The Architectural Exhibition Review (aer) is a grassroots, self-funded platform that nurtures a long-lost art form, architecture criticism. aer provides a much needed independent public forum for thoughtful discussion— without a subscription, paywall or the need to be in a particular location. Borne out of a common frustration with the quality of commercial architecture writing and its lack of independent and truly critical analysis, this ongoing online and print experiment solicits and collects short-form writing on a global scale. Our authors are curators, scholars, architects, teachers, writers, students (and counting). Our mission is to resurrect a lively culture of critical and engaged dialogue centered around exhibitions as a primary medium of architectural discourse with profound influence on the way we negotiate the built environment. 

Four years ago, the idea for The Architectural Exhibition Review was born out of a yearning. Yearning to visit all the places and see all the shows we never manage to catch before they disappear. To indulge in this desire each week one of our writers adds a new color to the vivid pastiche of contemporary curatorial and scenographic practice. The fourth issue collects today’s mesmerizing global practice of curating architecture through the lens of contemporary storytelling, some local, some global, always with shifting focal points: flowers, air, nature, and trees; models and fragments of historic buildings; (Cold war) politics, revolutions, and protests; globally recognized big names like Frederik Kiesler and IM Pei, and perhaps lesser known practitioners like Slovak architect Vladimír Dedeček; artist-created environments, bygone utopias and a shrine to the moon landing; biennales and expos, computer-generated geometries and visual investigations; housing policies, human rights issues, and real estate economies as well as tales from the diaspora.

Our recurring feature “Shows I Wish I Had Seen” puts the history of architecture exhibitions under a microscope to question established narratives. In the past year our writers have unearthed almost forgotten European avantgarde practices such as the origins of the term “new building,” the West German exhibition “Berlin Plans” that was later outdone by another pivotal reconstruction era show, “America Builds,” and the daring feat of the Prague-based Museum of Decorative Arts to show modern architecture during the city’s Nazi occupation.

aer continues to expand to broaden our formats. Together with architecture and scenography students at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology we published a special edition “Shows We Wish We Had Seen” that unpacked iconic exhibitions that have shaped architecture’s relationship to styles and fashions, technological advances, the relationship of humans to nature, nationality, culture and globalization, the individual’s place in society, and our relationship to history. And with a collective of twenty-one writers, curators, architects, and academics aer participated in the exhibition “The Architecture Exhibition of Tomorrow” at Architektur Galerie Berlin to ponder how architecture exhibitions may continue to be a key medium of architectural thought and production.

As a collective effort aer is nothing without its writers around the globe who report on what they see. And yet, we still don’t manage to cover it all. That is why we want you.
If you’d like to contribute to aer and you’re based in one of the locations listed below we’d love to hear from you:

Abu Dhabi, Accra, Amsterdam, Athens, Atlanta, Buenos Aires, Brussels, Cape Town, Copenhagen, Delhi, Dublin, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Lagos, Lima, London, Los Angeles, Melbourne, Mexico City, Milan, Montreal, Moscow, New York, Paris, Rome, San Francisco, Santiago, Sao Paulo, Sharjah, Stockholm, 
Tokyo, Vienna

Or shoot us a message to let us know which other place we’re missing: hello (at) architecturalexhibition.com 

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(fall 2025)