Collective City: Seoul Biennale for Architecture and Urbanism, Thematic Exhibition
- Submitting institution
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Royal College of Art(The)
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- Hughes1
- Type
- T - Other
- DOI
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- Location
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- Brief description of type
- Multi-Component Output with Contextual Information
- Open access status
- -
- Month
- -
- Year
- 2019
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- Collective City is double-weighted due to the complexity, scale and range of the research involved in the Thematic Exhibition led by Hughes. The project includes three key elements, each substantive research in their own right: the curation of the main Thematic Exhibition of the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism 2019, a series of archival and commissioned artists’ films providing a critical and historical context linking curatorial strategy and exhibited work, and the physical design of the exhibition.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Collective City presented alternative models of practice to current dominant paradigms of urbanisation through a wide-ranging review of the agency of collective organisation within the disciplines of architecture and urbanism. The curation strategy was informed by research and review activities including archival research, literature review, conference participation, peer review and discussion, participant dialogues and review of written proposals.
Contributions from a diverse range of practices, researchers and artists from around the world were contextualised and reflected upon through artist and archive films commissioned by Hughes to unpack relationships between collective practices and human subjects.
Archival research studied recent architectural histories of the collective as explored in the 1960s and 70s (Herman Hertzberger, Jaap Bakema, Fumihiko Maki and metabolism), which focused on ideas of collective form as a spatio-tectonic articulation of ideologies of collectiveness. Whilst the historical architectural canon understands collectivity in terms of form, collectivity is reframed in the biennale through the lens of architecture’s role as a social agent and its instrumentality in contemporary urban transformation. The biennale explores how to apply collective systems of empowerment to public spaces, natural resources, wild-life and ecologies and architectural heritage and community-led projects, not only as a diagram of organisation but also as an instrument for change.
The exhibition design is partnered to the curation. Central to this is the co-location and connection of the many individual contributions in an open-field condition, allowing for varied and overlapping readings. In concert, these are not understood as discrete actions but a common project of change with the capacity to reorganise larger systems.
The work had an impact beyond the architectural discipline by engaging with mayors, planners, policymakers and academic/educational institutions. An important legacy of the project is its continued influence on Seoul’s city policy through the adoption of case studies presented at the biennale.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
