Metamaquettes: Between the Lab and the Site is open daily and free to visit.
Metamaquettes: Between the Lab and the Site exhibition presents a body of works that explore subjective perceptions of space and user engagement. Metamaquettes are installations, models, and mock-ups that question their own nature yet create playful spaces in which to explore cognition/perception, scale, light and (im)materiality. Metamaquettes invite us to investigate subjectivity, neglected notions about sensory experiences, communal habits, and the ordinary and vernacular elements of culture. Being a composite word that derives from the Greek μετά/meta, and the French maquette, Metamaquette literally translates as after/post/among/beyond models. Swinging between the real and its representation, Metamaquettes occupy the liminal space of laboratory-cum-site, becoming simultaneously both experiments and experiences.
The French philosopher Bruno Latour claims that science experimentation has now moved outside the laboratory, to the world wide lab, where we are all engaged in a series of experiments collectively attempting to survive. Metamaquettes exhibition presents new states for projects, where the laboratory and site merge into one. Models move away from the desk - and scale up to intervene in public spaces and lobbies, turning these sites into opportunities for experiments. We all collectively participate in these experiments to test an idea, witnessing its appeal and prospect. By positioning installations as meta-spaces that depart from the service model of architecture practice, Metamaquettes exhibition lends a fresh perspective on the influence of installations in contemporary architecture. The minimum quality of this architecture is subjected to specific costs, materials, and other resources and conditions; however, what in Metamaquettes appears as experimental and innovative will soon become an integral part of the new traditional.
The BAC is honored to exhibit Metamaquettes: Between the Lab and the Site so that the larger community may engage with ideas that make us question our own scale, the space of the gallery, and the nature of architecture as a discipline enmeshed in social and economic networks.
Metamaquettes: Between the Lab and the Site is supported by a grant from Dartmouth College and by Boston Architectural College.
About Zenovia Toloudi
Zenovia Toloudi is the artist/architect responsible for Metamaquettes: Between the Lab and the Site. Zenovia Toloudi is an architect, artist, and assistant professor of Architecture at Studio Art, Dartmouth College. Her work critiques the contemporary alienation of humans from nature and sociability in architecture and in public space, and investigates spatial typologies to reestablish cohabitation, inclusion, and participation through digital, physical, and organic media. The founder of Studio Z, a creative research practice on art, architecture, and urbanism, Zenovia has exhibited internationally, including at the Biennale in Venice, the Center for Architecture, the Athens Byzantine Museum, the Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art and the Onassis Cultural Center. She has won commissions from Illuminus Boston, The Lab at Harvard, and the Leslie Center for Humanities at Dartmouth. Zenovia's work belongs to permanent collections at Aristotle University (AUTh) and the Thracian Pinacotheca. Her essays have been published in Routledge, Technoetic Arts, and MAS Context. Zenovia is the recipient of The Class of 1962 Fellowship. She was a Public Voices Fellow; a Research Fellow at Art, Culture, and Technology Program at MIT; and a Fulbright Fellow. Zenovia received her Doctor of Design degree from Harvard's GSD (2011), a Master of Architecture degree as a Fulbright Fellow at the Illinois Institute of Technology (2006), and in 2003, she graduated from the AUTh in Architectural Engineering.
