MAN transFORMS: Die Dokumente
gta Exhibitions, 3. November to 9. December 2016 at ETH Hönggerberg, Zurich
The exhibition MAN transFORMS: The Documents examines the exhibition conceived by Hans Hollein in collaboration with Lisa Taylor, which marked the opening of the Cooper-Hewitt, National Museum of Design in New York in 1976. For the first time, the development of this groundbreaking, historic exhibition is retraced through original documents—from the initial project sketches to the final exhibition plans.
The contributions developed for the opening exhibition by Hans Hollein, as well as Richard Buckminster Fuller, Arata Isozaki, Richard Meier, Ettore Sottsass, and Oswald Mathias Ungers, represent the spectrum of a heterogeneous and evolving architecture around 1976 and highlight key questions of the emerging currents of Postmodernism.
The exhibition demonstrates how Hollein reoriented the Cooper Hewitt Museum and focuses on the transformation of the institution from a place of collection display to a total environment where physical experience overshadowed the presentation of historical contexts. Beyond this, MAN transFORMS also served as a catalytic medium for the development and discussion of architectural ideas, thus making the medium of the exhibition visible as a tool for theory formation.
An exhibition by the professorship of Laurent Stalder with Samuel Korn in collaboration with gta Exhibitions.