Downtown Denise Scott Brown

Agency

Jeremy Eric Tenenbaum

Practice Area

Client

Architekturzentrum Wien

  1. Welcome to Downtown Denise Scott Brown! Stores to your left and right, cafe and marketplace behind you, and there’s the grand fountain! Photo Credit: Lisa Rastl

  2. But what’s this? A secret passage through the fountain! With architectural quotes graffitied all over the walls and, at the heart of the fountain, a video of Denise! Photo Credit: Lisa Rastl

  3. Relax! Grab a Denisaccino from Cafe Nkana (named for Denise’s hometown) and read Downtown’s special edition newspaper. And don’t forget to get a gift from the Venturi shop! Photo Credit: Lisa Rastl

  4. There’s too much to do Downtown! Look at these books and snowglobes at the marketplace! Look at these decorative arts on display! Photo Credit: Joanna Pianka

  5. What’s going on across Downtown? There’s the Ugly Instagram interactive game, and the Caesar’s Sign Shop, and the photoautomat booth. What’s that about? Photo Credit: Lisa Rastl

  6. Okay, how does this work? You just sit inside, let it photograph you, step out, and…that’s you up there, projected on the fountain! Quick, take a selfie with your selfie! Photo Credit: Jeremy Eric Tenenbaum

  7. There’s seriously too much to see Downtown. Even just these three storefronts show dozens of Denise’s photos, some of her biggest architectural commissions, and dozens of her publications! Photo Credit: Lisa Rastl

  8. It’s opening night and Downtown is packed! Downtown is looking its best when it’s filled with people — the real heart of the show. Photo Credit: Jeremy Eric Tenenbaum

Project Vision

Downtown Denise Scott Brown at the Architekturzentrum Wien is the first major exhibition dedicated to Denise Scott Brown — iconic architect, urban planner, teacher, and writer.  With partner and husband Robert Venturi, Denise has guided designers and thinkers since the 1960s yet remains obscured and misunderstood.

Downtown manifests her ideas in a uniquely Denisian way.  The exhibition is designed as a real place, albeit temporary.  Driven by Denise’s concepts and spirit, it’s designed urbanistically:  the vaulted room is transformed into an outdoor piazza, with a monumental fountain surrounded by ersatz shops, café, and market.

Urbanism is fundamental to the exhibition’s design:  unlike many exhibitions, but exactly like cities, there is no prescribed experiential order.  Visitors enter the space and are drawn to the fountain, some storefront, the café?  The route visitors choose, as well as their interactions with the space and each other, help to define the show.

Brick piers between windows become trompe l’oeil storefronts with displays dedicated to Denise’s life and work — her design, planning, childhood, writing.  Some storefronts are two-dimensional while some are “real” constructions filled with books or decorative arts.  Throughout, texts are bilingual and positioned accessibly.

One storefront is titled “I Can Like Something Worse Than You Can Like,” a game Denise and Bob invented to expand their aesthetics.  Downtown’s visitors play in their footsteps by photographing the exhibition’s “ugly” parts — its construction, wires, and seams — and posting to Instagram.  Then these photos appear on the storefront’s old TVs!

The fountain is Downtown’s heart.  It honors Denise with a spray of projected light showing scenes from her life.  And it holds a secret: a hidden passage adorned with architectural graffiti and, at the heart of the exhibition’s heart, a video of Denise greeting visitors and telling them about the time as a student when she designed her own secret passage.

Lastly let’s try Downtown’s photobooth.  Sit within and your photo is taken — then projected atop the fountain!  Then take a selfie with your selfie.  “I Am A Monument” proclaims the fountain — meaning Denise but also meaning *you*.  Downtown is a celebration of Denise but realized by its visitors, its citizens.

Downtown Denise Scott Brown communicates meanings just as real urban environments communicate theirs: through signs and iconography, architecture real and represented, stores of goods and information, and a panoply of vernacular street things.  Downtown’s banners, trashcans, markers, and chalkboards are all encoded with content.  There’s even a Downtown newspaper dedicated to her studio work.  The ersatz blends with actual: the fake market sells real gifts; the fake café serves real Denisaccinos.  Throughout, Denise’s ideas pervade in word and action.  Is there a better honor for an architect?

Downtown  Denise Scott Brown’s accompanying publication, “Your Guide to Downtown Denise Scott Brown,” looks and behaves like a real travel guide.  It also serves as exhibition catalogue and stand-alone monograph containing an extensive new interview with Denise.  The guide has been described as doing “a great job of putting people… inside the exhibition — much better than anything I’ve ever encountered” (Archidose).

Downtown Denise Scott Brown succeeds with 7,765 visitors and features in the press (print, digital, TV, radio) across Austria, Europe, and America.  It has been called “…a vivid panorama that invites visitors to take part in an interaction…ironic and playful in a postmodern way, yet no less critical or inspiring.  It represents a welcome beginning for a subsequent intensive reception of an architect and her work, both of which will finally be given the honour that is due.” (Detail)

Project Details
Design Team

Jeremy Tenenbaum (exhibition designer; catalogue author and designer),Katharina Ritter (AZW, curator), Angelika Fitz (AZW, director)

Design Firm

Jeremy Eric Tenenbaum

Project Area

3,230 square feet

Fabricators

Architekturzentrum Wien (In-house fabrication workshop, with some subcontracted fabrication)