Architecture at Home

I wanted to use a museum space, an exhibition typology, as an experimental testing ground to unpack one of the world’s greatest questions: Is it possible for a single family dwelling to be attainable, while also connecting to individuality in America today?
*Curated by Dylan Turk as Special Projects Editor, Architecture & Design at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.*

“The architecture of what we live in needs to embrace and remind us of our own cultural histories, the materiality and characteristics of our environment, the joys and spirituality of being human, and the depth and soul of individual life. Not one design, housing typology, architectural lineage, or even material can speak for everyone.”

— Dylan Turk, Curator

Architecture at Home, Crystal Bridges’ outdoor architecture exhibition, brings together five prototypes for homes to spark a dialogue about contemporary housing. Through research, interviews, and innovative thinking, five architecture firms based across the Americas designed and fabricated 500 square-foot prototypes for a contemporary house to be displayed in the exhibition. Overall, this exhibition helps us better understand how architecture affects our lives, determine what makes a house a home, and celebrate the artistry in building and shelter.

Exhibited along the Orchard Trail on the museum’s grounds and anchored by R. Buckminster Fuller’s Fly’s Eye Dome, a prototype for an experimental home, the forms and materials of the five structures articulate the many ways in which we could live. Visitors can enter and explore these immersive, domestic prototypes, and interpretive elements focus on use of materials, scale, form, light, and interaction with the landscape.

The five architecture firms participating in the exhibition are studioSUMO, LEVENBETTS, MUTUO, PPAA (Perez Palacios Arquitectos Asociados), and studio:indigenous. These firms are led by architects from diverse backgrounds, cultures, and experiences, and each surveyed the needs, challenges, and opportunities of the Northwest Arkansas community to develop their prototypes.

Crystal Bridges acknowledges the complex and unequal realities of housing and recognizes that the Northwest Arkansas community is not immune to these challenges. Neither the Architecture at Home exhibition nor the museum can single-handedly solve the problems of housing insecurity, sustainability, or access to attainable housing. In creating this exhibition, however, Crystal Bridges seeks to inspire greater awareness of what is possible for housing through research and experimental design. The exhibition is inspired by Fuller’s lifelong mission of making “the world work, for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.” With Architecture at Home, Crystal Bridges is eager to join a larger, active, and ongoing conversation around the concept of home and the realities of housing in our backyard and around the globe. The exhibition can draw attention to the serious impact of building on the environment and encourage activism toward enforcing protections and regulations that can make sustainable and attainable housing more accessible.

The five architecture firms, selected because of their unique personal stories and professional practice, are working with Crystal Bridges and our larger community to listen and share ideas on how housing can work for more people. Their housing prototypes are ideas—rooted in reality and hope for the future, but with an understanding that in order to succeed, we will have to change how we build, how society understands and values housing, and address the economic realities of materials and regulations. This exhibition utilizes their five solutions to help make change possible. We, you, and the larger community can move closer to a more equitable society through conversation, exchange of ideas, and action steps accelerated by this exhibition.

Exhibition Website

Visit the exhibition site for extended content, educational information, and virtual walk-through of the structures.

Curator’s Note:

Yesterday, I walked through Architecture at Home. It was the perfect morning as the light pushed the colors to their most vibrant. This exhibition started as a quest to understand if beauty and affordability could coexist in one structure. I hoped to see structures that technically proved this was possible. The show isn’t anything like what I expected. Each installation is deeply personal—pulling on the life experience, soul, and mind of the architects.

The pieces were created in one of the most bizarre times in recent human memory: Covid, Trump, the murder of George Floyd, Black Lives Matter Movement, a wave of anti-aborition laws, and discriminatory laws targeting queer youth. During this time, home—individual sovereignty—became more sacred than ever As you walk through the show, each installation gently tells the story of the power and symbolism of the spaces that surround our bodies.

The bold subject isn’t the merging of affordability and beauty, although it is addressed. The subject of the show is an intimate exploration of the human connection to land, place, ecosystem, history, and each other. How all of these elements align with the symbolism and memory of individuals. What happens if we think about the people who live in a space before we begin to crunch the numbers? what does it do to a community when there is housing that not only supports the multiplicity of ways people live, but also the beautifully diverse spiritual and deeply rooted psychological characteristics of individuals’ relationship to the spaces they inhabit?

For the first time in any architecture show I’ve experienced at a museum, these pieces unite to show how architecture can acknowledge where we came from while persuading us to lean into the beauty of our humanness.

Thank you to all participating firms: LEVENBETTS, MUTUO, studio:indigenous, Studio Sumo, and Perez Palacios Arquitectos Asociados.