This exhibit has its origin in a seminar that took place in the School of Architecture, Columbia University, New York (GSAPP) on November 13th, 2010. The curatorial thesis is that the tectonic is a basic yet perpetually elusive value in architecture to which the work of each of these five, otherwise diverse North American practices aspire. This is, as it were, ‘the common ground’ between them, made manifest here through the interaction of three dyadic conjunctions which pass from the most telluric to the most ephemeral, through the interplay between (1) topography and type, (2) material and craft and (3) space and light. Each of the three pentagonal enclosures compare the ongoing work of these five practices, chronologically according to these categories, 1) topos/typos; 2) material/craft; 3 space/light. In these consecutive flat screen presentations the phenomenological scale and character of the work shifts from the landscape of the site to the light of the space.
– Kenneth Frampton, June 19, 2012, Arsenale, Venice Biennale 2012