Exhibition aims to connect people with urban spaces

An exhibition titled ‘PoroCity – Enabling Structures by Graber & Steiger Architects’ is currently underway at Kala Kendra in Dhaka.

The event is a site-specific spatial intervention by the Swiss architecture studio Graber & Steiger, and is supported by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia.

The exhibition began on May 8. Eros Robbiani, Counsellor, Head of Political, Economic, and Cultural Affairs, Embassy of Switzerland in Bangladesh, and architect Saif Ul Haque were present as guest speakers at the opening ceremony.

The installation on the Kala Kendra premises invites the general public to the venue and creates a welcoming place, connected with the urban spaces.

The installation in the gallery and the adjacent urban space give the opportunity to explore the notion of ‘enabling structures’ on different architectural and urban scales. The installation aims to trigger a dialogue about architectural structures that may be the actual DNA of welcoming places, which unfold a porous setting for vivid social interaction and future-oriented transformations.

The exhibition provides a glimpse into architectural works, which are characterized by permeable spatial structures that invite free appropriation by the users. The scenography setting of the installation is embedded in a circular concept for the reuse of the modular exhibition structure in the everyday life of Dhaka’s micro-urbanism. Besides the visitors of the exhibition, we invite city dwellers to participate in the project in the long term.

In one room of Kala Kendra, the steel bars stand on the ground perpendicular to one another, creating a composition of straight lines, whereas in another room, they simply hang from the ceiling. These two rooms display architectural projects done by Graber & Steiger.

‘Residential Building in a Tree Grove’ was designed in a way that could incorporate the idea of living in tree groves, like the client had wanted. Thus the narrow, elongated zigzag form leaves spaces for vegetation. The sectional perspective of the building model also resembles the trunk and branches of trees.

The third room with diagonally standing frames holds several proposals from the students of Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Switzerland, resulting in skilful design possibilities for the ‘Multi-Model Transportation Hub in Narayanganj, Bangladesh which was the Master’s project for Design Studio of Fall 2014.

The two smaller spaces of Kala Kendra were reserved for videos, one of which compiled photos from several architects and artists who sent images of spaces and structures along with the quotes they related to.

This exhibition is open for all to visit every day from 4:00pm to 9:00pm and will run till May 29.