At Rice University, the city of Houston has become both subject and canvas. The university’s School of Architecture has opened “Iwan Baan: The Notational Surface,” an exhibition by the world-renowned Dutch photographer Iwan Baan, whose work has redefined how architecture and cities are seen.
On view in Cannady Hall through Oct. 25, the show marks a bold step in the school’s new curatorial program, Exhibitions at Rice.
For Dean Igor Marjanović, hosting Baan was a natural fit for the program’s ambitions.
“His photographs remind us that every urban condition is also a representational project and that the city can be read, reimagined and ultimately, reshaped,” Marjanović said.
Over the past five years, Baan has been turning his lens on the Bayou City, capturing it both from the ground and the air.
“This exhibition kind of started about a year ago when I was at Rice to photograph the new architecture building … and I met Igor,” Baan said. “I’d been working on this series on Houston for the last four or five years, and I thought with the new galleries opening it would be really great to bring that exhibition to Rice.”
Inside Cannady Hall, the exhibition is more than a display of photographs — it’s an immersive experience designed specifically for Rice. Collaborating with the Houston- and Mexico City-based firm Departamento del Distrito and Amsterdam’s Experimental Jetset, Baan and the team used the building’s light-filled galleries to dramatic effect. His photographs, printed on industrial blue-back affiche paper, are suspended at sharp angles that envelop visitors in a sensation of flight.
“I very much liked the two galleries — how their light felt was really nice,” Baan said. “Also to work with the architects who did the exhibition design and really work on an installation which was connected with the subject but also connected with the architecture of the galleries and the space.”
For Rice students, the impact is immediate. Many recognize the highways, waterways and neighborhoods in Baan’s images but see them anew through his elevated perspective.
“This whole series I did on Houston lets students see their own city from a different angle,” Baan said. “They recognize many of these places, but suddenly they also see them from a totally different perspective and get a new understanding of their environment.”
The exhibition also comes with a fully illustrated catalog that includes a foreword by Marjanović and an essay by designer and urbanist Clare Lyster, who frames Baan’s work as a way of “reading” the city — finding notation in the traces and patterns of Houston’s landscape. The title of her essay, “The Notational Surface,” lent itself to the title of the exhibition.
Admission to the exhibit is free and open to the public.