Instant City at Abbaye de Fontevraud Explores Nomadic Architecture

The exhibition 'Instant City' at the Abbaye royale de Fontevraud (September 29 to November 18, 2007) brings together works from the collections of Fracs Pays de la Loire and Centre, focusing on the theme of the 'ideal city'. The show is anchored by Peter Cook's 1969 nomadic city project 'Instant City', conceived as part of the Archigram group, which proposed a mobile urban structure that grafts onto existing cities to transform them into ephemeral events. The exhibition includes architectural models, plans, and drawings by experimental architects such as Rem Koolhaas and Didier Fiuza-Faustino, as well as works by artists like Jordi Colomer, Kristina Solomoukha, and Martin Boyce (whose 'For 1925 Avenue d’Automne' greets visitors). The Frac Centre's collection specializes in architectural drawings and models from the last fifty years, while the Frac Pays de la Loire holds a rich trove of architecture-related contemporary art. Despite the strong selection of works, the exhibition suffers from a conventional scenography of white L-shaped partitions, reused from a previous show curated by medievalist Jacques Le Goff, and lacks a proper catalogue, offering only a newspaper-format document. The collaboration between the two Fracs in the historically and architecturally charged abbey is commendable, but the display feels underfunded.