Exhibit: CLUB KITS
For immediate release
CLUB KITS: A temporary club
The exhibit will be on view starting September 27, 2024,
with the opening reception at 6 PM on the same day.
MIT Architecture Keller Gallery, 77 Mass Ave, 7-408, Cambridge, MA
Cambridge, MA, September, 2024 – MIT announced ‘CLUB KITS - a temporary club’ – by Xavi L. Aguirre, Assistant Professor in the School of Architecture + Planning and founder of the Disassembly Design Lab at MIT – on view at MIT Architecture’s Keller Gallery through October 18, 2024 –
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CLUB KITS is a temporary club.
This installation is an invitation to celebrate fleeting pleasures. With references to gyms, queer clubs and locker rooms, it combines the spatial/material qualities of architectures that prioritize the social imperative of physical togetherness, of spaces ready for sweat, loudness, physical abandon and mutual enjoyment.
CLUB KITS sets a setting that can be tested in real time. Complete with a sound system and a video projection set up, the installation invites students and other artists to use the space at their leisure and will be activated on a weekly basis. During gallery open hours, the installation displays a video production by Aguirre, showing a night-to-day cruise through a series of body-oriented architectures that reappropriate often-invisible architectural proofing layers in order to remix our material expectations of interiority and exteriority and includes an immersive soundtrack by composer Ash Fure.
Using an architectural kit-of-parts, this space came together in 3 days. Built with lightweight aluminum strut, an easy and quick architectural assemblage system that matches the interim nature of the space. The kit is complete with off-the-shelf concrete modules, rubber mats salvaged from a relocated local gym and custom soundproofing panels developed by the Disassembly Design Lab that allow for sonic calibration of the space through fine-tuned modularity.
Architecturally, the project is designed with its disassembly in mind. Move-in and move out day look pretty similar here. Using dry assembly techniques in an effort to maintain all materials unpunctured and preserve their perpetual reusability, this architecture is put together using nuts, bolts, clamps and friction fittings. No nails, glues or mutually destructive construction techniques were used. The project creates a user-ready space now while serving as a proposal for a change-ready, reversible approach to architecture as an alternative to current demolition-bound building practices.
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About the author:
Xavi [SHAH-bee] L. Aguirre is an Assistant Professor of Architecture, founder of the architectural design practice stock-a-studio and Director of MIT’s Disassembly Design Lab. Through a focus on architectural temporality/durability, they create large-scale cultural productions, develop change-ready material techniques and build architectures that consider our relationship to circular resources, aesthetics and supply systems.
Design and Install Team:
Aisha Nasr Cheema
Mara Jovanovic
Sarah Okayli Masaryk
Leanah Sloan Aulgur
Video production team:
Boneless Pizza Productions
Ian Erickson
Zachary Slonsky
Opening Hours:
Monday through Saturday 9AM to 6PM and Fridays 8PM
Special Programming:
Opening Friday: Aisha Nasr Cheema
Following Fridays: will be programmed in collaboration with ASC
Special Thanks:
Lectures & Exhibitions committee, Calvin Zhong, Nicholas de Monchaux, Yolande Daniels, Joel Carela, Douglas J Le Vie and Jim Harrington.
Media contacts:
Joél Carela
Communications Strategist, MIT Department of Architecture
jcarela@mit.edu / 617-253-0692