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620 F Street NW
Washington, DC 20004
202.783.3788 |
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Classic Materials Get Future Spin National Building
Museum Exhibition Considers Masonry's Future
July 14, 2003
WASHINGTON—Masonry materials like stone,
brick and terrazzo have a classic appeal that links today’s buildings
with their historic predecessors. But it’s not over yet. Masonry’s
time-honored qualities of durability, beauty, scale, texture, flexibility and
color have even more to offer.
Exploring the untapped potential of masonry is the subject of a national exhibition
this fall sponsored by the International Masonry Institute (IMI), featuring
renowned architects. A leader in masonry design and research and a strong believer
in designer/craftworker collaboration, IMI hopes to inspire the masonry industry
to look to its design future, and to offer designers this challenge: "if you
can imagine it, we can build it.”
The exhibition, “Masonry Variations,”will open October 18, 2003
in Washington, D.C. at the prestigious National Building Museum, in conjunction
with the BAC/IMI International Apprentice Contest and Masonry Mania Family
Festival. “Masonry Variations”will run until April 2004.
The exhibit highlights four different masonry materials: stone, brick, terrazzo,
and AAC. It documents masonry’s contribution to today’s built environment,
and will challenge visitors to question masonry’s future direction in
architectural design. Lectures and hands-on design seminars will complete the
program.
To stimulate this process, four leading architects were invited to design full-scale
installations that suggest the unexplored potential of each material. The architects –Jeanne
Gang, Studio Gang Architects (Chicago), Carlos Jimenez, Carlos Jimenez Studio
(Houston), Julie Eizenberg, Koning/ Eizenberg Architecture (Santa Monica),
and Winka Dubbeldam, Archi-tectonics (New York) are designing in stone, brick,
terrazzo, and AAC respectively. The exhibit’s guest curator is Stanley
Tigerman, FAIA, of Tigerman McCurry Architects, Chicago.
Equally vital to the process, and to masonry architecture in general, is the
masonry craftworker. This rich facet will be provided by four leading IMI instructors,
who are collaborating with the architects and overseeing construction of the
installations: Matthew Redabaugh (Stone), Keith Behrens (Brick), Mike Menegazzi
(Terrazzo), and Bob Mion (AAC).
The International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers represents
100,000 skilled masonry workers in the United States and Canada. It is
the oldest continuously operating construction union in North America.
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