Behind the Image, Beyond the Image

edited by Giovanni Argan, Lorenzo Gigante, Anastasia Kozachenko-Stravinsky

Translating Architecture
into Images
Problematics of Architecture
on Display
Arianna Casarini
Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna, Italia

Abstract Considering the status of image that architecture representation predomi-

nantly assumes when subjected to an act of display, this paper aims not only to analyse
the cultural circumstances for the transfiguration of architecture into images in the con-
text of the architectural exhibition, but also to explore the conceptual and pragmatic
consequences of this visual translation. Expanding from this research frame, this study
will develop a critical discourse around the strategies of mediating and creating architec-
tural culture through images, while also serving as a theoretical foundation to propose
methods to resituate architecture in the exhibition.

Keywords Architecture exhibition. Architecture representation. Architecture theory.

Image theory. Exhibition studies. Curatorial studies.

Summary 1 Dealing with Absence. – 2 From Architecture to Representations. – 3 From

Representations to Images. – 4 Paradigms of Visual Objectification. – 5 Disciplinary
Problematics Derived from Architectural Images on Display. – 6 Hypotheses to Resituate
Architecture in the Space of the Exhibition.

Quaderni di Venezia Arti 5

e-ISSN 2784-8868
ISBN [ebook] 978-88-6969-588-9

Open access 5
Submitted 2021-11-08 | Published 2022-05-13
© 2022 | cb Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License
DOI 10.30687/978-88-6969-588-9/001
 Arianna Casarini
Translating Architecture into Images

1 Dealing with Absence

The absence of architecture from the space of its display is the intrin-
sic, haunting premise of the exhibition of architecture. The problem of
transforming architectural space into an object suitable for the can-
ons of display proper to the exhibition, as well as the endeavours to
obtain this metamorphosis from built object to exhibited object, can
be read, historically, as the conceptual foundation myth of the contem-
porary reflection around the exhibition of architecture. Of the many
conceptual and operational paradoxes that characterise the exhibi-
tion of architecture (Arrhenius et al. 2014; Pelkonen et al. 2015), the
provocative problematics of transfer and adapt architecture into the
display space generate a theoretical and practical conundrum of dif-
ficult resolution, especially if the primary interest is not focused on
shifting entirely from the act of exhibition to the act of building tout-
court.1 The issue of having to build a display of architecture, instead
of simply constructing or relocating architecture in the space of the
exhibition, routinely generates challenging curatorial and installation
initiatives, which have to confront directly the surreal necessity of
spatialising and objectifying architecture space in order to manifest
and visualise it inside the context of the exhibition – a circumstance
that challenges a univocal usage of the medium of display:

Because of its size and situation, the architectural exhibit en-

croaches on the territory of social and relational art, installation,
site-specific work and, of course, architecture itself. Indeed, a pro-
ductive way to define the architectural exhibit is as an anatomi-
cally incorrect version of all these practices, one that uses its mi-
nor physical distinctions (often hard to see hiding under cover of
outward appearances) as a means of combining features of them
all. (Lavin 2010, 9)

This difficulty in making architecture the subject of a display act might

even seem ironic, if we consider the inherent ‘exhibitionism’ manifest-
ed naturally by architecture (Di Carlo 2010; Van Gerrewey, Bekaert,
Patteeuw 2012) and its ability to expose itself spontaneously in the ex-
perience of its users; or if we examine the willingness of architects to
intend, and not accidentally, architecture as an agent of display of ar-
chitectural ideas and forms, and thus an exhibitionist generator of ar-
chitectural language. To a certain extent, the act of exhibiting archi-

1 Expanding from this statement, critical reflections can be produced around the idea of
architectures temporary created for exhibition purposes, and exploring if their ontologi-
cal status should be considered more tangent to impermanent architecture or spatial ar-
tistic installations, and thus if the verb ‘to build’ could be legitimately be applied to them.

