A SOUTH FORTY: Contemporary Architecture and Design in the American South.
The European Cultural Center (ECC) / Palazzo Mora, collateral to the 2021 Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy, May 22 - November 21, 2021
Exhibition Summary: The Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design, University of Arkansas, working with modus studio of Fayetteville, Arkansas, has worked to organize and curate an exhibition devoted to the vibrant, distinctive contemporary architecture and design practices of the American South. The exhibition is installed to coincide with the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale, in a collateral venue, the Palazzo Mora of the European Cultural Center.
In partnership with the highly regarded literary journal OXFORD AMERICAN, A SOUTH FORTY will also be featured in the annual summer issue of the journal, one focused on the idea of “place” in culture of the American South. The exhibition takes its cues from the critically successful and popularly appealing annual OXFORD AMERICAN issue highlighting the music of the American South and proposes that architecture and design (the built environment) is as reflective and definitive of the culture and values of society as the forms of music that animate that society.
Modern architectural history in the regional context of the American South is conventionally framed by singular figures, from Paul Rudolph and the Saratoga School of Florida to Fay Jones and Bruce Goff in the Ozarks and Oklahoma, or stereotypical typologies and appearances. In counterpoint, A SOUTH FORTY aims to provide an overview of the current vitality of contemporary architecture and design in the American South, through both illustrated profiles of buildings and practices, and statements of principles and observations by those in practice in the region.
The contemporary “story” centers on the development of architecture and design in the American South over the last generation (from 1990 forward) as the region undergoes rapid economic and population growth, withstands and recovers from multiple natural disasters, and discovers a more complex and diverse identity amidst the historical societal traditions and conventions. Such a mapping of the American South in these terms opens new and essential territories for work in architecture – more positive, empowering, engaged, sensitive and aware work altogether.
The mapping of A SOUTH FORTY geographically is organized along the armature of US Highway 40, running west from the North Carolina Atlantic seacoast through the southeastern states to an inflection point in Oklahoma. Approximately forty participating practices in the exhibition are drawn from the larger southeastern region along this latitude.
The “story” of A SOUTH FORTY is also one of place-based design, attentive to the necessities of climate, materials, labor, and purpose, but also attentive to overlooked or undervalued typologies, constituencies, and locales. While there is the surge of new urban centers and suburban peripheries as conditions to address in the region, there also is a new appreciation for the smaller communities and rural or even wilderness landscapes as productive sites for distinctive work. As well, while design excellence has been achieved by many practices at the residential scale, the greater emphasis in the exhibition is to be seen at the public scale, in the civic realm, through the accomplishment of buildings and projects of strength, durability, and value for the communities in which they are situated.
The exhibition implicitly proposes that the path towards that better “place” of the region leads through both recognition of a common inheritance embedded in the landscape of the American South, and a reconciliation with that physical, cultural, and phenomenal landscape. There is much work accomplished, but much still to be done, and as a project, A SOUTH FORTY is just beginning, and still becoming.
A SOUTH FORTY: Contemporary Architecture and Design in the American South features the work of:
Alterstudio Architecture ; archimania; ARCHITECTUREFIRM; Dake Wells Architecture; de leon & primmer architecture workshop; DEMX Architecture; Duvall Decker; Ecological Design Group; El Dorado / KSU Design + Make Studio; emerymcclure architecture; EskewDumezRipple; Evoke Studio Architecture; Frank Harmon Architect; Fultz & Singh Architects; Helix Architecture + Design; Hobgood Architects; Ray Huff Architect; Hufft; in situ studio; Katherine Hogan Architects; Marlon Blackwell Architects; modus studio; Office of Jonathan Tate; patterhn ives; Pendulum Studio; Polk Stanley Wilcox; Rural Studio, Auburn University; Sanders Pace Architecture; SILO AR+D; Somewhere Studio; The Raleigh Architecture Company; unabridged Architecture; University of Arkansas Community Design Center; University of Arkansas Urban Design Build Studio; Vines Architecture; and W.G. Clark Architect.