BUILDING: An exhibition under construction

The Farrell Centre presents BUILDING: An exhibition under construction which will transform the exhibition galleries into live making spaces in an exploration of the process of building. Rather than open fully-formed, the public will witness the exhibition taking shape over four months via two live build projects, installations created by students and apprentices, audience participation, and a programme of workshops and events for all audiences.

Building sites are ever-present in our cities. Yet we are always separated from them, experiencing them at a distance and from behind hoardings. There are important practical and health and safety reasons for this—building sites can often be dangerous. But this separation has the effect of disconnecting us from the construction process that exists almost in a separate world, where questions about how buildings are made and who they are ultimately for can struggle to get heard.

This exhibition aims to help change this. It recasts “building” not as object, but as an action. When you do this, everything the hoardings obscure comes into view: who builds our buildings, the conditions they work in, the tools they use and the skills they employ; the materials buildings are made from and their environmental impacts both locally and further afield; the money that funds buildings, where it comes from and what it wants in return.

Under construction
In its exploration of the process of making buildings, the exhibition also turns a light on the process of making exhibitions. In contrast to the conventional “big reveal”, which often serves to obscure or erase the very many hands involved in favour of the artists or curator, BUILDING comprises a series of collaborative projects that will take place during the exhibition’s run, inviting the public to reconsider how exhibitions are made and the ideologies they reflect.

In the coming weeks, Newcastle-based artist/technician Peter Evans will realise the latest iteration of Stage Directions—a project by Andjeas Ejiksson and Joanna Zawieja. Architect Lee Ivett will work with local group North East Young Dads and Lads to design and build a pop-up maker space. Sunderland College Level 3 students and apprentices, in collaboration with Mawson Kerr, will create an installation demonstrating their carpentry, plumbing and electrical skills. The work of the exhibition’s graphic designers, Foundation Press, and 3D designers/makers, And+ Studios, will also be showcased through live working in the spaces and workshops during the exhibition.

Alongside the various projects and installations, a programme of workshops and activities will look to include as many people as possible in making the exhibition, as a way of broadening the conversation about how we can re-imagine the built environment as something we can all positively shape.

Translating Ferro / Transforming Knowledges
The exhibition emerges from the major research project Translating Ferro / Transforming Knowledges of Architecture, Design and Labour for the New Field of Production Studies (TF/TK)—a joint Brazil/UK project funded by the AHRC and FAPESP with the aim of defining and consolidating a new field of Production Studies, structured and informed by the work of Brazilian architect and theorist Sérgio Ferro. Reflecting the ethos of that project, the exhibition has been conceived through a collaborative curatorial process involving Katie Lloyd Thomas, Professor of Architectural Theory and History at Newcastle University (and Principal Investigator UK of TF/TK); Will Thomson, TF/TK Research Associate in the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape at Newcastle University; Lorna Burn and Hannah Christy, Assistant Curators, Farrell Centre; and Owen Hopkins, Director, Farrell Centre.

Towards Another Architecture book
BUILDING coincides with the launch of the Farrell Centre’s first book: Towards Another Architecture: New Visions for the 21st Century, published in collaboration with Lund Humphries. Edited by Owen Hopkins, the book brings together contributions from practitioners, researchers, educators and curators, working in a range of fields and geographies, to put forward bold and optimistic possibilities for ‘another architecture’ in the context of the myriad crises facing the discipline – and the world – today. Featuring Nzinga Biegueng Mboup; Dávid Smiló; Superflux / Anab Jain and Jon Ardern; Xu Tiantian; Gonzalo Herrero Delicado; Marianela D’Aprile; Ruth Morrow; Alice Brownfield; Xenia Adjoubei; V. Mitch McEwen; Marianna Janowicz; Joshua Mardell and Adam Nathaniel Furman.