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Translating Architecture into Images

tecture might even be considered a redundant operation,2 a tentative

to induce an artificial, in vitro recreation of a behaviour that can more
naturally be observed in and performed by architecture itself outside
the environment of the exhibition, without the mediation of any display
tool except the ones already inherent to the discipline itself.
Even so, the current proliferation of exhibitions related to archi-
tecture, as well as the increasing production of spaces, institutional
or para-institutional, dedicated to the display architecture (Steier-
hoffer 2012), tend to point in the direction that the challenge of dis-
placing architecture into the space of display is a popular experi-
ment to be undertaken.
Fundamental then, to understand the consequences of this status
alteration of architectural objects from built entities to displayed ob-
jects, is analysing the strategies employed to adapt architecture to
the condition of the exhibition.

2 From Architecture to Representations

In order to fill the spatial vacancy of architecture from the exhibi-

tion and to differentiate ‘architecture-that-is-displayed’ from ‘archi-
tecture-that-displays’ (so to say, the material space of the gallery
where the exhibition is articulated with its collateral installation
structures, as well as the architectural macro-system of the hosting
cultural institution), architecture is generally presented in the exhi-
bition as virtuality. Since architecture can’t autonomously fit inside
the exhibition frame,3 it is necessary to simulate its presence with
stratagems and apparatuses that substitute themselves to architec-
ture and thus become the true objects of the act of display. Consider-
ing the fact that architecture, as a tridimensional ensemble of rela-
tionships within space, needs to be somehow reified to be visualised
in the exhibition and that it also necessitates an objectual reference
to be exposed, architecture display happens by proxy.
The most common exhibition techniques thus employ surrogat-
ing instruments and replacement devices that intercede and medi-
ate for architecture at the moment of its introduction in the realm of
exhibition. This structure of compensating devices materialise and
conjure up architecture working as architectural representations,
as Sylvia Lavin writes:

2 To this analysis should also be added the intriguing paradox of the urge to exhibit
architecture, the public art par excellence, in order to ‘make it public’, as it is expressed
and analysed in Lipstadt 1989.
3 For the pragmatic and conceptual uncomfortableness of architecture in the space
of display, see Pelkonen et al. 2015.

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Translating Architecture into Images

today’s architectural exhibition constitutes a special case within

the spectrum of experience, where the world as such (fully three-
dimensional and immersive as quotidian life is generally thought
to be) and the world as culture (driven by representation and oth-
er artifices from which three-dimensionality and immersion are
now also expected) become anatomically isomorphic with one an-
other. (Lavin 2010, 9)

In the context of the exhibition, architecture is therefore manifest-

ed through a heterogeneous array of multimedia and mixed media
objects that describe, illustrate, document and thus narrate archi-
tecture, allowing it to be absorbed into the paradigms of display. Ex-
hibited architecture is, then, an aggregation of representations that
speaks about and for it.
To replace architecture, architectural exhibition makes use of
items connected with the practices of producing, visualising and re-
cording architecture4 and recontextualises them in a procedure not
unlike the conceptual operation of Duchamp, transfiguring them from
factual materialisations of architectural work to displayable objects
(Cohen 2010). Architecture exhibition thus, instead of bringing the ar-
chitecture to the display space, adapt for exposition the residual of its
making and the traces of its documentation: the focus of the exhibition
then shifts from architecture itself to be attributed to its representa-
tions. Alienated from the building process,5 drawings, models, graph-
ics, photography and projectual or documentary videos lose their role
as productive allies of the architectural practice to become instead
vehicles to primarily show architecture in the space of display. Con-
sequentially to this decontextualisation, architecture representations
assume a new, autonomous condition as aesthetic products and enter

into the world of architectural culture, achieving, either perma-

nently or momentarily, the status of (relatively) independent cul-
tural goods. (Lipstadt 1989, 111)

Employing Baudrillard terminology to the context of architectur-

al exhibition curation, it is possible to define displayed architectur-

4 In this paper, the term ‘architectural representation’ is used to encompass both ar-
chitectural ‘representation’ (general representation of architecture created by different
professional actors inside and outside the architectural discipline) and ‘figuration’ (spe-
cifically related to the activity of architect-generated representation). For a more com-
plete enucleation on the difference between these definitions, see Lipstadt 1989, 110-11.
5 To expand further on the historical and conceptual consequences of the “displace-
ment of objects and their constituting elements from their site-specific location or from
the architect’s studio” (Cohen 2010, 52), especially on their derived unheimlich quali-
ties, see Cohen 2010; Forster 2010.

