Design fairs are crawling with collectors ready to drop tens of thousands of dollars on objects that promise immediate gratification. Case in point: beaded sculptures of mushrooms and animals by designers Nikolai and Simon Haas sold out in the first half hour of Design Miami on December 2 for up to $150,000 apiece. But for architects, nothing happens in a half hour. That may be the lesson of Unbuilt, an installation by Harvard's Graduate School of Design outside the Design Miami tent. It consists of pink foam models of 198 unrealized buildings by students and faculty, raised on a steel frame. The intent is honorable, but the finished installation reduces buildings of different scales, functions, and materiality to tabletop objects. The school's dean, Mohsen Mostafavi, pointed out that signs direct visitors to the projects' websites. "It's an architectural archive masquerading as a pavilion," he said.
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