Large City Architecture Research Exhibition

Mebane Gallery, Austin
curated by Rasa Navasaitye, Daniel Koehler
Januare 19 - April 15 2022 

Fourteen million nine hundred eight thousand eight hundred fifty-six acres forest compensates Austin's Co2 emissions related to the built environment. If everyone lived in an urban fabric like Austin, it would take 3 ½ forested planets only to sink the carbon emitted through how we build, place, and comfort our homes. One household alone in West Austin emits 80 tons Co2 per year - the highest amount in the world. Living in the most desirable city of the USA is also today’s most unsustainable - and tomorrow’s most deadly way to live.

The Climate Crisis unfolds only at planetary scales. Rising temperatures, sea levels, UV rays can’t be experienced by one human alone. Yet, the climate crisis is fired by each human’s way to dwell. Large City Architecture fuses the world into your home. Without time left to unveil, critique, resist, and no hinterland left, we have to include the world in our cities now. Larger than humans, planetary worlds are worlds too large to be contained within enclosures. Buildings do not anymore frame and contain: they bind, blend, bond, brace, catch, chain, chunk, clamp, clasp, cleave, clench, clinch, clutch, combine, compose, connect, embrace, fasten, federate, flap, fuse, glue, grip, gum, handle, hold, hook, hug, integrate, interlace, interlock, intermingle, interweave, involve, jam, join, lap, mat, merge, mingle, palm, shingle, stick, stitch, tangle, tie, unit, wield, and wring. Architecture larger than wholes builds with parts. Partaking in worlds turns cities into forests of participatory capacities, buildings into trees, and people into birds. This is Research by Architecture - not by words, not by numbers but by architecture with the promises, the offers, the beauty, the joy architecture can offer to dwell in a city.

The work shown here exposes research from twelve years and five institutions: Die Angewandte Vienna, University Innsbruck, The Bartlett School of Architecture, the University of Texas at Austin, and the Lab for Environmental Design Strategies. 

Acknowledgements: Participants in chronological order: Rasa Navasaityte, Daniel Koehler, Gil Greis, Maric Sanel, Chen Chen, Genmao Li, Zixuan Wang, Wen Liu, Guangyan Zhu, Junyi Bai, Anna Galika, Qiuru Pu, Silu Meng, Ruohan Xu, Qianying Zhou, Kexin Cao, Yue Jin, Qiming Li, Sheghaf Abo Saleh, Hua Li, Chuwei Ye, Yaonaijia Zhou, Anthony Alvidrez, Shivang Bansal, and Hao-Chen Huang, Dongxin Mei, Zhiyuan Wan, Peiwen Zhan, and Chi Zhou, Mengshi Fu, Ren Wang, Chenyi Yao, and Zhaoyue Zhang, Yao Chen, and Zhaofeng Chen, Ping Ju, Rong Liu, and Jiachong Zhou. Curated by: Daniel Koehler, Rasa Navasaityte. UT Austin, School of Architecture, Spring 22.