Supergroup, work exhibited in Adjacencies, group show at Yale University School of Architecture, New Haven

Other - Exhibition, 2018

“Supergroup”, ia a proposal for a combined new cultural center and hotel in Skellefteå, gathering several existing cultural institutions. It features a theatre, two art galleries, a library, a conference center and a hotel as a set of individual buildings grouped on top of a low podium. In this way, each institution retains some of its independent identity, while simultaneously allowing for productive adjacencies with neighboring institutions. On the exterior, each building mass acquires its own character based on figure, proportions, and planar rotation. The interior is characterized by a short span timber structure with densely arrayed columns that emphasize the direction of each building. Shared and communal spaces are created in the podium as well as in intersections between building volumes. The interior becomes a dense urban condition with junctions, piazzas and landmarks – a city without streets consisting solely of tightly packed architecture. The project’s coloration reflects traditional use of luminous, colored plaster on facades in Skellefteå, and its timber structure explores the opportunities offered by local expertise and industrial processing of timber. 

Curatorial statement by Nate Hume:
In this group exhibition of work by fourteen architecture studios, building speculations representing a wide range of interests and overlapping tendencies illustrate components of the contemporary architectural zeitgeist, including a reinvestigation of architecture’s history, its forms of communication, the embrace of composition, the cultivation of new audiences, and explorations of the act of building. One project by each office that privileges physicality, surprise, playfulness, curiosity, and pleasure in search of a wider public is represented in drawings, details, renderings, videos, gifs, apps, photographs, and physical models.  Curated by Nate Hume, the exhibition encourages audience engagement with the new and strange visual and tactile aspects of these design proposals.

Participating firms include:
Young & Ayata
Medium Office
MILLIØNS
Besler & Sons
The Los Angeles Design Group
SPORTS
Mira Henry
BairBalliet
Endemic Architecture
The Open Workshop
T+E+A+M
First Office
Norell/Rodhe
MALL