WASHINGTON, D.C. —A new exhibition opened at the National Building Museum exploring contemporary and future directions in the design of public space, proposing that new spaces can be the generators of urban revitalization. OPEN: new designs for public space, an exhibition originated by the Van Alen Institute, will present innovative recent projects from around the world, all of which address aspects of the public realm. The exhibition will also explore the role of public space in an age of heightened security and increased electronic interaction. The exhibition will be in second-floor galleries, and will be on view through May 15, 2005.

At the National Building Museum, OPEN is made possible by the American Planning Association, the American Society of Landscape Architects, EDAW, Inc., and ULI-the Urban Land Institute.

The contemporary spaces represented in this exhibition include architecture, landscape, playground surfacing, and urban design projects by renowned design leaders including Will Alsop, Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio, Craig Dykers, Peter Eisenman, Zaha Hadid, Walter Hood, Norman Foster, and Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi. More than 300 images, digital animations and videos, and models (many commissioned for this exhibition) illustrate a range of projects in a variety of settings: from memorials to new types of urban plazas and parks, and from Macon, Georgia, to Melbourne, Australia, to Johannesburg, South Africa.

The projects in OPEN will be organized into five themes. The Plaza Unbound, Information in Place, Opening the City, Active Memory, and New Meeting Grounds will explain how public space is evolving according to the specific needs of today’s cities across the United States and around the world. One additional section, In the News, will focus on “Parks to Watch” in New York City, “North American Competitions,” and “Temporary Interventions in Public Space.” The National Building Museum’s presentation of OPEN will include an additional examination of current and upcoming public space projects in the Washington area, many of which reflect an effort to wrestle with the dilemma of security in a city intended to represent democratic ideals of openness and accessibility.

The Plaza Unbound will examine the challenges that the most familiar “public places” face as a result of today’s ambitious demands for both visual transparency and physical access. For example, Foster and Partners’ recently completed City Hall in London, England, (2002) employs the metaphor of transparency in government. Another design solution that attempts to ensure that public spaces remain shared with the community is UN Studio/Caroline Bos and Ben Van Berkel’s “three-dimensional” piazza design for the Ponte Parodi in Genoa, Italy, projected for completion on 2005. Their waterfront scheme challenges traditional ideas of street-front access to public spaces by imagining various social and cultural uses divided among several levels, shifting the usually ground-level public park to a rooftop.

In Information in Place, projects by firms such as Diller + Scofidio and Zaha Hadid Architects will address the present-day question of how information can have a role in public space that stimulates and enhances a culture of innovation. To this end, the Chungmuro Intermedia Playground (2002), by New York City- and Seoul, Korea-based Cho Slade Architecture with Seoul architect Kwang-Soo Kim, entailed the installation of a 210-foot-long digital-media learning center with a lounge, video viewing area, editing suite, and exhibition spaces—all within a Seoul subway station.

Opening the City will re-examine the traditional uses planners and architects have historically assigned to the street. Rather than accepting the street as merely a functional mover of goods and people, projects in this section—such as Walter Hood Design’s 1999 proposal for Poplar Street in Macon, Georgia—attempt to reconceive the street as a vital public space, not just a transit corridor.

The exhibition will also recognize that today’s changing metropolis is the home to events—from concerts in Central Park to protests on the National Mall—that necessitate different spaces. Designs by Acconci Studio and Gluckman Mayner Architects, among other firms, featured in New Meeting Grounds present solutions to accommodate these new demands. Acconci Studio’s design for an artificial island in Graz, Austria, for the Graz 2003 Cultural Capital of Europe event, aims to accommodate multiple activities with its floating cafe, open-air theatre, and children’s playground, while attempting to weave the river more fully into the life of the city.