We all know that wonders no longer exist. They belong to a distant past. Nobody builds sanctuaries or colossal statues in 2025, right? And yet, to our great astonishment, these things are right here, before our eyes. There are many of them—and they are very, very large.

The world, as a factory of vast and inexplicable buildings, has not ceased its activity. The sacred fire of monument building has not been extinguished. One only has to open their eyes. Every year, during the mourning period of Ashura, twenty-two million Shia pilgrims walk from Najaf to Karbala. Along the seventy-five kilometers of the route, temporary installations are built. In 2017, a new roof was completed for the mausoleum of Imam Husayn. Every year, two million Tamils take part in the Thaipusam rites at the Batu Caves in Kuala Lumpur. Every year in Munich, huge tents are erected to host Oktoberfest, a folk festival that was first held to celebrate the marriage of the King of Bavaria.

It is from phenomena such as these that the exhibition Wonders of the Modern World takes its cue.

Finstral Studio Friedberg presents the exhibition curated by Pier Paolo Tamburelli and Anna Livia Friel, featuring works by Giovanna Silva, Giulio Squillacciotti, Werner Feiersinger, and Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach. Open free to the public from October 9, 2025, to March 30, 2026, the exhibition explores several “wonders of the modern world”: extraordinary places where vast crowds gather to celebrate collective rituals.

The project stems from research carried out by the Department of Gestaltungslehre and Design (Pier Paolo Tamburelli, Aleksandra Budaeva, Anna Livia Friel, Agustina Josefa Labarca Gatica, Ernst Pfaffeneder, Patrick Pregesbauer, Gerhard Schnabl, Adam Sherman) at the Technical University of Vienna and presents a previously unseen atlas of contemporary ritual landscapes. After its first chapter at Fondazione ICA Milano in spring 2025, the exhibition now comes to Germany in an expanded version.

Wonders of the Modern World presents nine glass architectural models, built to scale and lit from within, accompanied by sixteen photographs by Giovanna Silva documenting the relationship between crowds and built space. A film by Giulio Squillacciotti offers a unified vision of the wonders, weaving together the different scenarios into a continuous narrative. The exhibition also includes two engravings by Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach from his Entwurff Einer Historischen Architectur (1721), as well as Anubis (2023), a sculpture by Werner Feiersinger.

The exhibition invites viewers to observe modern architecture in its most spectacular and contradictory aspects, offering a reflection on the relationship between architecture, ritual, and collectivity. The models on display represent the Great Mosque of Touba (Senegal), the Batu Caves in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), the Sanctuary of Fátima (Portugal), Mount Rushmore (United States), Oktoberfest in Munich (Germany), the Sambadrome in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), the Basilica of Notre Dame de la Paix in Yamoussoukro (Ivory Coast), the Chronicle of Georgia Monument in Tbilisi (Georgia), and the Coptic Church of Muqattam in Cairo (Egypt).

Accompanying the exhibition is a monographic issue of the architecture magazine ARCH+ Zeitschrift für Architektur und Urbanismus, entirely dedicated to the Wonders of the Modern World research. Published in a bilingual edition (German/English), the volume brings together drawings, photographs, and critical texts, delving into the themes of the research and presenting the “wonders of the modern world” through an interdisciplinary lens. The publication will be available for consultation in the exhibition.