About — a42

A42是一个在建筑与艺术的交汇界面上工作的小型独立工作室。主持设计师常蓝先后接受了建筑与当代艺术的训练——她毕业于柏林工业大学建筑系与中国美术学院当代艺术与社会思想研究所。她曾参与雅安地震重建、上海迪士尼乐园等不同尺度的建筑实践，也以策展人身份策划和参与过“行动中的田野”“再野实验室”“方志小说:地方体”“地方音景:苏州的声音地理”“ Hyundai Blue Prize 2020”等项目。目前阶段，A42的研究与实践聚焦于展示机制及展览空间。
A42 is a small independent studio working at the intersection of Architecture and Art. Its principal designer, Chang Lan, was trained in both architecture and contemporary art—she studied at the Department of Architecture at TU Berlin and the Institute of Contemporary Art & Social Thoughts at the China Academy of Art. She has contributed to architectural projects of varying scales, from the Ya’an earthquake reconstruction to Shanghai Disneyland, and has curated or co-curated projects such as Open Field in Action, Rewilding Lab, Gazetteer-Novel: kiss & ride, Soundscape: The Sonic Geography of Suzhou, and the Hyundai Blue Prize 2020. At this stage, A42’s research and practice focus on the mechanisms of display and the spatial design of exhibitions.

42出自道格拉斯·亚当斯的《银河系漫游指南》:超级电脑“深思”用750万年的时间算出了“关于生命、宇宙以及一切的终极问题”的答案——42。但没人知道“终极问题”到底是什么。A42借此隐喻自身的方法论立场:在“展示时代”，展览空间不仅是物理容器，而是策展语境、艺术生产与观众经验之间的生成场。答案从不封闭，问题始终在场。空间叙事在形式与内容的多层编排、在观众感知与语境再生产的交错中展开，成为显化作品—观众—时代关系的实验性平台。A42因此保持对艺术、空间、体验及其相互作用的开放态度，将每一次实践视为重新提出问题的契机，而非完成答案的终点。
The name “42” comes from Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, in which the supercomputer “Deep Thought” takes 7.5 million years to calculate the answer to the “Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything”: the number 42. Yet no one knows what the ultimate question actually is. A42 adopts this as a methodological metaphor: in the “Era of Display,” the exhibition space is not merely a physical container but a generative field where curatorial contexts, artistic production, and audience experience intersect. The answer is never closed; the question is always present. Through layered orchestrations of form and content, through the interplay of perception and contextual reproduction, spatial narratives unfold as experimental platforms that render visible the relations between work, audience, and era. In this sense, A42 maintains an open attitude toward art, space, and experience, treating each practice not as the completion of an answer but as an opportunity to pose the question anew.