For EventArchitectuur – Herman Verkerk and Paul Kuipers – exhibition design is a medium for practicing a form of temporary architecture in which the ideas of architecture parlante (speaking architecture) serve as a guiding principle. In this interview, referencing several recently completed exhibitions, Verkerk and Kuipers discuss the use of archetypal landscape or architecture typologies, alienating elements, or 1:1 scale models. This interview attests to the explicitly architectural, almost artisanal approach EventArchitectuur uses to create a meaningful context for an exhibition visitor.

Geert Bekaert has written about dozens of European architecture exhibitions in essays and reviews since the 1950s. In this conversation, he speaks about the imperatives behind some of the initiatives he was involved in during the 1960s and 1970s. Bekaert also discusses the shifts in the practice of showing architecture during the 1980s and 1990s: the sudden interest in the architecture of art institutions, the constant crisis of the Venice architecture biennale, and the rise of the monographic exhibition and of the ‘architectural installation’.

The editorial provides a detailed introduction to the theme of ‘productive indeterminacy’, focusing on the changing nature of the contemporary urban and architectural challenge. This introduction includes a discussion of the perspectives on the theme from various disciplines and an analysis of their possible connections, and it places the various contributions to this issue against an outlined background and provides a perspective for dealing with the challenge of indeterminacy.

When collecting and exhibiting architectural models several questions arise. What happens exactly when the model enters the museum? Which role does it need to assume when exposed and made public? How can we consider its exhibition when taking into account the shift from working instrument to autonomous object? And what about the model’s significance and its role both in demystifying the architect’s work and mystifying his importance? Véronique Patteeuw opens up some of these questions in an informal talk with Howard Shubert, curator of the drawings collection at the Canadian Centre for Architecture. A CCA staff member for 25 years, Shubert is a privileged observer of the institute’s developing acquisition policies and curatorial programmes. Discussing the CCA’s acquisition policies, and the difficult role of the model once exposed, Shubert and Patteeuw ended up talking about Eisenman’s working models, Hejduk’s drawings for models, and on how to expose these models without losing their significance. 

The editorial of this issue of OASE opens up a reflection on architecture criticism, following the critical encounters (seminars, debates, lectures, round table discussions), the journal organised to mark its 25th anniversary. The discussions held with a series of stakeholders: architects, writers, academe, publishers, graphic designers, students, etc. have filtered into this issue, which simultaneously evaluates and explores the current state of architecture criticism, ranging from academic reflections on criticism, via the personal views of critics on its current state, to tentative explorations.