Architectural exhibitions aimed at a general audience have always been notoriously difficult to pull off. Small-scale representations—such as photographs, intricate models, detailed drawings, and, increasingly, dynamic video projections—can only ever approximate the true spatial sense and physical presence of a full-size, completed work. Much like traditional art objects, these representations need to immediately captivate the casual museum visitor while simultaneously acknowledging the thicket of real-world constraints, including program, site, and budget, that ultimately shape an architectural form.
When the projects on display possess an explicit socially or environmentally conscious dimension, the curatorial challenge becomes even more formidable. Such displays frequently lack the immediate "wow factor"—the dazzling visual panache of extravagantly innovative or formally elegant architectural works and luxury objects that typically make museum visitors stop dead in their tracks. Furthermore, a persistent danger lurks: the risk that providing the necessary textual and contextual information required to genuinely appreciate the projects will inadvertently transform the exhibition space into a heavy, uninviting walk-in book.
Undaunted by these complex hurdles, two leading art and design institutions in New York, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, have boldly embraced this demanding category of exhibition over the past few years. Both prominent museums have organized ambitious design shows that directly confront problematic living conditions, climate crises, and infrastructural failures around the globe.
The Cooper-Hewitt blazed an early trail when it mounted Design for the Other 90% at its palatial quarters on upper Fifth Avenue back in 2007. That exhibition generated substantial media attention and welcomed an impressive audience of 100,000 visitors. Building on that momentum, the museum designated Cynthia Smith, the curator who had organized the landmark show, as its official Curator of Socially Responsible Design in 2009. Smith, an industrial designer with a deep background in public service, followed up with a widely anticipated sequel titled Design with the Other 90%: CITIES.
Because the Cooper-Hewitt’s main building was undergoing a major expansion, the sequel opened for a successful three-month run in October 2011 at the United Nations headquarters. The exhibition proudly displayed 65 innovative projects originating from 25 different countries, concentrating heavily on the pressing realities of slums and informal settlements in the Global South. The venue proved to be a major draw, pulling in 150,000 visitors, including a large number of international UN diplomats and staff members. "The United Nations was a great location," Smith reflected on the unique partnership.
Meanwhile, MoMA’s exhibitions in this vital arena have proven to be even more exceptionally popular with the general public. Rising Currents: Projects for New York’s Waterfront, an exhibition devoted entirely to speculative architectural solutions for combating rising sea levels driven by global warming, reached a staggering high of 881,520 visitors over its six-and-a-half-month duration in 2010. Shortly after, Small Scale, Big Change: New Architectures of Social Engagement, which closely examined innovative design created specifically for underserved and marginalized communities across five continents, opened in October 2010 and successfully drew 311,188 visitors during its three-month stay.
Continuing this trajectory, MoMA installed Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream, on view through July 30. With this compelling exhibition, the museum has further deepened its socially conscious identity under the steady leadership of Barry Bergdoll, who has served as the chief curator of architecture and design since 2006. Bergdoll, who also maintains a position as a professor of architectural history at Columbia University, might initially seem like an unlikely candidate to steer MoMA away from the blockbuster monographic exhibitions celebrating masters like Frank Lloyd Wright or Mies van der Rohe with which the institution has historically been identified.
Yet Bergdoll is quick to point out historical precedent, noting that MoMA’s very first architecture show—the legendary Modern Architecture: International Exhibition of 1932—actually included a significant social housing component. Over the ensuing decades, similar socially focused subjects appeared sporadically within the museum’s galleries.
However, the sheer frequency of these civic-minded, "do-good" shows has undeniably stepped up in recent years. As Joseph Rosa, the director of the University of Michigan Museum of Art, observes, "The museum today is becoming more of an incubator of ideas, with people thinking about socially minded critiques of culture." For his part, Bergdoll explains that he is deliberately trying to pose critical questions that are rarely addressed in normal, everyday architectural commissions. "But the shows do involve architects whose work is already of interest, so we are continuing the traditional role of MoMA in culling the finest talent."
Much like the earlier Rising Currents presentation, the Foreclosed exhibition positioned MoMA in an active, interventionist role. Rather than simply displaying existing works, the museum actually commissioned speculative solutions, which were meticulously developed through an intensive collaborative workshop process. Bergdoll, who organized the ambitious project alongside Reinhold Martin, Director of Columbia University’s Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture, carefully isolated five distinct geographical areas across the United States—stretching from Florida to California—where the devastating banking mortgage crisis of 2007 and 2008 left behind stalled developments and large swaths of publicly held land now ripe for creative reimagining.
For each of the five specific sites identified through rigorous research conducted by the Buell Center, Bergdoll and Martin assigned a multidisciplinary team led by visionary architects and rounded out by seasoned experts in finance, housing, urban planning, and infrastructure. Each collaborative team created provocative proposals intended to spark entirely new ways of thinking about housing design and dense community living. At its core, Bergdoll aims to actively engage the general public in understanding "how architects think."
Among the talented Foreclosed teams—which feature prominent practices such as Studio Gang, MOS, WORKac, and Visible Weather—Zago Architecture put forward a striking proposal to completely redesign a failed residential subdivision pocked with vacant, unbuilt lots in an unincorporated section of Rialto, situated just east of Los Angeles. Principal Andrew Zago’s quixotic and intensely colorful scheme presents a diverse array of alternative housing types, including duplexes and innovative row houses, skillfully rearranged to completely avoid the deadly visual and spatial repetitiveness of the standard subdivision house, yard, and driveway model.
As is frequently typical in socially oriented architectural exhibitions, Foreclosed incorporates a substantial amount of nonvisual material to convey its comprehensive message. Indeed, an entire gallery within the exhibition is devoted solely to presenting the hard data and economic foundations underpinning the show’s core program. Designers constantly grapple with the inherent limitations of exhibiting grainy documentary photographs and variously fabricated architectural models, often choosing to abandon any illusion of a slick, hyper-polished "museum-quality" aesthetic. Granger Moorhead, who expertly designed the Cooper-Hewitt exhibition at the United Nations, noted that his team tackled these exact visual hurdles by discarding traditional display conventions entirely. "We tried to present the content in an informal, collaged way," he explained.
Faced with such thorny and complex matters to consider when presenting design to the public, cultural institutions wisely seek a healthy balance of subjects across their exhibition calendars. Looking ahead to the near future, the Cooper-Hewitt has scheduled an upcoming exhibition dedicated to graphic design, while MoMA is preparing two major architecture shows—one focusing on proto-Modernist master Henri Labrouste, and the other marking the institution’s very first comprehensive retrospective of Le Corbusier. Ars longa, vita brevis.