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Translating Architecture into Images

al representation as “simulacra” (Baudrillard 1994): objects that, in

the absence of their material referent, which is situated outside the
display space, following a principle of equivalence, serve as a sub-
stitution for the missing presence of architecture and as necessary,
mitigating embodiments of its otherwise un-relatable materiality.
Stripped of its corporeality, architecture needs to at least be visu-
alised in order to achieve the possibility to be displayed. Therefore,
representational simulacra, which work to vicariously evoke archi-
tecture through surrogates, are not only assigned the task of exor-
cising the extravagant alterity of architecture from the space of dis-
play but also, more specifically, of producing an experienceable and
apprehensible ‘image’ of it.

3 From Representations to Images

The exhibition of images of architecture is “central for the concep-

tualisation of architectural form and its communication to others”
(Lipstadt 1989, 130), which is the most customary and essential ob-
jective of the display of architecture. Representations work as a vis-
ual support structure that situates architecture into the space of
display; there, architecture’s atmosphere, performativity and inter-
activeness are transposed and distilled into a system6 of spatially or-
ganised images where

the relationship between image and represented object is not di-

rect, but mediated by the relationship among the images; and it is
these latter relationships, binding the images together into larg-
er entities, that structure the subject of architectural representa-
tion as a whole. (Blau, Kaufman 1989, 14)

At the moment of exhibition, it is not specifically the objectual qual-

ity of architectures representations that counts, but rather their ca-
pacity to deliver a simulation of architectural presence through a
predominant visual methodology: simulacra use their power as im-

6 Due to their nature and function, architectural representations are partial and rare-
ly synthetical. Each of them contributes to providing a specific perspective or an aspect
of their referent, formulating harmonically multiple alternative solutions to the ques-
tion of the depiction of architecture; yet, they encounter difficulties embodying the to-
tality of the phenomenon of the built object. For this reason, architecture representa-
tions are entities that rarely work autonomously: to perform their full potential and suc-
ceed in effectively synthetising and portraying the constructive and experiential com-
plexity of the built object, they need to be part of an organised visual system of collab-
orative interrelation to produce meaning. For an in-depth analysis of the organisation
of architectural representations in significant systems and series in the context of the
exhibition, see Blau, Kaufman 1989, 13‑14; Cohen 2010, 51.

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Translating Architecture into Images

ages to summon a mirage of architecture, ‘figuring’ it into existence

for the sake of display.
From a semantic perspective then, exhibiting architecture can
be described as the complex linguistic performance of the ‘transla-
tion’7 or ‘paraphrase’ of architecture into a space of display operated
through images. In the exhibition, the materiality, the concreteness,
and the interactivity of the built object are converted into a series of
images that develops a visual discourse about architecture into the
space of display. From a certain point of view, this operation can be
defined also as an inverted, and thus eminently visual, ekphrasis: a
conceptually charged, rhetorically infused commentary on a mate-
rial object developed primarily using images.
In the architecture exhibition, it is the status of image of the ar-
chitectural representation that provides not only the access, but the
way to reconstruct the meaning and form of the represented object.
Essentially, even if we can agree that the devices used to represent
architecture can be considered as objects, sometimes even as ob-
jects demonstrating an enviable degree of spatiality, it is also pos-
sible to argue that in the display space they are, however, general-
ly employed and presented in their status of images, and that their
visual qualities are emphasized as dominant. Therefore, exhibiting
architecture triggers a process where images come to stand for ar-
chitecture, combining both its conceptual premises and its materi-
al essence in a solely visual manifestation. Architecture is thus ex-
posed through the employment of a methodological synecdoche, in
which it is primarily the visual quality of its representations that con-
curs to symbolise the atmospheric, contextual and interactive expe-
rience of space in multi-sensory materiality: the image accounts for
the whole, global complexity of architecture.
As a result, it is possible to argue that, when on display, architec-
ture is routinely the subject of a process of ‘visual objectification’: by
negating the necessity of architectural representations to be acknowl-
edged and to operate as objects, they are thus reduced to images.

