Dwellings

From a crammed house in Frankfurt’s Judengasse to the grand architectural schemes of Waddeston Manor, architecture and architectural patronage have been a constant concern throughout the history of the Rothschild family. Dwellings is the first exhibition in the Rothschild & Co Switzerland Exhibition Series, focusing on the places we frequent and inhabit, and the backdrops against which history is played out. The exhibition considers architectural structures as surfaces for projection, historic witnesses and carriers of memory. Recent history has exposed the fragility of our dwelling places – both physically and socially. Places of life and work have become seemingly interchangeable. Many people found themselves pushed into systems of domestic productivity that could be compared to a pre-industrial era. Meanwhile the role of the office underwent considerable scrutiny – temporarily suspended and repurposed as places of eerie calm and individual retreat. Imposing, purpose-build architectural structures were silenced by a global health crisis and kept in suspense until they could return to serving their intended purposes – as places for assembly, collaboration, productivity and stages for representation. Dwellings brings together eleven artists from five European countries whose practices investigate societal and personal narratives against constructed backgrounds.