5 to See: This Weekend

The selection for this week holds contemporariness at its core. From innovation and design solutions, to carving new paths of individuality, the shows collectively reach towards a new, attainable future, where nature exists with industrialisation, and materiality is used to offer new ways of living and thinking.

Japan-ness, Centre Pompidou-Metz
Arata Isozaki (b. 1931) once proposed that Japanese architecture runs a course separate to the rest of the world’s. Carrying a distinct theme, and overarching values, he coined a term reflective of identity, innovation and urban responsiveness: “Japan-ness.” This phrase has inspired an entire exhibition crafted around a cyclical history of stylistic uniqueness, with notable names like Sou Fujimoto Kenzo Tange amongst those featured in this culturally expansive event. www.centrepompidou-metz.fr

London Design Festival
Since 2003, the London Design Festival has placed the city at the heart of the international design community and offered an international stage for the latest developments in technol­ogy and innovation. For the 15th edition, the festival hub will once again be the Victoria & Albert Museum, further deepening the strong link between the museum’s world-leading collection of art, design and performance – spanning in total 5,000 years of human creativity – and the leading edge of contemporary design.
www.londondesignfestival.com

Screens Series: Gregory Kalliche, New Museum, New York
Making use of industrialised neon, the crossings between manmade and natural worlds pervade the works of Kalliche. Calling upon the iconography of contemporary film, each video contains numerous jump-cuts and countdowns, juxtaposed with organic lifeforms: flowers, plants and water come together in a vibrant dose of sensory information. www.newmuseum.org

Primavera, MCA Australia
Now in its 26th year, Primavera offers the work of eight young artists (35 and under), who have been tasked with contemplating one of the biggest questions around: the meaning of existence, related specifically to archival practices or collecting What are its historical equivalents? And what happens if this information is erased, whether accidentally or deliberately?. Ancient Futures is the theme for the 2017 edition. www.mca.com.au

Chicago Architecture Biennial
For a city with such a history of modernist archi­tecture and a sense of growth, it’s perhaps particularly daring that the second edition of the Chicago Architecture Biennial is themed around the imperative to Make New History. Striking in its diversity, the uniting charac­teristic of many of the participating practices is their dual sav­viness in history, and technological and aesthetic approaches. www.chicagoarchitecturebiennial.org

Credits:
1. Otani Sumimoto, Fairytale Pavilion. Courtesy of Centre Pompidou-Metz.
2. Reflection Room, Flynn Talbot. Courtesy of London Design Festival.
3. Gregory Kalliche, Screens Series. Courtesy of New Museum.
4. Kynan Tan, Polymorphism. Courtesy of MCA Australia.
5. Barkow Leibinger, HAWE Factory Kaufbeuren, Germany 2014. © David Franck.