4 Paradigms of Visual Objectification

This metamorphosis of architectural representations into images

happens specifically for reasons deeply embedded into the mecha-
nism of the exhibition itself. The functional paradigms of display not

7 The idea of translating architecture into images is used here with a specific inten-
tion, since it is considered important to highlight how a fundamental conversion of ar-
chitecture from the language of spatiality and to that of visuality is enacted and devel-
oped in the space of display.

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only enhance and exacerbate the unavoidable effect of the predomi-

nantly visual aestheticisation of architectural representation in the
exhibition, but also encourage the transition from representational
objects to architectural images for specific conceptual motivations.
To begin with, it is fundamental to remember that the methods
of exhibiting architecture profoundly interiorise and adopt the dis-
play and curatorial strategies employed for the exhibition of art ob-
jects.8 Historically, during the troubled process that sanctioned the
access of architecture in the ritualised space of display, while seek-
ing methods to legitimise itself in the eyes of humanistic culture, ar-
chitecture was indeed determined to prove that its productions could
behave like artworks.
On the one hand, it was specifically the artistic institution that de-
manded this accommodation of status to grant architecture a place
inside the display frame. The main intention of the institution was
here to employ the canonical display system for artistic products to
domesticate and alleviate the traumatic and shocking introduction
of the alien presence of architecture in the traditional space dedi-
cated to art (in this context, still mostly, yet increasingly hesitant-
ly, singular). Harnessed into place by the ‘legitimate’ methods of ar-
ticulating artistic discourse in the display space, which incidentally
also shielded the institution from the critical urgency of having to
reflect, rethink or expand their outdated approaches to exhibition,
architecture could be more easily metabolised into the realm of aes-
thetic objects (Urbach 2010, 13).
On the other hand, also architectural professionals advocated for
the extensive adoption of the traditional methods of artistic display,
which in their hands became instead a methodological propagandis-
tic tool, functional to vouch and assert the status of architecture as
a legitimate fine art, as well as an instrument to emancipate concep-
tually their practice, conferring “to a manual activity the status of a
liberal art” (Lipstadt 1989, 109).
In the architectural exhibition, architecture has to simulate to be
an art object in order to be considered a vessel of artistic quality: the
only characteristic that counted in the still conservative display logic
of the exhibition. Therefore, isolating models on pedestals and encap-
sulating them under glass vitrines as statues, as well as the strategy
to frame architectural drawings, photographs and similar declina-
tions of architectural documentation like paintings. Therefore, isolat-
ing models on pedestals and encapsulating them under glass vitrines
as statues, as well as the strategy to frame architectural drawings,

8 The two systems seem to evolve in parallel: as artistic curation starts to favour display
methods that valorise performativity, environmentality and interaction, so the display of
architecture also regains and restores the notion of spatiality and relational experience.

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photographs, and similar declinations of architectural documentation

