Archinect - News

Make New History: Same Old Criticism

2017-12-18T14:40:00-05:00

Many non-architects have found it difficult to understand the show, which is titled “Make New History” and displays more than 140 designs from over 20 countries at the Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington St. The wall labels, which are supposed to help viewers understand what they’re seeing, are often written in jargon-laced archi-babble. Without guides to translate, many visitors would be lost. It’s the equivalent of putting a hurdle between the audience and the material.

Disengaged from the public, inaccessible, and impenetrable are just some of the newly minted adjectives being used to describe Chicago's second Architecture Biennale, Make New History.

This should not come as a surprise, the show has had a lackluster reception on multiple fronts and while the premise of 'Make New History' sounded titillating to say the least, it called upon much of the same makes of the last history, and even further, participants of the previous Biennale to produce and make it.

Such is a challenge for Exhibitions, Biennials and Triennials, with the endless cacophony of manifestoes, criticality and production erupting within our discipline, it is not the presentation that is in need but engagement. What and how can the general public learn from the prolific production of 'vertical cities' or 'super models' if they have no way into the discussion or our insider perspective and thus are left with a sensation of an architectural exclusivity, narcissism and self procl...

2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial Spotlight: Brandlhuber and Christopher Roth probe the politics of property

2017-09-15T17:26:00-04:00

“Who owns what? And why?” Despite their apparent simplicity, these questions strike at the heart of the disparities and violences that mark the contemporary city. Raised by the architecture studio Brandlhuber and the artist Christopher Roth, they also summarize neatly the work on display: a single-channel video entitled The Property Drama.

Through stylishly-shot footage and Godard-esque titling, the film probes the ways that “property is used as a means of control.” In it, the filmmakers juxtapose a wide variety of responses and positions from various figures in architecture, urban design, and politics. Patrik Schumacher advocates for full privatization while Phyllis Lambert declares that “the land belongs to everyone.”

Screenshot from "The Property Drama" trailer.

The second film in a trilogy, The Property Drama follows Legislating Architecture, which premiered at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennial and looked at the “ways that legislation—from building codes to zoning laws—create...

2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial Spotlight: T+E+A+M reimagines the contemporary ruin

2017-09-15T17:26:00-04:00

By now, it’s a relatively familiar narrative: over the course of the last few decades, there's been a mass return to urban centers from their outskirts, resulting in a field of abandoned strip malls and big box stores. What to do with these contemporary “ruins,” however, remains an open question.

In their installation for this year’s Chicago Architecture Biennial, the Ann Arbor-based studio T+E+A+M has imagined a strategy of “redistribution,” in which the physical elements of one such big box store are “taken apart, moved around, piled up, and mixed with new construction to create alternative uses.” It’s the type of bricolage, informal building logic one often finds internationally but rarely within the United States. Brought here, it’s a refreshing change from the type of totalizing, imposed visions often associated with architectural proposals for abandoned suburban sites.

Image by author.

A mise en scène model, replete with faux vegetation and miniature benches, Ghostbox plays off...