Curatorial Research Collective

Sir John Soane was obsessed with ancient Egypt. He collected Egyptian artifacts, incorporated Egyptian motifs into his architectural work, and filled his museum with pharaonic fragments. Now that same museum examines 250 years of British designers doing exactly what Soane did, returning again and again to Egyptian sources...
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The curatorial strategy is wonderfully self-aware, as visitors encounter the phenomenon while experiencing a prime example of it... The presentation spans from Regency period taste through Victorian archaeology fever to Art Deco geometry and contemporary reinterpretation, organized as recurring waves rather than simple chronology. Architectural drawings sit alongside decorative objects and , tracing how lotus columns and hieroglyphic patterns migrate from tombs to living rooms.
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By ending in 2025 with contemporary design responses, the positions this as ongoing dialogue, with each revival wave revealing something about the culture doing the borrowing...
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"Egypt: Influencing British Design 1775 - 2025: Impact Of Ancient Egyptian Culture On British Architecture And Design" at Sir John Soane's Museum in London, UK, England: 8 October 2025 - 18 January 2026
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Architectural history often gets told as a straight line: this style, then that one, progression from primitive to sophisticated. Not particularly accurate, especially when examining cultures shaped by multiple competing influences.
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The German Architecture Museum in Frankfurt takes a different approach with "Sulog: Filipino Architecture At The Crosscurrents." The title itself signals the conceptual framework—"sulog" means "current" or "flow" in Tagalog, suggesting movement, convergence, and the meeting of different forces...
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The exhibition design maps these intersections: indigenous traditions encountering colonial impositions, vernacular wisdom meeting modernist ideology, climate-responsive techniques engaging contemporary urbanism. Rather than presenting Filipino architecture as derivative or hybrid (loaded terms, both), the organizational strategy reveals how architects working at cultural crossroads develop sophisticated solutions precisely because they must navigate competing demands.
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From traditional bahay kubo structures to cutting-edge contemporary projects, the presentation choices emphasize adaptation, negotiation, and innovation.
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"Sulog: Filipino Architecture At The Crosscurrents" at German Architecture Museum (DAM) in Frankfurt, Germany: September 20, 2025 - January 18, 2026

What if an architecture exhibition began not with a finished building but with a drawing made by dozens of hands working together?
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That's the opening gesture of "Ouest: Urban Legend" at , and it establishes everything that follows. This show presents the Brussels-based collective Ouest Architecture through spatial arrangements that reveal their working process as the real story. Collaboration becomes the subject, not just the context.
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The curatorial choices reject conventional architecture-exhibition formats that privilege individual genius and completed projects. Instead, visitors encounter methodology in action, participatory urbanism as lived practice. Brussels serves as both subject and laboratory, examined through the collective's engaged approach to the city.
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Here's the brilliant move: the catalogue doubles as manifesto, transforming ideas into portable tools for anyone interested in community-driven design. The extends beyond institutional walls, treating architectural thinking as something reproducible and shareable rather than precious and singular.
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https://www.bozar.be/en/opening-exhibition-ouest-urban-legend
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"Ouest: Urban Legend" at BOZAR in Brussels, Belgium: October 15, 2025 - January 4, 2026
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Here's a housing story that doesn't begin with architects drawing plans.
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It starts with people occupying empty buildings during Amsterdam's 1960s housing crisis. Those squatting actions weren't just protests—they became blueprints for future policy. "Building On Housing History" at shows how resistance transformed into renewal over six decades.
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The presentation choices are thoughtful: rather than separating activism from , the organizational approach treats them as inseparable forces. You see how social movements and political decisions shaped buildings just as much as design did. Housing crises appear as recurring cycles, with each generation's struggles informing the next era's solutions.
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What's particularly striking is how the legitimizes unconventional actors—squatters, activists, policy-makers—as co-creators of Amsterdam's built environment. Running through December 2025, there's still time to absorb this complex narrative of how cities actually evolve…
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https://arcam.nl/en/events/building-on-housing-history-from-resistance-to-renewal/
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"Building On Housing History: From Resistance to Renewal" at ArCAm in Amsterdam, Netherlands: November 15, 2024 - December 31, 2025
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Domestic architecture tells us how we choose to live, and how place influences those choices. This exhibition gathers recent residential projects from across the Hudson Valley, using a regional focus to explore broader questions about site-responsive design.
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Each house represents a unique negotiation with topography, climate, materials, and local building culture. Rather than imposing a single narrative, the allows these projects to speak through their differences, presenting their varied strategies emerging from shared conditions...
