January 2026: Dates & Events

RECORD’s monthly list of upcoming and ongoing exhibitions, events, and competitions.

The Lightness of Strength: The WaveWashington, D.C.On view through February 9, 2026Suspended in the Great Hall of the National Building Museum, The Wave is a 55-by-180-foot recycled aluminum space frame structure that demonstrates how advanced material logic and fabrication can shape the next generation of resilient architectural systems. Its lightness and strength reveal how engineering precision and design imagination can coexist in a single form. This project is headed by Catholic University of America professor Tonya Ohnstad in collaboration with students and industry partners. See nbm.org.

Barbara Stauffacher Solomon: Garden = Grid = CityMill Valley, CaliforniaThrough February 27, 2026This exhibition, presented by the Anthony Meier gallery, highlights Barbara Stauffacher Solomon’s Green Architecture series and her lifelong fascination with the green rectangle as a symbol of paradise. In her 1989 book Green Architecture and the Agrarian, the landscape architect and graphic designer described California as a constructed Eden, where “yellow deserts were watered, and the green gardens grew.” Featuring rarely exhibited works on paper, paintings, as well as a signature supergraphic, the exhibition illuminates how Solomon’s enduring philosophy of landscape threaded through every aspect of her practice, from architectural logic to abstraction and color, producing a visual language of rhythm, scale, and imagination, while reflecting the fragility and ecological stakes of shaping these paradises in a land of impermanent water. Seeanthonymeier.com.

Le Liégat, Ivry-sur-Seine. Photo © Sacha Trouiller / NVBL Architects

Renée Gailhoustet: A Thousand and One Ways of LivingLondonThrough March 21, 2026Algerian-French architect Renée Gailhoustet (1929–2023) created pioneering master plans and social housing projects in the Parisian suburbs. Rejecting rigid typologies and modernist ideals of uniformity and standardization, she designed collective homes that featured a characteristic generosity of space and use of raised terraces. NVBL Architects founder Nichola Barrington-Leach reflects on Gailhoustet’s work in a 1:1-scale installation of a series of apartment floor plans from Gailhoustet’s Le Liégat housing project in Ivry-sur-Seine. Staged at the Architectural Association, the exhibition also brings together drawings, spatial study models by NVBL, and photographs by Sacha Trouiller and Valerie Sadoun. See aaschool.ac.uk.

Hidden Remains
Wroclaw, PolandThrough April 5, 2026
Showing at the Museum of Architecture and cocurated by local architecture studio Prolog, Hidden Remains traces the changes in Polish villages following World War II. Widespread destruction, border shifts, and new political realities meant that rural development was subordinated to the centrally planned economy. Alongside altered methods and the scale of land cultivation, housing forms and construction technologies also changed. Today, the remnants of state-owned farms and experimental village projects of the early postwar years—the so-called “hidden remnants”—provoke reflection on the relationship between space, architecture, and people. See ma.wroc.pl.
Piet Zwart: Brand Architect
San Francisco
Through May 3, 2026
Currently on view at Letterform Archive, this exhibition spotlights Dutch modernist Piet Zwart (1885–1977), who worked as a typographer, photographer, and industrial and interior designer. His signature photomontages, playful type compositions, and bold color fields elevated everyday subjects as objects of artistic exploration. On display are 200 works highlighting his graphic designs for Nederlandse Kabelfabriek Delft, Dutch Postal Telegraph and Telephone Company, Bruynzeel Lumber Company, and others. See letterformarchive.org.
Otto Wagner – Architect of Modern Life
Berlin
Through May 17, 2026
On view at the Tchoban Foundation Museum for Architectural Drawing, this exhibition showcases the work of Austrian architect Otto Wagner (1841–1918). Berlin played an important role in Wagner’s work—during his studies at the Bauakademie, he got to know the work of Karl Friedrich Schinkel, whose collection of architectural designs later became the model for his own publication of works. The show, co-produced by the Vienna Museum, is divided into six chapters, each dedicated to one of the most important themes in Wagner’s work. It spans from his little-known early historicist works, through spectacular projects from the Vienna Secession to the radical, ornament-free buildings of his later period, which established Wagner’s central position in the history of modern architecture. See tchoban-foundation.de.

Encounters: Denise Scott Brown Photographs
New Haven, Connecticut
Through July 3, 2026
In the formative years between 1950 and 1970, Denise Scott Brown found in photography the possibility of looking anew at a fraught world—and of rethinking the architect’s role within it. Presenting a wide-ranging selection of Scott Brown’s photographs, Encounters explores her crucial but little-studied photographic practice, and raises broader questions about architectural research and pedagogy, the profession’s interest in so-called ordinary places, and the social and political obligations of design. In Encounters, these photographs—many of which are shown as slides in a darkened theater—are paired with work by other photographers, as well as materials drawn from several archives, placing Scott Brown’s work in an expanded field and prompting audiences to rethink its significance for the present. Encounters is based upon the 2025 book of the same name edited by RECORD contributing editor Izzy Kornblatt, which features nearly 400 photographs chosen and sequenced in collaboration with Scott Brown. See architecture.yale.edu

Upcoming Exhibitions
Isamu Noguchi: “I am not a designer”
Atlanta
April 10–August 2, 2026
Although Isamu Noguchi declared in 1949, “I am not a designer,” the internationally acclaimed artist regularly engaged with the space-shaping possibilities of design, imagining and producing work in architecture, industrial design, ceramics, furniture, lighting, stage sets, and landscape design. In spring 2026, the High Museum of Art will debut the artist’s first design retrospective in nearly 25 years, featuring nearly 200 objects, many never or rarely exhibited, spanning all facets of his creative output. Highlights of the exhibition will include sculptural models of potential and unrealized projects, such as the recently rediscovered plaster for Play Mountain (1933); tables and stools designed for manufacturers like Herman Miller and Knoll; and a house model Noguchi designed in collaboration with architect Kazumi Adachi. The exhibition will also feature several large-scale installations, notably the stage set for choreographer Martha Graham’s Seraphic Dialogue(1955), one of Noguchi’s innovative pieces of play equipment, and a commissioned film capturing some of Noguchi’s site-specific plazas and gardens. See high.org.

The Century of Gehry
Porto, Portugal
May–October, 2026
This spring, the Serralves Foundation will present a major retrospective of the late Frank Gehry’s work. The exhibition explores the architect’s radical approach to form, material, and structure through models, drawings, and immersive installations. Highlighting the way his work made a dialogue between art and architecture, the show traces the evolution of Gehry’s thinking across 26 major projects, from early experiments to well-known buildings such as the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, offering rare insight into the creative process of an architectural icon. See serralves.pt. 

A model of Abu Dhabi Guggenheim. Image courtesy Gehry Partners, LLP

Events

International Builders’ Show
Orlando, Florida
February 17–19, 2026
Presented by the National Association for Home Builders (NAHB), the International Builders’ Show is the largest global annual light construction show. In addition to exhibiting new products, this year’s event hosted in Orlando will offer construction demos, educational sessions, and panel discussions. See buildersshow.com.

Coverings
Las Vegas
March 30–April 2, 2026
The latest edition of Coverings, the largest ceramic tile and natural stone conference and exhibition in North America, will feature nearly 1,000 global exhibitors from 40 countries. This year’s show, taking place at the Las Vegas Convention Center, will offer live product demonstrations, as well as educational sessions. See coverings.com.

Email information to kuthg@bnpmedia.com.