“Suite Fantastique,” the Wexner Center’s newest art exhibition, opened last Friday with an exhibition preview, special screenings of “The Predator” and a late-night student party with live music by DJ Spooky. The exhibit will run until April 15.This design arts extravaganza features “Perfect Acts of Architecture,” an exhibition of drawings created between 1977 and 1987 by internationally renowned architects. Each set of drawings explores this slow economic era when new building was curtailed by addressing the key debates of the time, from the loss of meaning to the radical reorganization of social life. The five architects – Daniel Libeskind, Peter Eisenman, Thom Mayne, Rem Koolhaas, and Bernard Tschumi – fueled the intellectual scene with debates involving philosophy, criticism and social thought.Daniel Libeskind, born in Poland and living in Berlin, has his works “Micromegas” and “Chamber Works” on display. “Micromegas” was inspired by the history of modern drawing, but is a product of originality. “Chamber Works” struggles with the question of how ideas become universal – timeless and placeless. These drawings are a haphazard mixture of signs, symbols and scratches from Libeskind’s life. Peter Eisenman’s “House VI Transformation Collage” is the most famous in a series of 11 houses. He generated hundreds of drawings for the project and many are displayed at this exhibition. Eisenman wanted to develop a type of architecture that was not based solely on function. These houses demonstrate his esoteric theories. Eisenman is also the designer of the Columbus Convention Center.Thom Mayne, whose ideas are often imitated by architects and students, shapes his architectural vision through his fascination with machines and mechanisms and with the part over the whole. On display are his works “Morphosis,” drawings for a house he imagined, and the “Kate Mantilini Drodel,” a drawing-model consisting of a series of etched glass blocks stacked together to create a virtual model of the design in space. Rem Koolhaas’ solution to revitalize architecture as an instrument of social and political change was to explore its revolutionary role in the city. The “Exodus” project, or “The Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture,” is a series of collages that portray the social and political upheavals of the 1960s, mixing freedom with irony into architecture.Bernard Tschumi’s four “Manhattan Transcripts” – “The Park,” “The Street,” “The Tower” and “The Block” – tell murder mysteries and other stories using traditional architectural techniques such as drawing, blended with collage, storyboarding, diagramming and strip films. These illustrative narratives are created to resemble buildings.”The drawings in the middle section of the exhibit displayed here have a critical commentary that I feel is important to mention,” said artist Don Bates, the fill-in moderator at Saturday’s symposium.In the back of the exhibit rests “The Predator,” a creation by painter Fabian Marcaccio and architect Gregg Lynn. The two are the co-recipients of the 2000-01 Wexner Center Residency Award. “The Predator” is a plastic creature, a mixture of painting and architecture. This large form, thirty feet wide and 10 feet high, is large enough at certain points that visitors can walk into it, and are encouraged to do so. The Predator was created by animation software and manufactured with computer assistance.Scattered throughout the exhibit are the 21 late-modern and post-modern works of the late Scott Burton. The Scott Burton furniture on display includes chairs and tables that employ a vast array of forms and techniques. The chairs are made out of stone, granite, lava and steel and are highly acclaimed by critics.”The Burton furniture was my favorite part of the exhibit,” said Lauren Warner, a junior in speech and hearing. “I think it is an excellent example of post-modern artwork.” Warner found out the hard way that the visitors could not actually use the chairs as furniture.The opening party kicked off the art exhibit, but the events for “Suite Fantastique” went into weekend-long festivities. Friday night’s opening party wrapped up with the late-night student party with DJ Spooky, and Saturday ended with the symposium.The symposium “Technologies of World Making” included a panel of respected speakers, some of whom are exhibition participants. The symposium discussed how the world of art, which was previously immersed in drawing methods, is shifting in this high-tech world to that of digital methods. The discussion was in two parts. The morning session discussed drawing, and the afternoon discussed digital methods.The symposium mixed discussion with visual and audible examples of the artists work and their opinions and critiques of the debate. The panels expanded generations of perspectives, giving light to some interesting views on each issue.”I felt that the symposium was a crucial part in understanding the exhibition and the thought processes that go into these artists’ work,” said Joe McMann of Boston, Mass. These festivities are just the beginning of the art extravaganza. “Suite Fantastique” also includes workshops, Family Day, screenings, guided tours and a lecture series. All lectures are free and will host many provocative architects and innovative designers. The first of the series is Feb. 8 at 7 p.m. with Rem Koolhaas in the Mershon Auditorium. Future lecture times and speakers as well as any other additional information can be found at www.wexarts.org.