A five meter tall installation made of used interior building elements found in demolition sites, markets for used materials, and recycling centers throughout Stockholm.

In the novel Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino elaborates on a city called Clarice, where the same building elements continuously are rearranged on an urban scale. For the exhibition Architectures of Transition at Bildmuseet in Umeå (2021-06-19 to 2022-04-03), Calvino's fiction was materialized in the form of a five meter tall installation made of used interior building elements found in demolition sites, markets for used materials, and recycling centers throughout Stockholm. Put together, they form a one-meter grid. Based on the building element’s qualities – materiality, color, scale, patina etc. a loose associative order was developed. The work asks questions such as, to what extend can architecture, with its convention of strong part-to-whole relationships, incorporate elements from radically different origins and still make sense as a whole?

The exhibition Architectures of Transition presents Nordic architects and projects that, in various ways, represent a shift in contemporary architecture. What does society’s increasing demands for climate action mean for architecture, and what are the practical and esthetically impacts arising from this demand? How can architecture contribute to a society in transition to a new ecological paradigm?

Architectures of Transition showcases architectural answers to the challenges of the current environmental emergency, featuring innovative solutions, new materials and alternative ways of conceiving architecture and urban space.

Through photography, video and large-scale installations, the exhibition presents ongoing, realised and utopian building projects that underline potential pathways towards decarbonisation and eco-friendly construction methods. In conjunction with the exhibition, Bildmuseet will arrange talks, workshops and physical interventions in the public room.

Participating are 3XN (Denmark), Anders Berensson Architects (Sweden), Belatchew Arkitekter (Sweden), CITA (Denmark), Framlab (Norway), HappySpace (Sweden), Lundén Architecture Company (Finland), and Norell/Rodhe (Sweden).

The Architectures of Transition exhibition was initiated and produced by Bildmuseet. For this project, Bildmuseet has invited curator, architect and writer Pedro Gadanho, Loeb fellow at Harvard University, former director of MAAT – Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, Lisbon, and former curator for contemporary architecture at MoMA, New York.