Now that we can do anything, what will we do?

Photo: Maris Mezulis

Massive Change: The Future of Global Design is a groundbreaking exhibition commissioned and organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery in collaboration with Bruce Mau Design and the Institute without Boundaries, which investigates the capacity, power, and promise of design. Reflecting the scope and dynamism of its subject matter, Massive Change will immerse audiences in a series of powerful encounters with the latest innovations in housing and urbanization, information, movement, manufacturing, energy, materials, markets, the military, wealth and politics, and even life itself.

Photo: Maris Mezulis

The Image Gallery is saturated with fascinating and incredible images that provoke visitors to think about the process by which they were captured. The instruments and devices that capture these remarkable images are on display within table mounted vitrines.

Photo courtesy SOAP

The Global Portraits Gallery features projections of the Earth that highlight a variety of global information, such as the images generated by the Aerospace Corporation’s Satellite Orbit Analysis Program (SOAP), which tracks the space “debris” of objects that orbit the globe.

The OPTE Project uses a single computer and internet connection to map the entire Internet, and chart its growth and development. By tracking Internet usage, the OPTE Project also can track weather disruptions, natural disasters and war, creating a metaphysical representation of the real world.

Photo: Maris Mezulis

On view in the Manufacturing Gallery are examples of innovative and radically sustainable manufacturing processes, designed to effect change at numerous scales. Two long, tapered display ramps features a sequence of sustainable innovations, which tell the story of design for disassembly, rapid prototyping and systems assembly.  

Photo: Maris Mezulis

The Markets Gallery features vertical panels and seating areas placed at intermittent positions around the room. Each panel poses a question about markets and features small scanning devices; a shelf on the panel holds a screen which can be scanned by visitors to watch a story about innovations in the design of markets, or visitors can
sit in the seating areas and listen to stories that are broadcast through speakers hanging from the ceiling.

Photo courtesy of NASA/JPL

The Materials Gallery will showcase innovations in materials science that are producing substances with unprecedented performance abilities and properties, such as Aerogel, the lightest solid in the world. Here, a 2.5 kg brick is supported on top of a piece of Aerogel weighing only 2 grams.

Photo: Maris Mezulis

The Energy Gallery includes one black-walled room and one brilliantly lit room. The black-walled room is filled with black-reflective text and graphics that describe the challenges we face due to reliance on non-renewable, polluting energy sources. A brilliantly lit adjacent room, visible through apertures in the wall, contain prototypes and images of radical new energy sources including fuel cells, solar cells, and Dean Kamen’s Stirling Engine.

Photo: Maris Mezulis

In the Movement Gallery, a recreation of the design studio of noted inventor Dean Kamen will provide an intimate look at the design process behind celebrated inventions such as the Segway and the IBOT.

Photo: Maris Mezulis

Visitors entering the Urban Gallery encounter white massing models of cityscapes from the top ten cities which will have the largest urban density by 2015, and images of urban scenes from Sao Paolo to Tokyo are projected onto the cityscapes, composing an endless city. Visitors are also provided a glimpse into possible world scenarios of proposed vertical, horizontal, and prefabricated housing solutions.
Wealth and Politics Gallery

Photo: Maris Mezulis

The Wealth and Politics Gallery will present a picture of global wealth as defined within a variety of new frameworks. A series of surprising statistics are expressed in terms of relative quantities. These comparisons examine world issues such as population, food supply, education, health, energy, the military, economy, and the environment.

Vancouver Art Gallery
Bruce Mau Design
The Institute without Boundaries
Massive Change 

For more information there is a new book published in connection with the Massive Change project.

Massive Change
By Bruce Mau & The Institute without Boundaries
Publisher: Phaidon Press

In essays, interviews, and provocative imagery aimed at a broad audience, Massive Change explores the changing force of design in the contemporary world, and in doing so expands the definition of design to include the built environment, transportation technologies, revolutionary materials, energy and information systems, and living organisms.  

The book is divided into 11 heavily illustrated sections covering major areas of change in contemporary society such as urbanism and architecture, the military, health and living, and wealth and politics. Each section intersperses intriguing documentary images with a general introductory essay, extended captions, and interviews with leading thinkers, including engineers, designers, philosophers, scientists, architects, artists, and writers.  

Concluding the book is a graphic timeline of significant inventions and world events from 10,000 B.C. to the present.

Buy a book at Amazon.com through arcspace, and a small portion of the proceeds from your purchase will go to support our efforts to keep you informed.

 

October 11, 2004