Harvard GSD: A Temporary Exhibition of Temporal Public Spaces

A Temporary Exhibition of Temporal Public Spaces brings together projects by a dozen or so emerging architects from Taiwan, Korea, Thailand, and Hong Kong—a region sometimes called the Milk Tea Alliance for its shared fondness for the drink and experience of heightened uncertainty. For this generation in their first decade of practice, temporary public space-making has become a defining project type, much as private houses and commercial fit-outs launched earlier generations.

The exhibition examines these works through three lenses. First, it explores why this project type has emerged as central to a generation practicing at the forefront of geopolitical uncertainty and climate risks, offering lessons for other regions facing similar pressures. Second, it examines the expanded design repertoire that has emerged—from reversible construction to innovative use of found objects—excavating Asia Pacific building culture’s tradition of working precisely with small material fragments and maintaining sophisticated protocols for sharing, repair, and upkeep. This suggests alternatives to high-tech approaches to resilience and sustainability, and a distinct vision of how to live well in an uncertain world.

Third, the exhibition embraces temporality as both subject and method. Designed to keep the library exhibition space publicly accessible throughout, and shaped by long-distance logistics constraints, the exhibition itself becomes an experience of the temporal public spaces it presents—a counterpoint to how architecture is typically displayed and discussed.

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