Graham Foundation Grants to Organizations

In 2013 we sent questionnaires to eleven independent institutions in Europe, North America and Latin America that exhibit architecture, resulting in the Making Architecture Public Insight feature. Four of those eleven institutions received 2014 Graham Foundation grants, and we highlight those first, in alphabetical order.

GRANTEE
Canadian Centre for Architecture

Publication
Archaeology of the Digital Series
Greg Lynn, Editor
Canadian Centre for Architecture, 2014

"As part of a multi-year research initiative launched by the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) to investigate the development and application of digital tools in architecture, the publication series revisits twenty seminal projects designed between 1990 and 2000 that experimented with the use of these novel technologies, and documents the discussions and findings of the research program. The series recounts the development and application of digital technologies through the work of architects, such as Lars Spuybroek, Karl Chu, Mark Goulthorpe, Asymptote, Bernard Cache, Peter Testa, Reiser/Umemoto, and Foreign Office Architects—each of whom will be the object of an electronic monograph released each month and intended for reading and visualization from portable devices. A print publication with a parallel fixed-layout ePub version will complement the digital publication series with critical texts, discussions with the architects and experts, historical documents that reveal the emergence of a new line of work in practice and academia, and findings in the CCA's objective of creating a collection of digital architecture and making it accessible to researchers."

GRANTEE
Chicago Architecture Foundation

Conference
The Big Idea: Intersections in Design and Big Data
Vishaan Chakrabarti, Reed Kroloff, and John Tolva, Speakers
Chicago Architecture Foundation
Sep 18, 2014

"A public program from the Chicago Architecture Foundation, The Big Idea features luminaries in the design field primed to initiate dialogue with public audiences and design professionals and help identify design impacts in our world. In kicking off this program in 2014, the selected speakers and content complement CAF's exhibition Chicago: City of Big Data (opened May 2014). We now live in an age where data is one of the greatest commodities: something that surrounds us at all times, manages our lives, and even challenges our fundamental notions of order. But what does big data mean for our cities and buildings? How are the managers and designers of urban environments using big data to improve our quality of life? The Big Idea: Intersections in Design and Big Data asks these questions, providing insightful answers and new pathways of discovery. This two-part series introduces Chicagoans to a generation of thought leaders whose powerful speculations and applications of big data are leading big changes in how we view the future of the built environment."

GRANTEE
LIGA-Space for Architecture

Exhibition
LIGA Exhibitions Program, 2014-2015

"LIGA-Space for Architecture is an exhibit-oriented platform that focuses its efforts in displaying emerging and influential architectural practices whose origin is Latin America, to transplant interesting proposals between culturally parallel countries and reach a larger audience. Each exhibition is a site-specific installation that explores the unlimited ways of making an architectural exhibition, an activity recently developed in Latin American countries that continues to gain importance. Each exhibition looks for the guest architect to find an innovative way of displaying their line of work, trying to avoid the classical expositive standards. Simultaneously with the annual exhibition program, LIGA offers a forum that combines a variety of disciplines that can relate to the architectural practice. For this, there is a set of lectures (approximately one every quarter) that aims to broaden the spectrum of approaches and interpretations inherent to a geographical construct by presenting such space to a young architectural audience, promoting the evolutionary essence of both the program and the discipline of architecture."

GRANTEE
MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles, at the Schindler House

Exhibition
Groundswell: Guerilla Architecture in Response to the Great East Japan Earthquake
Archi+Aid, Artists
Kimberli Meyer, Curator
MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles, at the Schindler House
Oct 25, 2014 to Jan 04, 2015

"The still unfolding disaster caused by the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami has been in urgent need of attention from creative and critical thinkers since the catastrophe struck in 2011. Under the auspices of the organization Archi+Aid, architects have taken on the challenge of strategizing reconstruction, calling upon key members of the design profession to take a leadership role in re-imagining what the built environment should look like. This exhibition presents a selection of architectural projects that provide ways for architects and citizens to think through their domestic and urban space in light of an ever-shifting planet."

In addition to the four institutions above culled from our Making Architecture Public feature, below are six more grantees that stand out from the list of 42, also presented in alphabetical order.

GRANTEE
Art Institute of Chicago

Exhibition
The City Lost and Found: Capturing New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, 1960-1980
Alison Fisher, Katherine A. Bussard, and Greg Foster-Rice, Curators
Art Institute of Chicago
Oct 26, 2014 to Jan 04, 2015

"The City Lost and Found is a groundbreaking exhibition focused on a pivotal shift in American cities during the 1960s and ’70s, explored through the intersection of photography, media, and urban planning. Breaking from traditional disciplinary boundaries structuring scholarship in this period, this project argues for the collective impact of practices from a wide range of makers and thinkers—documentary photographers, urban planners, architects, filmmakers, and performance artists—focused on the specific qualities and social potential of urban places. Not only did close examinations of streets, neighborhoods, public demonstrations, and the conditions of the urban fabric offer the American public a more complex image of life in the three largest cities in the United States, but also their images served as important new models for architects and planners in the study and transformation of New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. A 256-page, illustrated publication will accompany the exhibition, featuring scholarly contributions from art history, urban studies, sociology, urban planning, and architecture."