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in Rhinebeck offers both a thoughtful regional portrait and design investigation, showing how attention to place generates architectural ideas that feel rooted yet inventive...
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"New Hudson Valley Houses" at T Space in Rhinebeck, New York: September 7 - December 19, 2025
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An architect's legacy lives in photographs taken decades apart. Historical images by Hansjörg Abuja meet contemporary shots by Gerhard Maurer, documenting what survived, what changed, and what disappeared from Karl Hayek's postwar modernist practice in Villach.
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The presentation at follows each building from initial design through construction to later modifications, creating a longitudinal study of architectural lifespan. This approach acknowledges uncomfortable realities: the Elite Cinema demolished, the Warmuth department store's uncertain future (despite heritage listing), buildings heavily altered over time...
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In the end, buildings and projects are presented as living documents rather than fixed monuments, inviting reconsideration of what architectural means when buildings keep changing...
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https://architektur-kaernten.at/programm/kalender/karl-hayek-1910-1994
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"Karl Hayek 1910-1994: A Pioneer of Modernity in Villach" at Architektur Haus Kärnten in Klagenfurt, Austria: November 20, 2025 - December 19, 2025
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What if an architecture firm's first exhibition showed the work still happening rather than work already finished?
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Compagnie Architecture has taken over La Galerie d'Architecture in Paris not with polished renderings but with working tools: models at 1/50 scale still being adjusted, images in active use, editions in progress. The space functions as "permanence architecturale," an occupied studio where the architects maintain continuous presence.
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Every Thursday evening, they host cultural programming with partners, exploring transmission, rehabilitation, and cultural urban planning through workshops and conversation. The gallery animates with weekly rhythm, inviting return visits and sustained engagement.
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Alongside the physical , "Des Mots à la main" launches, bringing together texts by Emmanuelle Borne and illustrations by Simon Roussin around the agency's collaborative practice.
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http://www.galerie-architecture.fr/fr/exposition.php?ID=246
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"Compagnie Architecture: Hi, Everyone!" at La Galerie d'Architecture in Paris, France: November 15 - December 13, 2025
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Imagine convincing church authorities in 1920s Ljubljana that industrial concrete could create sacred space more effectively than traditional marble. The Museum of Architecture and Design (.Slovenia) reconstruct this negotiation through archival correspondence, construction photographs, and technical drawings that most people have never seen.
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The curatorial approach positions Jože Plečnik's Ursuline Church of the Holy Trinity alongside other European modernist from the interwar period. You see how materials became arguments: brick and concrete transformed into instruments of contemplation, natural light replacing expected stained glass. as contested territory, not finished monument.
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https://mao.si/en/exhibition/our-beautiful-century-the-ursuline-church-and-modernism/
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"Our Beautiful Century: The Ursuline Church and Modernism" at Museum of Architecture and Design (MAO) in Ljubljana, Slovenia: June 12, 2025 - December 7, 2025
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A model usually represents something else: a building yet to be built, a design waiting for approval, an idea seeking validation.
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Not here. At Art/Space 114 Gallery, SCI-Arc presents projects as speculations made physical, questions given form, research conducted through making rather than writing.
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The presentation approach treats each prototype as complete in its incompleteness. The doesn't ask "what will this become?" but rather "what futures does this object propose?" The spatial organization reinforces this shift: visitors encounter material investigations that bridge pedagogical experimentation and professional practice.
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Over eight weeks, these speculative artifacts invite us to reconsider what architectural objects can do when freed from representing future buildings. They become tools for thinking, vehicles for inquiry, physical manifestations of "what if."
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https://www.sciarc.edu/events/exhibitions/speculative-artifacts
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"Speculative Artifacts" at Art/Space 114 Gallery in Los Angeles, California: October 10, 2025 - December 7, 2025
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There's a certain type of architectural photography we're all used to: pristine buildings under perfect light, captured at just the right angle. Max Creasy's "Bad Language" exhibition at the offers something more challenging and ultimately more rewarding.
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Rather than documenting architecture's successes, Creasy's camera examines the friction between intention and outcome, between designed space and lived experience. The organizational approach allows these tensions to accumulate, building a sophisticated argument about how we see and judge the built environment.
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This is as critical tool, as method of inquiry. The spatial arrangement gives each image room to provoke and question, creating an exhibition that lingers in your mind long after you've left.
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"Bad Language: An Exhibition of Photography By Max Creasy" at AA School in London, UK: September 26 - December 6, 2025
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