“5x5 Participatory Provocations” exhibition opens at the Center for Architecture on July 11

Debuting at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign last February, “5x5 Participatory Provocations” is opening at the Center for Architecture in New York City tomorrow. The exhibition calls for architecture that is more actively engaged and critical with today's most dire global issues, like immigration, the income gap, surveillance, and power, to name a few.

Curated by Kevin Erickson, Julia van den Hout, and Kyle May, the exhibition features 25 young architects based across the U.S., including Abruzzo Bodziak Architects, Andrew Kovacs/Archive of Affinities, Platform for Architecture + Research, Snarkitecture, Studio Cadena, and Ultramoderne.

“Architecture as a profession struggles to simultaneously engage with the public and be provocative within the confines of its own field,” the 5x5 curators write on their website. “Either arguments and proposals get ‘dumbed down’ or they simply aren’t accessible or relevant. The avant-garde in architecture has for decades captured the imagination via two-dimensional representations; this exhibition asks architects to be just as provocative in three dimensions.”

The teams responded to five prompts, based on controversial present-day issues, in the form of physical expressions — or “provocations”. The prompts focused on: the future of drone deliveries, the consequences of luxury high rises as financial investments, luxury resorts on the moon, the fictional development of NSA community branches, and the potential construction of the anti-immigration U.S.-Mexico border wall.

Here's the full list of participants:

Abruzzo Bodziak Architects (New York, NY)
Andrew Kovacs / Archive of Affinities (Los Angeles, CA)
Anthony Titus Studio (New York, NY)
Brillhart Architecture (Miami, FL)
Carl Lostritto (Providence, RI)
Club Club (Chicago, IL and New York, NY)
David Emmons (Urbana, IL)
Formlessfinder (New York, NY)
Future Expansion (New York, NY)
GELPI Projects (Miami, FL)
is-office (Los Angeles, CA and Milwaukee, WI)
JKURTZ (Cleveland, OH)
KNE studio (New York, NY)
Kyle May, Architect (New York, NY)
Michael Abrahamson (Ann Arbor, MI)
Norden (Urbana, IL)
Platform for Architecture + Research (Los Angeles, CA)
Path + Price Studio (San Francisco, CA)
P.R.O. (New York, NY)
Sean Gaffney / Christina Nguyen (New York, NY)
Snarkitecture (New York, NY)
SOFTlab (New York, NY)
SPACECUTTER (New York, NY)
Studio Cadena (New York, NY)
Ultramoderne (Providence, RI)

The exhibition will be open at the Center for Architecture until October 31, 2017. You can learn more on 5x5exhibit.com.