GRANTEE
Barbican Centre

Publication
Constructing Worlds: Architecture and Photography in the Modern Age
Alona Pardo and Elias Redstone, Authors
David Campany, Owen Hatherley, Sarah Ichioka, Justin Jaeckle, Kobena Mercer, Eleanor Nairne, and Julian Stallabrass, Contributors
Barbican and Prestel Publishing, 2014

"Constructing Worlds: Photography and Architecture in the Modern Age is a publication accompanying an exhibition of the same title (at the Barbican Art Gallery, from September 25, to January 11, 2015), which explores the relationship between photography, architecture, and modernity, capturing seismic shifts in society and economic power. Featuring the work of eighteen architectural photographers and a lead essay by acclaimed writer David Campany, this publication presents a chronological narrative of the synergy between architecture and photography, tracing their shared history since the 1930s. In looking beyond the medium's ability to document the built world, this publication explores the power of photography to reveal wider truths about society, with architecture as the principal protagonist or witness. In tandem, Constructing Worlds reflects on the ongoing dialogue between photographers, architects, and iconic buildings, interrogating their symbolic value as well as the gap between the world architects construct and the lived experience of these spaces."

GRANTEE
Nasher Sculpture Center

Exhibition
Provocations: The Architecture and Design of Heatherwick Studio
Brooke Hodge, Curator
Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas
Sep 13, 2014 to Jan 04, 2015

"Provocations: The Architecture and Design of Heatherwick Studio is the first North American retrospective of the work of visionary British architect and designer, Thomas Heatherwick. This groundbreaking exhibition shares the celebrated works and innovative work process of Heatherwick Studio with an entirely new North American audience. Organized by guest curator Brooke Hodge for the Nasher Sculpture Center, the exhibition will open at the Nasher in Dallas, Texas, and run from September 13, 2014 through January 4, 2015, before traveling to the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles and the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York. This mid-career survey of Heatherwick's work-to-date showcases the process behind the innovative and visually compelling structures designed by Heatherwick Studio, while also illustrating the astonishing range and development of the Studio's work and illuminating the Studio's unique "problem-solving" approach to design."

GRANTEE
National Building Museum

Exhibition
amBIGuity
Susan Piedmont-Palladino, Curator
National Building Museum, Washington DC
Jan 18, 2015 to Sep 07, 2015

"The Danish architect Bjarke Ingels is known internationally as the master of architectural fusion, combining seemingly irreconcilable functions, forms, and even entrenched ideologies to produce what he calls "pragmatic utopianism" and "hedonistic sustainability." The result: a world-wide reputation, projects in eighteen countries, and, most recently, an assignment to create a master plan for the South Campus of the Smithsonian Institution along the National Mall in Washington. A celebration of architecture and its potential to recalibrate perception, amBIGuity provides a provocative glimpse behind the scenes of the firm's New York and Copenhagen offices. The exhibition presents BIG's thought process—from the first sketch to the completed building—revealing their unorthodox approach, methods, and processes. Each of a dozen featured projects draw from the firm's extensive archive of process material, taking the visitor through an imaginative journey to the result: a truly original design."

GRANTEE
Pamphlet Architecture

Publication
Lebbeus Woods Blog
Clare Jacobson, Editor
Princeton Architectural Press, 2015

"From the fall of 2007 until the summer of 2012, architect and educator Lebbeus Woods kept a blog. Through more than three hundred entries of articles, drawings, anecdotes, poetry, interviews, and photographic essays, it became a repository for topics ranging from architectural theory and criticism to education and politics. The blog consistently engaged a dedicated readership that found it a platform for thoughtful, cross-disciplinary community exchange with one of the most revered architects of our time. His commitment to the discourse, social conscience, and, above all, to the humanism of architecture was a lifelong central tenet made manifest in the content he presented. In this volume, editor Clare Jacobson compiles a selection of the archive into a collection that distills Lebbeus's prolific repertoire into a singular vision of architectural possibility."

GRANTEE
Rice University Art Gallery

Exhibition
Atelier Bow-Wow: New Installation
Kimberly Davenport, Curator
Rice University Art Gallery, Houston
Jan 30, 2015 to Mar 15, 2015

"In collaboration with the Rice School of Architecture (RSA), Rice Gallery has invited internationally renowned, Tokyo-based architecture studio Atelier Bow-Wow to create a new site-specific installation. Atelier Bow-Wow will lead a seminar course that will take RSA students from the conception to the execution of this installation. Atelier Bow-Wow principals Yoshiharu Tsukamoto and Momoyo Kaijima will travel from Japan to lead three workshops in Fall 2014. Bow-Wow's practice is to do intensive fieldwork wherever they do an architectural project. Students will have the rare opportunity to work directly with Bow-Wow, conducting extensive research and experimenting with construction and fabrication techniques. The resulting installation by Atelier Bow-Wow will be a public exhibition at Rice Gallery that will contribute to the burgeoning field of architecturally focused, contemporary installation art. It will also give the Rice and Houston communities the opportunity to see work by these leading architects."