My interest in charity as a form of art – see last blog - led me last week to MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Let’s just say I needed a holiday and got lucky. New York might have a reputation for the merging of various boundaries, but what caught my eye was the potential in an exhibition title of:
‘Endless House: Intersections of Art and Architecture’.
Modern art has constantly pushed our understanding of its identity and
purpose, for which an embrace of architecture seems a natural progression from rooms
full of Picasso and Warhol. Our social dialogue
on designing a better sense of place has obvious merit as an inquiry to explore
visions of future humanity. What we can do, who we can be and how? At least, it is when you have the right minds
in the room like at MoMA.
I was gripped by the breadth of ideas and
imagination on display. From concepts
for mobile home ‘escape vehicles’ to ‘shelter for people living in precarious
conditions’, the art and architecture explored deep issues of human psychology
and social need. The creators clearly
inhabited a world in which people were still trying to build a positive future
of wonder; a world prepared to think in a different language of possibility and
challenge. It’s a dying art.
The MoMA's exhibition centred on the fascinating works of Austrian American artist Frederick Kiesler. In the 1920’s, Keisler
began to map out a form of ‘endless architecture’ that merged art and architecture
into living forms of infinite creation. Keisler’s explorations led to the Endless
House – an organic model for a new type of single-family accommodation that was
as much interested in people’s spiritual and physical needs for a form of
residence as it was in the concept of a dwelling being a more fluid process of
arranging different textures, light and space. Keisler concluded, ‘the house
must be a cosmos in itself, a transformer of life-forces’.
What is in our cosmos? David Cameron’s
vow to scrap the requirement to build affordable homes for rent is more likely
to find future favour in a shop of horrors than an art gallery. Yet, it
was the announcement today that brought to my mind Keisler and the MoMA. The
power of thinking in new directions is a real lack in so much current policy
and programmes associated with housing. Are we really asking the deep questions
to be able to imagine the right answers? If we wish to embrace the housing pressures from
young people and older people in their different life transitions, then we need
to build a different way of thinking about housing, people and communities. It’s no surprise ‘Endless House’ offers more provocations
as to what that might look like than any soundbites from this season’s party
conferences.
The
Museum of Modern Art promotes itself as ‘a place that fuels
creativity, ignites minds, and provides inspiration’. But you don’t have to
go all the way to New York to find it. At
InspireChilli, we believe the source for creativity exists inside organisations
and people who learn how to fuel the ‘art of social inspiration’. It’s the intersection between charity and art where
future bold designs for housing will flourish. Just ask for a hot ticket to make it happen.
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