Advertisements for Architecture

RESEARCH STATEMENTRecently there has been renewed interest in using architectural exhibitions as tools to engage the public with architectural practice. This interest responds to current questioning of the role and place of architecture against the background of global economic and ecological concerns.RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONThe exhibition contributed to this debate in a novel way. The curators invited architects, architecture students and designers from around the world to create an 'Advertisement for Architecture'. They were asked to address one of several questions, including the need for architecture, the role and status of the architect, the changing historical place of the profession, and the relationship between architecture and broader social and cultural issues. Although open to professional architectural firms, the advertisements were not to serve as self-promotion but as self-reflection and communication of the place of architecture as a whole. The most outstanding of these entries were exhibited at Federation Square, Melbourne, September-October 2009, and published in an accompanying catalogue.RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCEFollowing the initial exhibition, Advertisements for Architecture was reviewed in Architecture Australia 2009, was re-exhibited as part of the Woods Baggot National Architecture Week in 2009, and for the Australian Institute of Architects at the Victorian Chapter's Public Gallery in December 2009. It was re-exhibited with the addition of Sydney entries as part of the Darchorse event organised by Sydney's Australian Institute of Architect's D'arch group in February 2010, and won the AIA's 2010 Bates Smart Award for Media in Architecture.