Best in Show

Most often, architects do not create architecture; they produce drawings, models, and instructions from which the architecture can be created. “Study the art, the architecture, the design,” says Zoë Ryan in Futures of the Architectural Exhibition, but also “study the ideas of the art, architecture and design.” Still, when architectural exhibitions do dare to subscribe to plentiful definitions of what practice can be; when they dissect the nonarchitectural forces that bear on buildings, construction sites, and offices; when they look to the extractive processes that enable architectural production, they create a friction that often makes people ask, where is the architecture? It’s an inane question that likely points to a desire for a focus on a finished product and a single author. The architecture is more often than not already in the gallery itself, but seeing it requires an understanding of all the abstractions that make up and shape the built environment. For curators, mounting such a show requir…