Review: In Situ: Architecture and Landscape

Abstract

In Situ: Architecture and Landscape ; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; 8 April 2009––22 February 2010 In Situ: Architecture and Landscape , curated by Andres Lepik and Margot Weller, presented drawings and models on that theme drawn from the museum's collection. Modest in scope and concise in its selections, the exhibition displayed an assembly of often intriguing surrogates unburdened by a strong curatorial perspective. Sweeping and somewhat inconclusive, the introductory text conflated the idea of site with that of landscape. The primary insights were found in the projects themselves and the informative labels focused on identification, description, and provenance. Many of the projects were well known, although not necessarily by these particular representations. Erik Gunnar Asplund's celebrated Woodland Cemetery, for example, appeared in plans and elevations from the middle of the final period of design, between 1935 and 1940. These drawings——unlike a number of others in the exhibition——are not show pieces intended to sell or dazzle, but rather investigations marked with specific station points and proportions, with dual nods to tectonics and projected experience. Some works, like Bernard Tschumi's exploded studies for the Parc de La Villette or Frank Lloyd Wright's Millard house, are familiar in reproduction, but rarely seen in the flesh. Others were emphatically more novel in their view or medium, for example, Paulo Mendes da Rocha design for the Port City of Tietee, depicted as a shallow relief executed in steel. In contrast, Zaha Hadid's elegant ink-on-trace representations of her project for La Villette were abstract …