like paintings, became familiar habits of display behaviour generi-
cally employed to upgrade architecture into the realm of art objects
and in the esteem of the cultural institution. It is important to note
here how all these methodologies of display insist specifically on the
necessity to perceive and read the architectural representation pre-
dominantly as a visual manifestation, since that was the perception
most commonly associated with the fruition of the object equipped
with inherent artistic qualities. As a result, even if these strategies
of exhibition certainly facilitated and accelerated the acceptance of
architecture representations as artworks (Lipstadt 1989), they al-
so invited for a merely visual acknowledgement and consumption of
their specificities (Rubin 2020).
As a further commentary on this subject, it is also important to
add the not-negligible aspect that the institutionalised behaviours re-
quired by the coded context of display rarely encourage proactive,
not hetero-directed interaction with the exhibited objects, preferring
instead a heavily mediated systems of approaches that desirably sup-
port the acts of aesthetic contemplation, educational metabolisation
and visual enjoyment. These paradigms of prophylactic approach,
which discourage participation and interaction, or simply a more in-
clusive sensorial approach to the artistic object, when applied to the
architectural representation, ultimately and definitely foment the
endemic detachment of the architectural object from its objectuali-
ty to propose instead the straightforward availability of visual con-
sumption to the public.
To this situation should be added that the mediating strategies
employed by the architectural exhibition, which tends, in order to
attune with aesthetic necessity, to organise the objects into spatial
narrations following techniques of visual rhyming, juxtaposition and
comparison, nurture sometimes a formalistic approach that enhanc-
es the strictly visual interpretation of architecture representations.
These choices of display are also used, in a non-neutral fashion, to
valorise the ‘artistic potential’ of the architectural representations,
thus subtly encouraging and suggesting a predominantly apprehen-
sion of architectural representations at the epidermal level of pre-
dominantly aesthetic manifestations.
To further complicate the situation created by the adoption of the
mechanisms of artistic display, it should also be considered the in-
fluence played on the identification of the architectural representa-
tions with images by the ‘functional illiteracy’ of the average pub-
lics concerning the decoding of architectural representations9 – an

9 To further expand these thematics and other notions concerning the ‘true’ accessi-
bility and democratic fruition of architectural exhibitions, see Rubin 2020.

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interpretative limit of the specificities of the language of architec-

tural representation that needs to be attributed mostly to the lack-
ing efforts from the educational system to integrate efficient methods
of introduction to architectural culture than to an actual individual
resistance imputable to the public. This lack of hermeneutic and in-
terpretative means often confines, for the ‘non initiated’, the expe-
rience of exhibited architecture into a superficial visual reading of
architectural simulacra as a succession of images and forms, more
or less imbued or evoking aesthetic and artistic references: an atti-
tude which is sometimes, as it was mentioned above, also legitimat-
ed and approved by the cultural institution itself.

5 Disciplinary Problematics Derived from Architectural

Images on Display

Even if it is not the intention here to define or promote the experience

of architecture through images as a secondary or inessential concep-
tual encounter, it is necessary to underline in this context that this
focalisation of architecture representation on predominant visuali-
ty, which is a theoretical as well as pragmatic act, is not without an
impact: not only on the construction of the relationship between the
public and architecture but also on the development of the architec-
tural discipline itself.
The more evident consequence, employing Benjamin terminolo-
gy, is the loss of the ‘aura’10 of architecture in its displayed images.
The capacity to produce atmosphere, as well as architecture sense of
space and its potential for interaction, is lost when transferred and
adapted to the exhibition space (Blau 2010, 20; Urbach 2010, 13). Los-
ing the possibility to be experienced as a three-dimensional complexi-
ty, architecture on display converts into a kind of machine celibataire,
a decontextualised mechanism deviating from its purpose and neces-
sitating to develop new approaches to generate signification. Exhibit-
ed architecture thus, instead of creating a spatial event or producing
a tridimensional experience, has to concentrate on generating a con-
ceptual discourse and construct a new status for itself: architectural
images then become a medium for propagating and developing archi-
tectural discourse and culture, documenting the discipline and theo-
rising and conceptualising its problematics (Blau 1998; Cohen 2010).
From this perspective, this approach can be interpreted as a method
employed by the architectural representation to resist its complete

10 For aura, it is meant here that “the specificity and singularity of architecture lay
[…] in its identity as large-scale, three-dimensional, inhabitable materiality” (Lipstadt
1989, 109).

