A Fair, A Fare, Affair for Architecture: Curating Architecture and Other Oxymora

by Daniela Leon (MArch ’17)

This thesis is framed within the paradox of curating architecture. Curating architecture calls attention to the multi-viewer, the architect and larger public, in parallel to the object of inquiry: architecture. The thesis presents itself as A Fair for Architecture. Not a gallery, a collection of objects in space; not a museum, a historical record or past account; not a biennial, a speculative or projective future; but a fair as itself. A fair, in art, functions at the point of the present. It displays what is, not what was, or what could be. A Fair for Architecture does the same. The typology of the fair is used as a tool for self reflective production and thought of the discipline as it communicates with both architecture and a larger public. As architects we never make buildings, only representations of buildings. We represent architecture to different constituencies: clients, builders, contractors, communities, as well as represent architecture back to the discipline itself.

The fair: A Fair, A Fare, Affair for Architecture is a set of seven exhibits. The curatorial brief, made of up fourteen documents, sets the parameters for the exhibitor to work within and create architecture oxymora. Where architecture takes on the definition of an oxymoron. Architecture that has two different qualities at once. The oxymoron no longer becomes impossible but becomes a tool for architecture.