of innovative drawings and animations by architects who are trying to reimagine a different kind of world and a more sustainable world by means of architectural design,” he said.
Following Marjanović’s introduction, Utting expanded on the exhibition’s central focus — the technosphere, a concept introduced by geologist Peter K. Haff as the human-made “sixth sphere” interwoven with Earth’s biosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, lithosphere and atmosphere that includes the infrastructures of industrial production and extraction.
“The projects in this exhibition demonstrate that architectural production is not an act that occurs separately from either the Earth system nor from the technosphere. It instead points to a working framework for design — one of coexistence, rather than control,” Utting said during her lecture.
The graphic design of “The Sixth Sphere” is by Studio Lin. The exhibition is open to the public for viewing and located on the second floor of the newly constructed Cannady Hall, which is set for formal dedication Dec. 5. The exhibition is also the inaugural show in the school’s new curatorial program, Exhibitions at Rice.
As a curatorial program of the Rice School of Architecture, Exhibitions at Rice uses the lens of design research to look at the world differently. Mobilizing a full spectrum of architectural representation — drawing, imaging, making and prototyping — this program weaves together scholarly inquiry, visual experimentation and public engagement. Across all scales from objects to buildings, cities and the planet, Exhibitions at Rice engages the discipline of architecture as a cultural practice with a civic mandate, creating new discourses for both local and global audiences.
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