Lang co-curates radical Italian designer exhibit in Sweden

An exhibition in the Swedish Museum of Architecture co-curated by Peter Lang, associate professor of architecture at Texas A&M, looks back at a landmark 1972 exhibit of radical Italian design and architecture.

The exhibition, “Environments and Counter Environments; Italy: The New Domestic Landscape, MoMA 1972” looks back at the original exhibit in New York’s Museum of Modern Art in an attempt to revive an important discussion on design's and architecture's explorative and critically discursive role in the shaping of society.

It also contributes to the debate of the role institutions, exhibitions and curators play when it comes to conveying knowledge, discussing or assisting in knowledge production.

The exhibition, which opened March 31, 2011 at the Stockholm museum, primarily presents different kinds of media, including eight films produced for the 1972 show.

The exhibit was featured on a [Swedish television show] (http://vimeo.com/22904103) in which Lang was interviewed. The broadcast is in Swedish, except for a few remarks by Lang that start at the 2:35 mark, however, the segment features lots of imagery from the exhibition as well as clips from some of the featured films.

"We are repeating again many of the mistakes — the waste, the environmental disasters,” Lang tells the Swedish reporter, discussing the exhibit that promotes architecture as a social tool. “The condition that we are in today forces us to rethink how we live. One of the messages coming out of this show is the necessity to really change your own culture, not to just use a tool or a toy as a way of changing something.”

More about “Environments and Counter Environments,” also curated by Luca Mollinari and Mark Wasiuta, is available at the Swedish Museum of Architecture [website] (http://www.arkitekturmuseet.se/english/exhibitions/radical-design/) .

Visit Lang's [website] (http://www.petertlang.net/design-culture/environments-and-counter-environments-arkitekturmuseet-stockholm/) for more images from the exhibit.