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identification with the eidolon. Refusing to act uniquely as a mere es-

camotage for display, architectural representation reinvents itself as
a tool for architecture to depict disciplinary ideas, meta-reflect on it-
self and communicate its purposes. The loss of the ‘aura’ is then not
forcibly an exclusively depauperating consequence, since it enables
the architectural discipline to conceptualise and interpret its produc-
tion. Yet it should be highlighted that this nevertheless contributes
not only to propose and advertise a radically expanded definition of
architectural work and products, thus refocusing the discipline on a
more abstract level of production and on a different interpretation of
the acts of building and constructing,11 but also to foster an interpre-
tation of architecture production farther and farther divorced from
its built results.
Directly stemming from this first problematic of focussing the ex-
hibition on architectural images, it should indeed be said that, by
privileging the display of images created during the process of

imagining, producing, and recording architecture, the exhibition

inevitably shifts the focus from finished object to process, from
built work to idea, from the physical properties of the building to
its conception and critical reception. (Blau 2010, 20)

The exhibition used as a visualisation of theories reinforces the idea

of the visual domain as the main realm for the conceptualisation and
theorisation of architecture. Momentarily putting aside the contem-
porary crisis of architecture theory and criticism, it can be said that
today, for this very reason, the exhibition and its visual apparatus
have become the main medium for architecture reflection and stra-
tegic theorisation, thus assigning to architectural images a signifi-
cant and crucial role in the development of the conceptual reason-
ing around the discipline (Blau 1998; Lavin 2010). To be even more
specific, exhibiting images of architecture is becoming a manifes-
tation of architectural practice in itself, thus configuring the mo-
ment of display “as both a means of consuming and producing work”
(Lavin 2010, 7).
Another consequence, which derives this time from the necessi-
ty for architecture representation to adapt to the artistic and muse-
ological codes of display and presentation, is the museification and
commodification of architecture through its images (Cohen 2010;
Rubin 2020).
Programmatically, entering the exhibition space and becoming
an image, architecture validated itself as an art, thus compensating

11 To expand on the contemporary shift in the concept of ‘architectural work’ derived

from the practice of exhibition, see Lavin 2010.

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a historical identitarian crisis which now seems quite absurd to ar-

chitecture theorists and practitioners, but that nevertheless marked
dramatically the development of the discipline (Lipstadt 1989). Yet,
to do so, architectural representations

were sublimated into the conventions of exhibiting art in order

to be granted access to the institution. […] Architecture was wel-
comed in the museum gallery so long as it agreed to these, or sim-
ilar, representational conventions and declined, quite simply, to
be architecture. (Urbach 2010, 10)

Through this process, which alienates architecture representation

from the archive and more praxis-oriented spaces, architecture be-
came the victim of a process of aestheticisation and ‘artistification’
(Rubin 2020), which contributed to turning, in a fetishistic way, the
architectural object into an art object: a medium to be collected and
exhibited or, even more problematically, another mediatic commod-
ity in the system of consumer culture (Cohen 2010; Lavin 2010; Ur-
bach 2010).
In addition, the exhibition of architectural images “substitutes
the absence of the architectural work through a representation of
its maker creative process” (Lavin 2010, 10), “loaded with authori-
al intent” (Rubin 2020, 19), reinforcing in this way the anachronis-
tic notion of authorship, and compromising the idea of architecture
as a shared collective process which the architectural object on dis-
play should instead testify.12
Going to extremes, to acritically museify architecture through
images threatens it with the possibility of “extermination by muse-
umification” (Baudrillard 1994, 9): death sanctioned by the radical
transfer into a different order of reality and of sign, which pauper-
ise meaning from architecture, alienating it from the performance
of its specificity as a discipline. In the long run, the insistence on re-
inforcing the axiom of architecture images as museological proper-
ty contributes to distance architecture practice from its productive
encounter with the user, thus “stripping architecture of its agency
as a material intervention in the physical world” (Blau 2010, 21) and
limiting its performative capacity.
To conclude this survey of the problematics of insistent identifica-
tion of architectural representation with images in the display con-
text, and to reconnect with a more pragmatic framework, it can be
stated that the predominant act of exhibiting architecture through
images also establishes a sort of dictatorship of the visual field which

12 To further explore the reinforcement of the notion of authorship through the pro-
cess of exhibition, see also Lipstadt 1989.

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is additionally reflected in contemporary trends in built architecture.

