ROUGH CUTS
Syracuse SoA Visiting Critics Exhibition

The SOA Fall 2013 Visiting Critics exhibition “ROUGH CUTS” brings together the diverse work of this fall’s visiting critics in a single exhibition. Rather than focusing exclusively on finished architectural products or one particular practice, “ROUGH CUTS” puts on display the diverse processes of architectural creation through a range of drawings, objects, and artifacts. Both end products as well as ‘rough’ materials are shown side by side to allow for an understanding of the particular approaches, methods, and obsessions through which the Visiting Critics enrich the studio culture at Syracuse. The visitor can navigate a spatial field of artifacts on display in the gallery at his/her own pace, while a video installation provides an in-depth insight into each architectural practice through interviews with the five critics.

Due to space constraints, the exhibit had to function within the extremely tight limits of 1/3 of the regular gallery - a small sliver of narrow space. Transforming constraints into potentials, the design aggressively supersedes the allocated space through a graphic diagonal wedge that maintains its legibility as a singular figure and intrudes into adjacent spaces with formal indifference. At the same time this ‘Super Graphic’ is developed as a field of bases that allow for a multiplicity of artifacts to be exhibited without losing overall spatial legibility and coherence.

Photography by: Jaime Young