Architectural Exhibitions Research Hub - X_Hub

    The Architectural Exhibitions Research Hub – X_Hub, is a research hub established at the University of Auckland School of Architecture and Planning. X_Hub aims to promote architectural exhibition making as a form of high-quality research inquiry and dissemination, and to establish the School as a leader in this field. Drawing on the work of a number of staff and their collaborators, the X_Hub recognises that architectural exhibition making; through historical surveys, the making and display of para-architectural objects (books, models, 1:1 scale architectural objects) and speculative design schemes, through projects that critically investigate space and the politics of place, and through making digitally mediated installations and environments, is a valuable form of research inquiry.

    Architectural exhibitions confront the paradox of the actual, in that architecture as an ‘object’ cannot be exhibited, but only recorded or referenced. Much of our design research in architectural exhibition making contends with this paradox through developing inventive platforms to experience buildings and spaces ‘at a distance’ of both space and time. Others use exhibition platforms to focus their enquiry on more relational and social explorations, using exhibition as a laboratory-like platform to investigate the contingency of contemporary architectural practice and subjects, where these relations and connections are discovered and communicated through architectural methods and media.

Co-Directors:

Dr Karamia Müller
Email: k.muller@auckland.ac.nz

Dr Marian Macken
Email: m.macken@auckland.ac.nz

Members include:

• Dr Andrew Barrie
• Dr Anthony Brand
• Dr Mike Davis
• Gina Hochstein
• Dr Sarosh Mulla
• Aaron Paterson
• Uwe Rieger
• Dr Kathy Waghorn