In many cases, contemporary design and planning projects give birth
to constructions that condensate their impact and conceptualisation
mainly on their visual surface, thus contributing to buildings that
seem to be imagined with the main objective to ‘be seen’ rather than
to be experienced. This exasperation of the visual component gener-
ates a tendency to the spectacularisation and iconification of archi-
tecture manifestations, thus creating tridimensional architectural
events imagined predominantly as sculptural objects, hybrid instal-
lations or already-canonised mediatic monuments. As a main result,
this attitude creates a complicated relationship between architec-
ture and its notion as public art and social agent, not only challeng-
ing the centrality of spatial experience, but also adulterating archi-
tecture interaction and presence within the public space.

6 Hypotheses to Resituate Architecture

in the Space of the Exhibition

To conclude, I would like to open a speculative parenthesis to re-

flect on possible strategies potentially employable by exhibitions to
mitigate the dictatorship of the visual produced within their con-
text and to explore viable strategies to resituate architecture in the
space of display.
A tendency widely observed to be the predominantly popular one
is the effort to recreate, in the exhibition of space, the condition for
the replication of a certain interactive atmosphere: a tentative repro-
duction of the performative and relational qualities of architecture
(Urbach 2010), which materialises into a heavy recourse to immersive
environments and spatial installations, sometimes even enhanced by
the collaboration with digital video material and virtual reality soft-
ware. These simulations of architecture remain however mostly tri-
dimensional simulacra, and lack, in many cases, the curiosity or the
bravery to imagine a different way to build architecture or to deploy
an architectural act in a manner that can be suitable and adapt to
the specificities of the coded behaviours of the exhibition.13
Perhaps less spectacularly, instead of focussing on recreating ex-
perience, an alternative solution could be the possibility to rethink
architecture exhibitions and challenge their visual exasperation with
a return to the centrality of the status of object of the architecture

13 An interesting effort in this direction is offered by Eve Blau, who stated that “ar-
chitecture exhibition should no longer be a mere show of projects, but a ‘project’ unto
itself: a project that the visitor should be able to experience, not unlike experiencing a
built, functioning edifice” (Blau 2010, 34).

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representation, revitalising the importance of its inherent ‘object-

hood’. Borrowing here the terminology of Eyal Weizman (2010), while
also drawing from the reflection on objecthood of Byung-Chul Han
(2021) and adapting it to the context of exhibition display, maybe it
would be possible to attempt the development of ‘forensic exhibi-
tions’, where the adjective ‘forensic’ finds here again a crucial con-
nection with its etymological source, connected with the ancient Ro-
man forum practice where objects were called to testify in front of
the collectivity.14 Envisioning the architectural exhibition as a forum
where the voices of the representational objects are first to be heard,
and where the curator act as a mere translator15 for the object in or-
der to facilitate the manifestation of its architectural referent, could
conjecturally be an operative option to restore the agency of the ar-
chitectural object and re-place architecture in the exhibition as an
ensemble of processes and acts that generate a collective discourse.16
Letting the objects retake the stage could then be a productive solu-
tion for reimagining the purpose of architectural exhibition, posing
the foundations to create a space where the objects can perform, re-
gaining then their authority as instruments of production and not on-
ly as representational devices. In this perspective, the act of trans-
lating architecture into images can instead shift into a novel use of
the ‘prosopopoeia’ (Weizman 2010, 126), where the object will again
be the main orator in the architectural discourse.

14 Here the reference is specific to Weizman’s interpretation of the expression and

of the rhetorical praxis, as conceptually developed in Weizman 2010, 126: “Forensics
was part of rhetoric. Rhetoric, of course, is about speech, but forensics does not re-
fer to the speech of humans, but to that of objects and things. In forensic rhetoric, ob-
jects address the forum”.
15 “Things, however, need a ‘translator’ to interpret and mediate their speech. Be-
cause the thing speaks through, or is ‘ventriloquised’ by its translator, the object and
its translator make a necessary and interdependent duo” (Weizman 2010, 126).
16 To explore further the idea of interrelated spatial relations between publics and
things in the context of architecture, see Weizman 2010, 126-7.

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Behind the Image, Beyond the Image, 5-18
 Arianna Casarini
Translating Architecture into Images

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