“We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.” With this simple sentence, Winston Churchill offered a profound insight on our complex relationship to architecture. Just as we determine the architectural environments that form the backdrop of our lives, so those environments can greatly influence our experience and perception of the world.

You Are Here: Architecture and Experience brings together work by two artists who communicate the formative potential of architecture in very different ways. German photographer Candida Höfer’s lush color photographs of historic and contemporary cultural spaces encourage slow, sustained exploration of the meaning that builds through accumulation of detail. French-born Cyprien Gaillard employs both etching and video as he probes the history and legacy of the Modernist housing block. Equally but differently affecting, these two bodies of work draw the viewer into the space of the image with compelling intensity, situating the viewer here, in the realm of architectural experience.

You Are Here is organized by Tracy Myers, curator of architecture at the Heinz Architectural Center.