Räumliche Solidaritäten

Flims, Switzerland 2023–24

Studio Other Spaces (SOS) presents their third exhibition entitled ‘Räumliche Solidaritäten’ (Spatial solidarities) at Das Gelbe Haus Flims in Switzerland. On display from 8 October 2023 through 27 October 2024, the exhibition takes a multi-narrative approach, sharing a selection of SOS’s projects alongside local initiatives from Flims and the surrounding area to creatively address agricultural, social and infrastructural issues.

'Räumliche Solidaritäten' (Spatial Solidarities) aims to create a space for dialogue. Through this format, Studio Other Spaces shed light on common misconceptions and dualities: mountain and valley, city and countryside, nature and culture are not contradictions, or rivals, but intricately interwoven and dependent on one another—together forming the fabric of the area. For the exhibition, Das Gelbe Haus Flims is turned into a space of echoes that reach beyond the walls of the landmark by acclaimed Swiss architect Valerio Olgiati. Based on themes that inform Studio Other Spaces’s design language and research—such as energy, infrastructure, agriculture, nutrition, and education—local projects have been gathered with the help of co-curators Damian Christinger and Elizabeth McTernan.

The exhibition reflects SOS’s interwoven interests as an office for architecture and art: sharing novel design tools, traditional and cutting-edge building techniques, sustainable food systems, renewable energy, urban-rural cooperation, local knowledge, site-specificity, and consideration to ‘more-than-human’ perspective. Through collaboration with regional partners, SOS strive to develop a meaningful relationship to the environments that they typically arrive at as ‘outsiders’. By highlighting regional entanglements and weaving connections between projects, SOS share a lively exchange with cities, research institutions, and independent makers. The exhibition also displays points of contention in the region, to demonstrate that friction is part of any process of change in a community. Additionally, it includes places and entities that are not necessarily framed by any human project, but which nonetheless act as prominent characters in the landscape: for instance, the enormous wall of the Zervreila dam, which has reshaped the ecosystems and acoustics of the area below; Icelandic moss and its idiosyncratic role in Rhaeto-Romanic folklore; and the ancient Flims landslide, upon which the region has been built.