Curating Architecture and the City: Recent Australian Pavilions

In recent decades, pavilions have emerged as a popular vehicle for exhibitions of architecture: these often spectacular structures and immersive environments becoming both the object and subject of display. Yet, despite their ubiquity, and the increasing interest of art galleries and institutions in exhibiting and commissioning architectural projects, the pavilion has largely escaped interrogation within the discourse and practice of curation. Taking three recent Australian pavilion programs as its focus, this essay examines the diverse challenges of curating this kind of full-scale architecture, and the ways in which architecture is curated in or through them. In particular, the Australian pavilions raise important questions concerning the curatorial work: what is being curated, by whom, and to what ends? Such questions are critical to understanding the changing place of architecture in contemporary culture, but also the limits and opportunities presented by architecture in an ever-widening field of curation.