BRUSSELS.- For one of its last exhibitions before moving to the cultural hub in the heart of Brussels, KANAL, CIVA reflects on the latent potential of architecture. With the participation of a transdisciplinary field of architects, artists, sociologists and archeologists, the exhibition pre- architectures critically unveils how the study of prehistory might uncover not only causes of modernity’s present crisis, but also signs of architecture’s future past.

CIVA invites you to discover pre-architectures during an exclusive visit with the curators on the 5th of November 2024 from 10am to 6pm.

Envision a world without architecture, a world-tecture without arche, the latter meaning not only beginning or origin, but also the authority to arrange and subordinate persons, objects, and processes into an identifiable power structure.

Pre-architecture is not simply “not architecture”–it is what architecture could have become, but ultimately disavowed. The same unfulfilled potentialities haunt not only the distant past but also architecture’s anxious present in a time of environmental crisis, energetic transformation and related social challenges.

Referring to the beginnings of human habitat and the “birth” of design, the exhibition speculates about the cultural, social, economic and political foundations of spatial organization.

With works by: Kader Attia, Mariana Castillo Deball, Jacques Gillet, Hans Hollein, Frederick Kiesler, Gianni Pettena, Ettore Sottsass, Anton Vidokle & Pelin Tan, Paulo Tavares, David Wengrow & Eyal Weizman with Forensic Architecture.

The exhibition is accompanied by the publication pre-architectures, edited by Silvia Franceschini, Nikolaus Hirsch, Spyros Papapetros; with a text by David Wengrow; French/Dutch/English. Soft cover, 84 pages, 10 × 16 cm, approx. 40 ill., Spector Books.

A series of events and talks will be organized alongside the exhibition including Mariana Castillo Deball, Laurent De Sutter, Charlotte Malterre-Barthes, Sébastien Marot, Spyros Papapetros, Pelin Tan, Paulo Tavares, Anton Vidokle, and many others.