Resumen de Arquitectura en exposición: trascendiendo el paradigma clásico
When it comes to museological exhibition, architecture presents an added difficulty in comparison with other artistic disciplines: the material alluded to is never present The principal means of museographic discourse i.e. the presentation of the object, testimony of the past or present, is not possible. For this reason, architecture is often invoked through documents or elements which represent it but, in many cases, offer a superficial or aseptic transfer of architectural knowledge. However, throughout the history of the discipline various architects have created exhibitions of architecture which not only attempt to document but also realise architecture, providing in this way a far more direct communication of the discipline. This work proposes an interested joumey spanning three centuries (the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first) through the medium of exhibition. The aim is not to write an exhaustive study of the history of architectural exhibitions, but rather to offer a fragmentary approach. The intention is to analyse examples which go beyond the artistic paradigm: exhibitions which are not merely presentations of objects or documents, but which have eminently considered the exhibition of architecture as a place in which to act upon concepts inherent to the discipline; exhibitions which attempt to transmit architecture through a concrete and conscious experiencing of it. The exhibitions analysed in this work treat space as something which is demonstrative and, to this end, they do not try to 'reproduce' but to 'produce' something new; they are not works 'in' a space but rather works that 'create' a space. They are examples which aim to transmit that which one lives and feels in a space, and which is difficult to express in words, images or graphics; they talk not of dwellings but of living; they talk not of buildings but of space; not of architects but of architecture. They are exhibitions which evoke the qualities of space, revealing thus its architectural potential. They reconfigure the relationship between the body and the place by changing the experience of such. They arouse a new awareness of the space in which they are; theymake it tangible. The questions here formulated are, amongst others: What kind of exhibitive responses have the architects given in these cases? What concepts have they tested in their exhibitions? What role has the visitor been assigned? How has the communicated message changed over time? The work attempts both a rereading of the development of museographic exhibition of architecture. with voluntary pauses at moments of paradigmatic change, and also the analysis of scattered but marked episodes with the aim of demonstrating the most outstanding strategies employed over the last century and a half to reveal the essence of architecture and to communicate this through an exhibition. The method used is that of design analysis of each case (considering the place, the materials, the itineraries, the light, the sights), hereby discovering the intentions of the creators and the architectural instruments implemented to fulfill these intentions, and, at the same time, to observe how not only the exhibitive language but also the message and consideration of the receptor have become modified over time. In the end, to learn from these experiences and also highlight extraordinary examples of architectural museography truly capable of communicating.
