A sad game of green

05 of October '23

Naples main subway station, design: Benedetta Tagliabue - EMBT Architects

photo: Paolo Fassoli | press materials The Chicago Architecture Center

...

The article is from A&B issue 9|23

This fall, two exhibitions at two prestigious American cultural institutions — one at the Chicago Architecture Center and the other at New York's MoMA — present the relationship between architecture and ecology. Content-wise captivating, they leave one unsatisfied and asking: who should start cashing in on sustainability to make it the standard?

An Internet joke from the North American part of the world: in July 2023, a photo of rangers at one of the national parks taking photos against an electronic thermometer indicating 100 degrees Fahrenheit (almost 38 degrees Celsius) began to be shared on Instagram. The meme's caption read: „It's almost as if dinosaurs are taking pictures with an asteroid.” Funny — because true. Scary — because it's real.

Visualization of River Beech Tower in Chicago, Illinois, pro: Perkins & Will — Chicago exhibition "ReFramed: The Future of Cities in Wood"

vision: Perkins & Will | press materials from The Chicago Architecture Center

I am writing this text in my room in Inwood (north of Manhattan). The air conditioning has to work practically non-stop. Summer and especially August are unbearable in the city. The heat pours not only from the sky, it also beats from the buildings, as air conditioners blow hot air from closed rooms, restaurants, movie theaters and offices into streets devoid of any greenery. And to think that a hundred years ago most of the city area was simply forest. And forty years ago, the famous experimental film „Koyaanisqatsi,” with phenomenal music by Philip Glass, warned about the consequences of exploiting the Earth. Is the conversation about preventing a climate crisis forty years overdue? Organizers of the Chicago and New York exhibitions say no. And to prove it, they present factually exhaustive narratives that are really hard to resist.

The first of the exhibitions is divided into two parts. One is „ReCovered: Chicago "s Urban Tree Canopy,” which is meant to remind us of the role of trees in urban space. This part is curated by Ryan Gann and Carol Ross Barney-led prestigious Chicago studio Ross Barney Architects. An immersive arrangement of infographics on the walls explains how trees can affect every element of the city: from air quality to quality of life. From the exhibit you can learn, among other things, about the relationship between tree canopy and income, crime and social vulnerability (specifically, using examples from Chicago).

elevation and cross-section through the entrance tunnel of the „Venturus” wind-generated house, Victoria, Canada — designed by Eugene Tssui, 1982; watercolor, Prismacolor pencil, pastel and colored ink on paper, 53.3×81.3 cm

The second member is „ReFramed: The Future of Cities in Wood.” This exhibition is a collection of architectural models of buildings (public and office spaces) made of mass timber erected around the world. The arrangement of the exhibition space is inspired by cross-laminated timber (CLT) construction methods, which create a grid for reproductions, texts, infographics or maps. The exhibition is co-curated by the Chicago Architecture Center and the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. „ReFramed tells the story of reinventing one of humanity's oldest building materials,” — said Eleanor Gorski, president and CEO of the Chicago Architecture Center.

The panel discussion „Talking Timber: Can Wood Save Us?” held on the opening day expanded on the show's theme and gathered a pool of answers to questions such as: how high can we build with wood? What is the real relationship between wood construction and carbon emissions? „ReFramed” also offers a hands-on opportunity to learn about the material in an educational pavilion built from mass timber, as well as a striking visual demonstration of mass timber's superior fire resistance. Ultimately, the exhibition demonstrates how thinking about one of the oldest and noblest building materials is very much a point, even local, thinking, and how a global vision for this type of architecture is lacking.

Cross-section of Tsuruhama rainforest pavilion, Osaka, Japan, projet: Cambridge Seven Associates, 1993-1995 — Prismacolor pen and pencil on black-line diazo print, 50.8×76.2 cm

At the Chicago show, the section on the impact of trees on the quality of life in the city is definitely a stronger proposition, mainly due to the charismatic personality of Carol Ross Barney. Her strong opinions are heating up the atmosphere of the architectural community in this part of the States. The Chicago-born and based architect muses, for example, that while a denser urban fabric is needed, skyscrapers are not the right way to deliver it. „Ultimately, tall buildings are simply trophies, they don't have the power to build city-forming relationships,” he says. Barney also argues that changes in work habits caused by the internet and pandemics have exposed shortcomings in the way American cities are planned. „One of the things we're learning is that this very traditional American idea of cities — that they should be zoned horizontally — doesn't work, especially now that we have hybrid work and 24/7 cities.” According to Barney, there is a lack of even density of functions in certain areas, and she cites huge vacancies in office space in downtown Chicago as an example. According to her logic, the diversification of functions of urban areas cannot lack greenery, which seals and binds these functions together.

"The Climatron in winter-Shaw „s Garden — Saint Louis,” artist unknown, circa 1960 — postcard, 10.2×20.3 cm.

TheChicago exhibitions will run through October and will dovetail with a second show addressing themes of architecture and ecology: „Emerging Ecology: Architecture and the Rise of Environmentalism,” which will open at MoMA in New York on September 17.

The show will include more than one hundred and fifty works, from the 1930s to the 1990s. The examples cited are meant to make up a history of the relationship between the environmental movement and American architectural thought. Their non-obvious, yet clear connections will be traceable through models, photographs, diagrams, leaflets, posters and sketches. Among the protagonists selected by the exhibition's curators will be, for example, Emilio Ambasz, Charles and Ray Eames and Frank Lloyd Wright. The show is also expected to evoke less popular phenomena and names, such as The New Alchemy Institute, Glen Small and Mária Telkes. The exhibition will be divided into five thematic groups: Environment as Information; Environmental Enclosures ; Multispecies Projects; Countercultural Experiments; Green Poetics.

Prefectural International Hall, Fukuoka, Japan, pro: Emilio Ambasz, 1990

Photo: Hiromi Watanabe | Emilio Ambasz collection | MoMA press materials.

Among the many fascinating personalities whose work will be celebrated in the MoMA show, the most notable is Buckminster Fuller and his 1961 „WorldGame” ("World Game"). It was conceived as a computer system in which anyone interested could see the flow of raw materials such as gold, coal and wood. This dataset was intended to be the first step toward efficient and transparent environmental management. The use of the word „game” in the title shows Fuller's approach to managing and solving social problems. A serious tool was called a „game” because it was meant to be accessible to everyone, not just the elite few in the power structure. In this sense, it was one of the more subversive visions of the famous explorer. Fuller wanted the data collected in the innovative system to be widely disseminated through a free press. Through this „verification” model, the public was to be the barometer that regulated politicians and entrepreneurs. In the late 1960s, this was a view of the political process considered naive by some, but in a world without personal computers and the Internet, it was revolutionary, and today seems an idea worthy of a lucrative startup.

Stanford torus, interior view proj.: Don Davis, 1975 — acrylic on board, 43.1×55.9 cm (never used illustration created for Richard D. Johnson and Charles Holbrow, editors of „Space Settlements: A Design Study,” Washington, DC, NASA Scientific and Technical Information Office, 1977)

Contemporary exhibitions on the relationship between ecology and construction — including the two I'm writing about here — are to some extent an extension of the thoughts from the aforementioned documentary painting „Koyaanisqatsi,” on the other hand they show how much the world needs total visions from under Fuller. But in order for their thought and message to fully resonate, they should be watched with the air conditioning off... At the stage of the climate crisis we are currently facing, radical change will only come from the need to address real discomfort.