08/26/2026
Grounds Grids Grammar Exhibition
by Paul Mosley
Now on display
Aug. 20 – Sept. 2
Armstrong Gallery
“Grounds Grids Grammar" examines territory as an idea produced over time through sovereignty, jurisdiction, cartography, and power. While architecture and urban design have largely treated territory as the substrate upon which buildings are made — a surface to be surveyed, divided, and improved — the exhibition traces the historical construction of that surface and tests an alternative: a territorial project in which ecological expansion, non-proprietary land tenure, and ethics of care prevail.
Through drawings and full-scale construction, the exhibition proposes a counterproposition for territory in architecture. Rather than subdividing land to intensify development, an adaptive grid subdivides most finely where land is most damaged, so that the grid's own geometry registers where repair is most needed.
That logic is tested at full scale in Pyra, a wildlife and controlled-burn monitoring structure under construction at the Westbrook Artists' Site in Winterset, Iowa, where a decade of controlled burns has converted former soybean and corn monoculture to endemic tallgrass prairie. Pyra appears here as a scale model, accompanied by aerial footage of the site, a nearby limestone surface mine, and an industrial silo complex.
The exhibition is by Paul Mosley, Assistant Professor of Architecture and Urban Design.
Pyra by Fields (Paul Mosley and Laure Nolte) with Kevin Lair, Iowa State University, and Seth Andrews. Scale model by Corbin Cunningham. Renderings by Joseph Perry. Supported by Kent State University's College of Architecture and Environmental Design, the URC/SURE Program, and the UTC. Footings donated by Perma-Column, LLC.
