ArkDes exhibition programme 2018-2021: From Lewerentz to the design of the future.

A comprehensive collections-based exhibition, a major international production, and an exhibition that sets the tone for ArkDes’ new direction – ArkDes’ 2018-2021 exhibition programme is here.

Major exhibitions

Public Luxury

1 June 2018–13 January 2019

Public Luxury is an exhibition about architecture, design and public life. A number of large-scale works, installations and projects will be displayed inside and outside of the museum on Stockholm’s Skeppsholmen, and will offer visitors a rich experience of design as a tool for highlighting and providing solutions to the societal challenges currently facing Sweden. The works have been created especially for the exhibition by some of Sweden’s leading designers, artists and architects.

We share many of our most urgent social issues with the world around us, but the unique Swedish conditions for addressing these challenges can be found in examples as varied as the proposed demolition of an ice cream booth in Stockholm’s Kungsträdgården and the relocation of a bell tower in the Arctic mining town of Kiruna, through to the question of newly-arrived displaced persons and their rights to public space. The phenomena and urban problems highlighted by the exhibition reveal an incongruence that can often be found between professional ambitions, political visions, and the expectations which citizens have of public space.

Participants include Dansbana (Anna Pang, Anna Fridolin and Teres Selberg), Jonas Dahlberg, Sandi Hilal/DAAR, Johan Celsing, Hilda Hellström, Johannes Norlander and Uglycute, among others.

The Future Starts Here

February 2019

This exhibition explores the power of design in shaping the world of tomorrow. From smart appliances to satellites, artificial intelligence to internet culture, more than 100 objects will be brought together as a landscape for the near future. These objects are the seeds of possible futures, currently in development, being worked on by scientists and designers in studios and laboratories around the world. Together they present various ways in which emerging technologies might affect our lives in the near future, and what choices we have – as citizens – to influence their development. The exhibition will take visitors from the familiarity of the home where smart devices are changing our notions of privacy, to the ways in which the global network of the internet shapes contemporary politics, the environmental effects of technology and the strange prospects of immortality promised by Silicon Valley enthusiasts. Highlights include Facebook’s unmanned aerial vehicle Aquila, the Long Now Foundation’s Library of Civilization composed of over a thousand books, as well as specially commissioned pieces by Miranda July, Stamen, Tellart, Marco Ferrari and Kei Kreutler.

Curated by Rory Hyde and Mariana Pestana. Conceived by Rory Hyde, Kieran Long and Mariana Pestana.

Exhibition organised by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Flying Panels

Autumn 2019

Flying Panels is a unique exhibition about the cultural history of a notorious and ubiquitous building technology: prefabricated concrete panels. Curated by Chilean architects and professors Pedro Ignacio Alonso and Hugo Palmarola, whose work won the Silver Lion at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2014, the exhibition will describe the history of a technology that proliferated across the world in the 20th century, housing billions of people, not least in Sweden. It will show 1:1 prototypes, historical artefacts, posters, film, opera, paintings, advertising, drawings, models and much more, and tell a story of a technology that embodies both our belief in a better modern world, and the death of that dream.

Sigurd Lewerentz

2020

The Swedish architect Sigurd Lewerentz (1885-1975) stands among some of the foremost practitioners in twentieth-century architectural history, and has gained increasing international recognition in the past decades. This exhibition allows visitors to experience Lewerentz’s distinctive and multifaceted work for the first time since the 1980s. The aim is both to present an in-depth view of Lewerentz’s well-known buildings, and to shed light on projects that have hitherto been overlooked. The material for the exhibition will primarily be sourced from ArkDes’ own extensive Lewerentz archives, which contain everything from drawings and models to more personal artefacts.

Tham & Videgård

2021

Tham & Videgard has become Sweden’s most significant architecture practice, winning many awards, and gaining international attention for their work. We will work closely with the practice on a major, mid-career retrospective, which will open in 2021.

New permanent exhibition

2021

ArkDes has initiated a project to build a new permanent exhibition that will reflect its new role as a museum and an arena for debate and discussion about the future of architecture, design and citizenship. The project is being led by Christina Pech, researcher at ArkDes.

Smaller exhibitions

A Print Stockholm

16 November–3 December 2017

There is a revolution underway in architecture and design publishing, that is giving a voice to independent editors and critics as never before.

ArkDes dives into this debate with the help of guest curators Agnes Gidenstam och Naima Callenberg of Studio Nock, staging an exhibition in our library and a major symposium on contemporary architecture and design publishing on 16 November.

Participants include 2ha, 4ARK, Accattone, ANZA, Architektur in Gebrauch, Bricks from the Kiln, and Camenzind.

Young Swedish Design

7 February–8 March 2018

Young Swedish Design is an exhibition that showcases the most recent developments in Swedish design. Young Swedish Design 2018 will be premiered at ArkDes in connection with Stockholm Design Week 2018. ArkDes director Kieran Long is a jury member for the nomination of the Young Swedish Design participants.

ArkDes Studio Gallery

Autumn 2018

ArkDes Studio is a new gallery space of around 200 sq m at ArkDes, which will be a platform for new, experimental design, architecture and curatorial practice from Sweden and the world. Three architectural firms – Christine Svensson Arkitektur, Dehlin Brattgård and Krupinski+Krupinska – have been selected to an invited competition for ArkDes Gallery. It will open in autumn 2018, and show 3-4 exhibitions a year and provide a gallery setting for architects and designers to show their work free of constraints and without the pressure to fill one of our larger spaces. We want to create a platform where less established Swedish and international artists, architects and designers can display their work and research. It will also be a controlled environment for immersive installations from new fields of design, particularly the digital and interactive design communities.

The design community in Sweden lacks spaces for more open-ended and discursive work, and we hope the ArkDes studio will answer that clear need. For the public, the gallery will provide a vibrant, fast-changing and provocative display of the state of architecture and design practice today. It will also provide a beautiful and flexible room for our annual collaboration with Svensk Form on Ung Svensk Form and for our Christmas Pepparkakshus show.