The CCA presents Other Space Odysseys: Greg Lynn, Michael Maltzan, Alessandro Poli from 8 April until 6 September 2010. The exhibition reveals how the exploration of space has informed the rediscovery of earth, and illustrates the importance of pursuing an architecture based on the production of ideas.

The exhibition presents three approaches to the ideas of an adventurous journey that started 40 years ago after the 1969 moon landing. Featuring the work of architects Greg Lynn, Michael Maltzan, and Alessandro Poli, Other Space Odysseys comes at a time when space exploration is the subject of renewed enthusiasm, but also of debate which questions its justification. Scientific expeditions, satellite launches, and the emergence of space tourism are pushing us to reconsider our relationship with our own planet. For these architects, space has provided not only a rich context for experimentation,
but also an extreme condition in which to test new ideas for life on earth.

Photomontages, sketches, and literary narrative by Alessandro Poli for Architettura interplanetaria, (Interplanetary architecture),1970 –71. © Archivio Alessandro Poli. Photo: Antonio Quattrone

Alessandro Poli, Zeno incontra Aldrin a Riparbella (Zeno and Aldrin meet in Riparbella) 2008 © Archivio Alessandro Poli.

The idea of space exploration provoked these architects to use new and different media for disseminating their ideas: models, collages, animation, and objects supplant more traditional two-dimensional forms of representation. Accordingly, Other Space Odysseys presents a wide array of material, both real and virtual, from the simple tools of a farmer to the digital animation of a science fiction film. 

Commenting on the exhibition, Mirko Zardini stated:

“Other Space Odysseys has nothing to do with Space Architecture or architecture in outer space. It is not a celebration of high-tech architecture and imagery or extreme physical and mental conditions. Instead, this exhibition proposes a letting go of architecture understood as the production of material goods in favour of architecture as the production of ideas.”

Greg Lynn, Michael Maltzan, and Alessandro Poli have developed unique and imaginative responses to the questions of space travel and the inhabitation of new, extraterrestrial realities. Their odysseys, real and virtual, ultimately promise a rediscovery of our own planet.

Alessandro Poli, Paesaggio lunare – Luna Park (Lunar landscape — Luna Park ),1973. Photomontage. © Archivio Alessandro Poli. Photo : Antonio Quattrone

Alessandro Poli, Autoritratto con riflessa autostrada Terra-Luna (Self-portrait with reflection of Earth-moon highway), Photomontage, 1973. © Archivio Alessandro Poli. Photo: Antonio Quattrone

Projects by Greg Lynn are presented in the exhibition, each one making use of extreme conditions – such as virtual reality or the absence of gravity – to introduce new directions, technologies and form into the world of architectural possibility. A sense of tension is created between work which provides a virtual reality representation of the earth, and work conceived as architecture for outer space. The first gallery presents New City, an architecturally considered virtual world. Five models, digitally fabricated for the exhibition, as well as an animation, capture the project, which responds to the emergence of social media through the design of a parallel virtual reality in which all of the earth’s inhabitants reside in a single, interconnected city.

New City, concept model for a virtual world. © Greg Lynn, Peter Frankfurt & Alex McDowell

New City, concept model for a virtual world
© Greg Lynn, Peter Frankfurt & Alex McDowell

In a second gallery, Lynn’s research on outer space is presented. A series of models (also digitally fabricated for the exhibition) present the N.O.A.H. [New Outer Atmospheric Habitat] structures, a series of four planets developed for the science fiction film Divide. From afar, the planets appear as unique forms; up close, they are revealed as porous, cellular structures that contain a wide range of spaces and microclimates.

N.O.A.H (New Outer Atmospheric Habitats) set for the film Divide © Greg Lynn FORM

Michael Maltzan’s proposed new building for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a NASA laboratory in Pasadena, California, seeks to bridge the chasm between the emotional qualities of space exploration and the bureaucratic nature of the scientific research that underlies these missions. The scientists at the JPL (established in the 1930s) have been involved in many of the most important chapters in the history of space exploration. Maltzan’s design, still in a preliminary phase, challenges existing architectural models for campuses that house scientific research, and proposes a new type of physical environment to facilitate collaboration.

Writes Maltzan, “I am interested in the radically different scale between the space the scientists inhabit in their minds and their day-to-day experience.”

Michael Maltzan, Architect, New building for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, 2006-, model. © Michael Maltzan Architecture

Michael Maltzan, Architect, New building for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, 2006-, model. © Michael Maltzan Architecture

The 1969 moon landing radically changed Alessandro Poli’s vision of planet earth, leading him to develop a new idea of geography. Other Space Odysseys revisits projects of his that explored drastically different proposals for connecting the earth’s environment to the new reality of outer space. In the exhibition, Poli’s current reflections on his research are presented alongside his original projects. The first gallery is dedicated to Architettura interplanetaria [Interplanetary Architecture - 1972], a film by the radical Italian architecture group Superstudio (of which Poli was a member from 1970-72) that imagined a form for architecture at an interplanetary scale, including a highway from the earth to the moon. In addition to the film, preparatory materials including sketches, collages, and storyboards are on display.

Notes by Alessandro Poli for the movie Architettura interplanetaria, (Interplanetary architecture), 1970 –71. © Archivio Alessandro Poli. Photo: Antonio Quattrone

Notes by Alessandro Poli for the movie Architettura interplanetaria, (Interplanetary architecture), 1970 –71. © Archivio Alessandro Poli. Photo: Antonio Quattrone

Conscious that manned space exploration also implied a return to earth, in 1974 Poli began the research for Cultura Materiale Extraurbana [Extra-Urban Material Culture]
in parallel with several members of Superstudio. Challenging the optimism and technological dependence of space explorations, the protagonist of one chapter in this project was Zeno, a Tuscan peasant, whom Poli continued to study with Zeno - research on a self-sufficient culture. In a second gallery, Zeno’s tools are on display, along with a series of drawings made by Poli in an attempt to document and to understand Zeno’s world. A large-scale drawing illustrates the contrast between the clothes worn by Zeno and the spacesuit of astronauts such as Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin.

Alessandro Poli, Zeno-research of a self-sufficient culture, Pieces to be reused, 1979 – 80. © Archivio Alessandro Poli. Photo : Antonio Quattrone

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Other Space Odysseys: Greg Lynn, Michael Maltzan, Alessandro Poli from 8 April until 6 September 2010 at the CCA, Montréal, Québec - Canada