As the cultural calendar shifts through the winter and spring seasons, major museums, institutions, and design centers across the globe are launching a compelling array of exhibitions, events, and competitions that confront the most pressing issues of the built environment. From groundbreaking explorations of housing affordability and renewable energy to historical retrospectives and showcases of emerging talent, the architecture community is actively engaging with the social, economic, and environmental challenges shaping our cities.
At the forefront of this seasonal programming, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York has announced a brand-new exhibition series designed to spotlight work from emerging architects who are driving innovation within the field. The inaugural exhibition puts a well-deserved spotlight on 12 recently completed projects distributed throughout New York City. The featured works come from a dynamic roster of architecture practices, including Adjaye Associates, nArchitects, and SO – IL. Additionally, the lineup features projects from RECORD’s 2022 Design Vanguard winners, CO Adaptive and Only If, underscoring the vital contributions of contemporary boutique firms to the urban fabric.
To bring these physical spaces to life for museum visitors, each project featured in the MoMA series is accompanied by a newly minted video produced specifically for the exhibition by Brooklyn-based filmmaker Hudson Lines. By pairing architectural documentation with cinematic storytelling, the exhibition offers audiences a richer, more immersive understanding of how these completed designs function within their dense urban contexts.
Ongoing Exhibitions
Across the globe, institutions are mounting major exhibitions that interrogate the mechanics of shelter, history, and urban design. In Dublin, a compelling collaboration between the Irish Architecture Foundation and the country’s housing agency has yielded Housing Unlocked, currently on view at the Science Gallery Dublin through January 21, 2023. The exhibition brings together eight distinct, architect-led solutions designed to tackle complex housing-related crises such as affordability, structural resiliency, density, and overall quality of life.
Among the standout proposals featured in Dublin is the "Eco:Cube," a modular housing concept composed of interlocked cubes that can be cleverly stacked and rotated to generate a wide variety of one-, two-, three-, and four-bedroom homes. Another notable project, "Start Spreading the Mews," examines how new housing supply can be organically generated across parts of Ireland by exempting suburban laneways from overly stringent planning codes, thereby unlocking underutilized urban land for residential development.
In New York, the New Museum is currently hosting Theaster Gates: Young Lords and Their Traces, marking the first major survey exhibition for the celebrated Chicago-based artist and designer. Gates, who designed the 2022 Serpentine Pavilion in London, is widely recognized for an interdisciplinary practice that spans sculptures constructed from salvaged materials, tar paintings, clay vessels, collaborative performances, preserved historical photographs and objects, and large-scale architectural installations. Curated by the museum’s artistic director, Massimiliano Gioni, alongside Gary Carrion-Murayari, the exhibition showcases a carefully curated selection of Gates’s work. The pieces pay profound homage to the radical thinkers, heroic figures, and everyday icons who have profoundly shaped both his home city of Chicago and the broader American cultural landscape. The exhibition remains on view through February 5, 2023.
Also in New York, the Center for Architecture is presenting New Practices New York through February 25, 2023. This exhibition highlights the remarkable work of the six practices selected as winners of AIA New York’s 2020 competition of the same name: BRANDT: HAFERD, Byrony Roberts Studio, City-group, GRT Architects, New Affiliates, and ANY. Each of these emerging firms has demonstrated a deep, sustained engagement with the city of New York and its diverse citizenry, pointing toward fresh directions for local architectural practice.
Shifting the lens toward environmental sustainability and technological futures, Rotterdam’s Het Nieuwe Instituut is hosting The Energy Show—Sun, Solar, and Human Power through March 4, 2023. Presented as a key component 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 an international cohort of architects and designers—including historical figures like Mária Telkes and Michael Jantzen, alongside contemporary firms such as Jessen Vollenweider—to construct a visionary blueprint for a world powered entirely by the sun.
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 collective of creators who integrate the ethos, rhythms, and cultural elements of hip-hop into their approaches to the built environment. Curated and designed by architect Sekou Cooke—whose work was also prominently featured in MoMA’s acclaimed 2021 exhibition Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America—the exhibition features a rich selection of work spanning a 25-year canon. Projects range from experimental installations and provocative building designs to visionary urban-development proposals, collectively presenting an alternative framework for architectural expression.
Returning to Washington, D.C., the National Building Museum is presenting A Better Way Home: The Housing Affordability Breakthrough Challenge through May 8, 2023. The exhibition tells the stories and explores the methodologies behind the six winning ideas of the Housing Affordability Breakthrough Challenge, a nationwide call to action launched in 2019. Responding directly to the severe housing affordability crisis sweeping the United States, the $20 million grant competition challenged participants with a fundamental question: how can we break down systemic barriers to ensure everyone has access to an affordable home where they can live and thrive? The resulting proposals on display cover three critical pillars—resident services and support, innovative financing, and advanced construction—challenging traditional American approaches to residential development.
Meanwhile, the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum in New York is presenting 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 World’s Fair in Paris, W.E.B. Du Bois and a group of his students at the University of Atlanta produced a striking series of data visualizations detailing the social and economic status of African Americans following emancipation. Although this historic display occupied more than a quarter of the space allocated to the United States at the fair, it was largely ignored by the mainstream American press at the time. Today, Du Bois’s long-overlooked contributions are brought into direct dialogue with the broader history of the exposition, shedding light on the historical disparities in how the World’s Fair has been recorded and remembered as a spectacle of Western progress.
Events
The international events calendar kicks off in earnest with major gatherings in Scandinavia and Southern California. Scandinavia’s largest design fair, the Stockholm Furniture Fair, returns to the Swedish capital from February 7 to 11, 2023, marking its first in-person gathering in two years. Long regarded as a premier destination for discovering Nordic innovation, this year’s fair introduces a brand-new exhibition space designed to forge a stronger, more seamless connection between the Stockholmsmässan trade fair grounds and the concurrent Stockholm Design Week events unfolding across the city.
In the United States, Palm Springs, California, will host its annual celebration of Modernist design and architecture, Modernism Week 2023, from February 16 to 26, 2023. Spanning more than 350 individual events hosted at various architectural landmarks throughout the desert city, the festival features curated home and garden tours, independent films, and expert lectures. This year’s marquee keynote presentation will be delivered by Morphosis principal Thom Mayne, drawing preservationists, architects, and design enthusiasts from around the world.
Competitions
As institutions look toward the future, professional organizations are opening calls for visionary proposals. The Architectural League has officially launched the Architectural League Prize 2023 under the thematic title Uncomfortable. Operating against a backdrop of accelerating climate change, shifting labor practices, and the continuous erosion of traditional global hegemonies, the organization is seeking fresh proposals from young designers that directly respond to the pervasive state of contemporary discomfort.
To be eligible for the competition, entrants must not be current students and must have earned their bachelor’s or master’s degree within the past ten years. The Architectural League welcomes submissions in any medium, encompassing both purely conceptual ideas and fully realized projects. Winners of the prestigious annual competition will each receive a cash prize of $2,000. The submission window closes on February 15, 2023.
