Exhibition → A Little bit of Syracuse
2023 FallSyracuse Everson Museum of Art
Collaborator: Zhirun Huang
“We like Dumb Architecture.
We dislike Clever Architecture. ”
Dumb Architecture is about buildings. Dumb Architecture is not about ideas. It likes things. It makes drawings and models. It stares at you blankly in photos. It’s not about the cutting edge or the next big gizmo. And it’s obviously not about smartness, or whatever. It’s dumb, not stupid."-- MOS ArchitectDrawing on the visual narrative techniques of Japanese graphic novels and traditional Chinese landscape painting, students in the Syracuse University School of Architecture developed A Little Bit of Syracuse, an artistic tableau of the city.
Those familiar with Syracuse will immediately recognize many, if not all, the building models—the Dunkin Donuts drive-through, CNY Jazz Central, the Byrne Dairy Deli and Convenience Store. These and other familiar structures can also be identified in the Syracuse cityscape depicted in the eighty-foot scroll drawing, which stitches together each building into a visual story that is at once both realistic and abstract, familiar and unfamiliar.