Exhibition: Creation from Catastrophe: How Architecture Rebuilds Communities (London, 27 January – 24 April 2016)

Creation from Catastrophe: How Architecture Rebuilds Communities
27 January 2016 — 24 April 2016
The Architecture Gallery
RIBA, 66 Portland Place
London, W1B 1AD
 
The Exhibition
“A disaster zone where everything is lost offers the perfect opportunity for us to take a fresh look, from the ground up, at what architecture really is.” Toyo Ito
The destruction of cities, whether man-made or natural, can present unique opportunities to radically rethink townscapes. Creation from Catastrophe: How architecture rebuilds communities explores the varying ways that cities and communities have been re-imagined in the aftermath of natural disasters. From masterplans to reconfigure London after the Great Fire of 1666 to contemporary responses to earthquakes and tsunamis, the exhibition considers the evolving relationship between man, architecture and nature and asks whether we are now facing a paradigm shift in how we live and build in the 21st century.
Take a journey from London in 1666, through to 18th century Lisbon, 19th century Chicago, 20th century Skopje, and ending in current day Nepal, Nigeria, Japan, Chile, Pakistan and USA. Illustrated by historical and contemporary with work by, among others, Yasmeen Lari, ELEMENTAL, OMA, Shigeru Ban, NLÉ, Toyo Ito, Metabolism (Kenzo Tange and Kurokawa Kisho) and Sir Christopher Wren.

Share this post

News from the field

ARQ 121: Utopian América

Coined by Thomas More in 1516, utopia holds a telling ambiguity: it means “no place” (ou-topos) but is sufficiently close to “good place” (eu-topos). Since then, the concept has oscillated between aspiration and critique—between imagining radical alternatives and...

Materialities of Empire

Organizers: Irene Cheng, James Graham, Andrew Herscher, Diana Martinez Attention to material has become almost ubiquitous in recent architectural history, both extending and revising a modernist tradition of interest in material innovation and expression. Whether...

Materia Arquitectura 29: CIVICNESS

CIVICNESS: ARCHITECTURE AND THE POLITICS OF THE PUBLIC REALM Guest editors: Anna Livia Friel & Agustina Labarca Gatica The term character in architecture has long been contested. During the 17th century, it was defined as rational manifestation of a building’s...

Plant Histories, Plantation Architectures

Palm leaves loosely thatched create a bushy screen wall. The screen is part of a large building designed to shelter the pieces of other plants and make them dry out quickly. They are tobacco leaves, hanging from the rafters in neat rows swaying in the breeze. Nearby,...