At the Chicago Architecture Biennial, T+E+A+M Deconstructs the Big-Box Store as a Post-industrial Community Space

2017-12-28T15:00:00-05:00

This article was originally published on the blog of the Chicago Architecture Biennial, the largest platform for contemporary architecture in North America. The 2017 Biennial, entitled Make New History, will be free and open to the public between September 16, 2017 and January 7, 2018.

The Amnesias of "Make New History"

2017-09-27T10:30:00-04:00

Before there was Mies, there was Mecca. Built originally as a hotel for the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, the Mecca Apartments, which once occupied the site of the now-heralded IIT campus in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood, served as a cultural epicenter for the city’s Black community. This was a community formed primarily by participants of what is called “the Great Migration,” one of the largest mass internal migrations in history. Between 1916 and 1970, 1.6 million people fled the American South, where they faced Jim Crow laws, racist ideology, and widespread, institutionalized murder (nearly 3,500 Black people were lynched between 1882 and 1968). But when they arrived in Chicago and other Northern cities, they were met with similar instances of racism, segregation, and violence. Places like the Mecca Apartments served as rare shelter. So when, under the guise of so-called “urban renewal,” the Mecca Apartments were slated for demolition to make room for the IIT campus,...

Archinect - Features

At the Chicago Architecture Biennial, T+E+A+M Deconstructs the Big-Box Store as a Post-industrial Community Space

The Amnesias of "Make New History"