As the cultural landscape continues to evolve in response to pressing global challenges, museums, institutions, and design fairs around the world are turning their attention to the intersection of architecture, social equity, environmental sustainability, and historical recovery. From prominent museum surveys in New York and Rotterdam to specialized design festivals in Scandinavia and California, the upcoming and ongoing months present a rich roster of exhibitions, events, and competitions that challenge traditional paradigms in the built environment.
In a major institutional development this year, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) launched an ambitious new exhibition series designed to spotlight work from emerging architects who are redefining innovation in the field. The inaugural presentation of this ongoing initiative highlights 12 recently completed projects located throughout New York City. The featured works represent a diverse range of practices from renowned and rising architecture firms, including Adjaye Associates, nArchitects, SO – IL, alongside recognized talent from RECORD’s Design Vanguard 2022 program, such as CO Adaptive and Only If. To deepen the visitor experience, each featured project is accompanied by a newly commissioned video produced specifically for the exhibition by Brooklyn-based filmmaker Hudson Lines, offering cinematic insight into the contemporary urban fabric of New York.
Beyond MoMA, cultural institutions globally are exploring how design can directly address critical societal needs, most notably the escalating housing affordability and density crises.
Ongoing Exhibitions
In Dublin, an insightful collaboration between the Irish Architecture Foundation and the country’s housing agency has brought together vital design solutions at the Science Gallery Dublin. Titled Housing Unlocked, the exhibition runs through January 21, 2023, and showcases eight architect-led proposals tackling complex issues such as housing affordability, spatial resiliency, urban density, and overall quality of life. Among the standout proposals is the "Eco:Cube," a modular housing concept composed of interlocked cubes that can be stacked and rotated to generate flexible one-, two-, three-, and four-bedroom homes. Another featured proposal, "Start Spreading the Mews," examines how new housing supply can be successfully generated across Ireland by exempting suburban laneways from overly stringent planning and zoning codes, thereby unlocking underutilized urban space.
In New York, the New Museum is currently hosting the first comprehensive survey exhibition of Chicago-based artist and designer Theaster Gates. Titled Young Lords and Their Traces and running through February 5, 2023, the exhibition celebrates the interdisciplinary practice of the designer behind the 2022 Serpentine Pavilion. Curated by the museum’s artistic director, Massimiliano Gioni, alongside Gary Carrion-Murayari, the show features a powerful selection of Gates’s works—ranging from sculptures crafted from salvaged materials and rich tar paintings to clay vessels, collaborative performance documentation, preserved historical photographs, and ambitious architectural installations. The collection pays profound homage to the radical thinkers, heroic figures, and everyday icons who have profoundly shaped the cultural fabric of his home city of Chicago and the broader United States.
Also in New York, the Center for Architecture is presenting New Practices New York, an exhibition on view through February 25, 2023, that highlights the winners of AIA New York’s 2020 biennial competition. The showcase focuses on six emerging and innovative firms that have demonstrated a deep, active engagement with New York City and its residents: BRANDT: HAFERD, Byrony Roberts Studio, City-group, GRT Architects, New Affiliates, and ANY.
Across the Atlantic, Rotterdam’s Het Nieuwe Instituut is hosting The Energy Show—Sun, Solar, and Human Power through March 4, 2023. Presented as part of the city’s inaugural Solar Biennale and curated by Berlin-based designer Matylda Cyzykowski, the exhibition explores the vast design potential of solar energy. It brings together work from an international collective of architects and designers, including historical and contemporary figures like Mária Telkes, Michael Jantzen, and the architecture firm Jessen Vollenweider, to construct an inspiring vision of a near future powered entirely by solar energy.
In Atlanta, the Museum of Design Atlanta is presenting Close to the Edge: The Birth of Hip-Hop Architecture through March 12, 2023. Hip-Hop Architecture represents a burgeoning design movement driven by a loosely organized group of creators who integrate the cultural principles of hip-hop into their approach to the built environment. Curated and designed by architect Sekou Cooke—whose work was also featured in MoMA’s landmark 2021 exhibition Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America—the exhibition features a canon of work developed over the past 25 years. Projects span experimental installations, visionary building designs, and radical urban-development proposals, collectively presenting an alternative framework for architectural expression and practice.
Washington, D.C., is similarly engaging with the housing crisis through the National Building Museum’s exhibition A Better Way Home: The Housing Affordability Breakthrough Challenge, on view through May 8, 2023. The exhibition highlights the compelling stories and innovative methodologies behind the six winning initiatives of the Housing Affordability Breakthrough Challenge, a nationwide grant competition initiated in 2019 with $20 million in funding. Addressing the severe housing affordability crisis sweeping the United States, the competition asked participants how to break down systemic barriers to ensure universal access to affordable homes. The exhibition features two winning proposals in each of three vital categories: resident services and support, financing, and construction, challenging conventional American approaches to housing development.
At the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum in New York, visitors can explore Deconstructing Power: W.E.B. Du Bois at the 1900 World’s Fair through May 29, 2023. For the American Negro Exhibit at the 1900 Paris World’s Fair, W.E.B. Du Bois and his students at the University of Atlanta meticulously created a series of groundbreaking data visualizations illustrating the social and economic status of African Americans since emancipation. Although these visualizations occupied more than a quarter of the United States’ allocated space at the fair, they were largely ignored by the mainstream American press at the time. This exhibition brings Du Bois’s long-overlooked contributions into direct dialogue with the broader history of the fair, exposing historical disparities in how world’s fairs have been recorded and remembered as spectacles of uncritical progress.
Events
In the realm of international trade and public events, the Stockholm Furniture Fair 2023 is scheduled to run from February 7 to February 11, 2023. As Scandinavia’s largest design fair and a longstanding destination for discovering regional innovations, the event returns to the Swedish capital for the first time in two years. This year’s fair introduces a brand-new exhibition space designed to strengthen the physical and conceptual connection between the Stockholmsmässan trade fair and Stockholm Design Week, which takes place concurrently throughout the city.
In California, Modernism Week 2023 will celebrate modernist design and architecture from February 16 to February 26, 2023. The annual festival features more than 350 events spread across various locations in Palm Springs, offering attendees curated home and garden tours, independent films, and academic lectures. The keynote presentation for this year’s gathering will be delivered by Morphosis principal Thom Mayne.
Competitions
For emerging professionals and academics looking to contribute to discourse, the Architectural League of New York has announced its 2023 competition, titled Architectural League Prize 2023: Uncomfortable. With a submission deadline of February 15, 2023, the competition invites proposals that respond to the pervasive sense of discomfort characterizing contemporary life amidst climate change, shifting labor practices, and the challenging of traditional power structures. Entrants must not be current students and must have graduated from a bachelor’s or master’s degree program within the last 10 years. Accepting projects in any medium, whether purely conceptual or fully realized, the competition awards successful entrants with a $2,000 cash prize.
