The show seemed promising. It's called "New Trajectories: Contemporary Architecture in Croatia and Slovenia." The whole idea, of course, is to reach out deliberately to a part of the world we don't usually think of as being culturally cutting edge. The goal is to prove that in today's global culture, terrific architecture can happen everywhere. The show is about making connections between the school and the larger world.
The problem is that it doesn't make connections with us, the viewers.
Start with the private language. Writes the curator, Mariana Ibanez, in her introduction: "Regardless of the locality of the built work, these firms' production techniques and strategies may be situated at the core of contemporary practice. . . . Croatian and Slovenian young architects have already created a niche for the production of exceptional work, but one that is charged with the legacy of their own architectural traditions."
A niche is charged with a legacy? When, anyway, did these guys fall from their new trajectories into all these cores and niches? Why does academic writing about architecture always have to sound as if it's been translated by a computer from the original Martian?
One more example. This describes one of the projects, an art installation: "The installation restructured space, time and spectatorship in an exploration of the phenomenology of viewing, manipulating and displacing the viewer's perceptions." That's art-student gibberish.
I'm always hoping I can recommend shows like this to the general public, because architecture, after all, is a public art, and it's nice when the designers and the public can communicate. Alas, "New Trajectories" fails visually almost as much as verbally. Much effort has gone into the bizarre creation of a translucent wall of folded planes. It looks as if someone had taken a Japanese work of origami, created with rice paper, stretched it from floor to ceiling, and put lights behind it.
