Exhibit: ‘Formations’

Looking at Formations is a lot like looking at Louis Sullivan’s organic-geometric details through a kaleidoscope. Now at the Austrian Museum of Applied Arts/Contemporary Art (MAK) in Vienna, this exhibition of architectural elements, models, and videos offers a chance to examine the design strategy of the Viennese firm Span Architecture & Design. Principals Matias del Campo and Sandra Manninger, both former architects-in-residence of the MAK Center for Art and Architecture in Los Angeles, use computers to generate architectonic models from the geometries of organic systems. While artists and architects have long taken inspiration from the mathematical forms of nature, in their own hands, del Campo and Manninger say, the results are often like a “spontaneous mutation in nature.” Through Sept. 11. • mak.at/e/jetzt