Radical: Italian Design Exhibition - Houston

The exhibition design acknowledges and superimposes two contradictory ideological views. Here the concepts mobilized by the Italian Radical group, Archizoom, and their never-realized model of “No Stop City” are housed within Cullinan Hall, Mies van der Rohe’s addition to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The former was an anti-consumerist collective focused on human needs and desires, whereas the latter was an icon of efficiency adopted as the architectural aesthetic of capital corporations. The exhibition design places the “radical” tables, sofas, chairs, stools, and lamps within a democratic, universal, and infinite grid. It is an open-ended grid that is not so dissimilar than one proposed by Mies van der Rohe early in his career for a Brick Country House. Maybe Archizoom and Mies are not enemies after all? The exhibition design is a unique opportunity to reveal a conversation between the art and the museum, the furniture and the gallery, the Radicals and the Architect.