Does Permanence Matter?September 14, 2017 – March 18, 2018

Munich’s Oktoberfest, the Kumbh Mela pilgrimage in India (or the largest gathering of humans on the planet), the Burning Man Festival in Nevada, and other major events demonstrate that flexible architectural configurations are temporarily deployed around the globe to provide medium-term shelter, often to enormous crowds. Such structures fulfill a range of functional tasks and are used in religious and cultural festivals or can take the form of military camps, refugee camps, or even temporary mining towns. This show traces a global phenomenon that has become increasingly topical given today’s current state of mass migration triggered by climate change, political strife, and natural disasters.

The exhibition is based on a long-term study by Rahul Mehrotra at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and Felipe Vera at the Centro de Ecologia Paisaje y Urbanismo in Santiago de Chile. This research on Ephemeral Cities focuses on the systematic analyses of hundreds of cases sharing the same common denominator: they are settlements with an expiration date!

Curators | Marcelo della Giustina, Andres Lepik, Rahul Mehrotra, Felipe Vera, Asli Serbest and Mona Mahall
Exhibition design | m-a-u-s-e-r: Asli Serbest and Mona Mahall
Sponsor | PIN. Freunde der Pinakothek der Moderne e.V., Förderverein des Architekturmuseums der TU München