UNStudio exhibition 'Motion Matters'

For many years UNStudio has been investigating the potential of the temporary installation as an experimental testing ground for manifold architectural concerns and it is these investigations that form the basis of the exhibition ‘Motion Matters’. The exhibition presents ten of UNStudio’s milestone projects, in addition to conveying their perspective on 25 years of architectural production, their current approach to architectural practice and the wider discourse that determines design challenges today. MOTION The effects of situation, light, color, and material on viewer perception are tested in a spatial installation of shifting perspectives. Within a trajectory of transitional spaces, optical illusions and trompe l’oeil effects are brought to contemporary structures, generating an experience that negotiates the ideal and the relational. The many interactions possible between building, programme and user which can engage the public in a dynamic and challenging confrontation is a key element in UNStudio's designs. The exhibit itself is not merely a showcase, nor an object to passively observe, but instead interacts with the visitor whilst simultaneously demanding active participation in order to create a spatial and dynamic experience. MATTERS At an almost 1:1 scale the visitor can, as it were, step into the projects on display: these include the Burnham Pavilion (Millennium Park, Chicago, USA), the Centre for Virtual Engineering - ZVE (Fraunhofer Institute, Stuttgart, Germany), the Theatre Agora (Lelystad, Netherlands), the Galleria Centercity (Cheonan, Korea), the Arnhem Central - Platform Roofs (Arnhem, Netherlands), the MUMUTH Music Theatre (Graz, Austria), the Holiday Home (ICA, Philadelphia, USA), the Education Executive Agency & Tax Offices (Groningen, Netherlands), the Haus am Weinberg (Stuttgart, Germany), and the Mercedes-Benz Museum (Stuttgart, Germany). KNOWLEDGE BASED In addition to the primary focus on these key projects, a more detailed view is generated by means of five thematic threads which bind the projects together along a three-dimensional ribbon which meanders through the exhibition space. These threads consist of numerous small images which afford the reading of the various relationships between the exhibited projects within a larger context of inspiration, debate and realisation processes and provide insight into the knowledge driven nature of UNStudio’s practice. Ben van Berkel: “When we talk of ‘motion’ within architecture we not only refer to buildings and their potential effects, but also to shifts, or twists in the whole, integrated practice of the profession; we talk of the mobile forces which engender change and where the future of architecture may lie. ‘Motion’ therefore also encapsulates the past, the present and the possible future of the profession.” Speaking at the opening will be: Dr.h.c. Kristin Feireiss, Aedes Berlin Bart Hofstede, Head of Press and Culture Department, Dutch Embassy Berlin Daniel Birnbaum, Director Museum of Modern Art Stockholm Ben van Berkel, Co-Founder and Principal Architect, UNStudio Caroline Bos, Co-Founder and Principal Urban Planner, UNStudio http://www.unstudio.com http://www.aedes-arc.de