Marking the 10th anniversary of the CCA’s public opening, the exhibition spotlights and juxtaposes acquisitions from its first decade. Over 350 prints, drawings, photographs, rare books, manuscripts, toys, and models spanning five centuries of architectural history reflect how the built world has been imagined, conceived, and reflected upon.

Dedicated to the many donors who enrich the collection and keep it perpetually “under construction,” the exhibition illustrates architecture’s power as an agent of social change. The objects presented in En chantier were produced all over the world and represent disciplines that either create the built environment or influence its development. Encompassing the architectural conceptions of Albrecht Dürer, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, John Ruskin, Erik Gunnar Asplund, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, and Frank Lloyd Wright, the bold experiments of Cedric Price, Archigram, Peter Eisenman, John Hejduk, and Herzog & de Meuron, the fanciful ornamental devices of Joseph Boillot in the sixteenth century and of Gilles-Marie Oppenord in the eighteenth century, and the confrontational new visions of modernist photographers like Alexander Rodchenko, Làszlo Moholy-Nagy, and Gordon Matta-Clark, En chantier testifies to the power of re-imagining and re-inventing in conjuring up new forms.

Curators: Nicholas Olsberg and Howard Shubert, CCA.