Abundance Not Capital

What if architecture were not an instrument of capital? The exhibition Abundance Not Capital presents the work of Indian-born architect Anupama Kundoo as a manifesto for a different kind of architecture. Using local resources, Kundoo designs buildings of extraordinary beauty that care for the needs of people and the planet.

Architecture has long been a driving force for innovation and growth and has become the materialization of global capital. The insatiable appetite of capital is forcing architecture into a regime of “never enough.” Natural resources and labor are being exploited by the construction industry worldwide. At the same time, many people can no longer afford their homes, which have turned into investment products. How did construction become so destructive to people and nature, and what can architects do to counteract this? Indian-born architect Anupama Kundoo’s oeuvre exemplifies a different kind of architecture. Her work defies the logic of capital and the normative standards of the building industry, as well as binary norms of beauty that require architecture to be either innovative or traditional, either ecological or wasteful.

In Anupama Kundoo’s projects, wealth does not lie in precious materials and perfected industrial products, but in the innovative use of materials and techniques that are locally abundant. She accomplishes this through the combination of high-tech and low-tech, the further development of traditional building techniques, inventive lightweight construction methods, and regional material cycles. Her projects are built knowledge for a new relationship between time, money, and materials. The exhibition enables Kundoo’s lively architecture to be experienced sensually and is a call for doing architecture otherwise.

Opening: September 17, 2025, 7 p.m.