Uneven Growth: Tactical Urbanisms for Expanding Megacities

Uneven Growth: Tactical Urbanisms for Expanding Megacities, a 14-month initiative to examine new architectural possibilities that address the rapid and uneven growth of six global metropolises—Hong Kong, Istanbul, Lagos, Mumbai, New York, and Rio de Janeiro—culminates in an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art from November 22, 2014, through May 10, 2015. In recent years, tactical modes of urbanism have arisen in the form of everyday, bottom-up approaches to local problems as a counterpart to a classic notion of top-down planning. Uneven Growth asks how current practices of architecture and urban design can learn from such developments by presenting design scenarios based on this type of urbanism, while also mapping emergent modes of tactical urbanism around the globe. The exhibition features design visions comprised of drawings, renderings, animations, and videos produced by six interdisciplinary teams of local practitioners and international architecture and urbanism experts, each focusing on a specific city.

Tactical urbanism is a highly pragmatic movement that applies to a spectrum of designers, from those who perform guerilla interventions of short-term change to those who seek to prod, provoke, or stimulate the political process toward incremental realization of fragments of what might be larger networks. To further explore these ideas, the Museum has published a book and created a user-generated Tumblr blog that collects examples of emerging modes of tactical urbanism happening in the six cities.

Uneven Growth: Tactical Urbanisms for Expanding Megacities is organized by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, in collaboration with the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK), Vienna.

The exhibition at MoMA is organized by Pedro Gadanho, Curator, and Phoebe Springstubb, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Architecture and Design, The Museum of Modern Art.

This is the third exhibition in the series Issues in Contemporary Architecture, supported by Andre Singer.

The exhibition and accompanying workshop at MoMA PS1 were made possible by MoMA’s Wallis Annenberg Fund for Innovation in Contemporary Art through the Annenberg Foundation.

Major support is provided by The International Council of The Museum of Modern Art.

Additional funding is provided by the MoMA Annual Exhibition Fund.