PROTEST/ARCHITECTURE, a timely exploration of the spatial aspects behind protest cultures worldwide

A new exhibition on view currently at the MAK Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna is offering viewers a timely look into the architecture of protests, its production and effectiveness as a disruptor and catalyst for their builders' attempts at societal change.

In PROTEST/ARCHITECTURE: Barricades, Camps, Superglue, which opened in February as part of a joint presentation with the Deutsches Architekturmuseum in Frankfurt, Germany, curators are hoping for a series of discoveries to be made using case study architecture from protests that have spanned the globe from 1968 to 2023. 

Examples from Occupy Wall Street, Tahrir Square, Gezi Park, and the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement will be dissected along with others from Ukraine, Germany, Brazil, Austria, Spain, and the United States. 

Critic Oliver Wainwright called the exhibition's companion text a "radical encyclopedia" that "cuts a compelling cross-section through the last 200 years of resistance" in a recent Guardian post spotlighting the "spatial tactics" underlying the success of the global protest movement in recent years. 

Curated by Sebastian Hackenschmidt of the MAK with help from DAM's Oliver Elser, PROTEST/ARCHITECTURE: Barricades, Camps, Superglue remains on view until August 25th.