CHANGE: Architecture and Engineering in the Middle East

In February 2012, the Center for Architecture in New York opened two landmark simultaneous exhibitions exploring architecture across the Middle East. The exhibitions — CHANGE: Architecture and Engineering in the Middle East and City of Mirages: Baghdad, 1952–1982 — presented a wide variety of work in the region, both historical and contemporary, drawing more than 500 guests to their opening night. It stood as New York City's first major exhibition dedicated to contemporary architecture and engineering in the region. City of Mirages offered a survey of projects for Baghdad from the city's golden era following the discovery of oil in 1952, featuring models and drawings of buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright, Alvar Aalto, José Luis Sert, Gio Ponti, and others — architects who shaped the cosmopolitan boom town Baghdad once was. The companion exhibition, CHANGE, turned its lens to the present. The Center held an open call for built and unbuilt work in the Middle East from the last decade, and the resulting 123 projects — designed for roughly 20 countries — were meant to serve as a snapshot of what was happening across the region at that time. Together, the three floors of exhibit space wove a discussion spanning structure, culture, and politics, drawing on pictures, films, models, and research to convey what life and architecture in the Middle East meant from both the inside and outside.