Cutting across the Chicago Architecture Biennial: Re-ordering Mies in "We Know How to Order"

2015-10-15T19:23:00-04:00

For a highly-limited run during the Chicago Architecture Biennial's opening weekend, Mies van der Rohe's federal plaza became the stage for a performance foreign to most central business districts: a drill team exercise. Conceived by Bryony Roberts (of the Oslo and Los Angeles-based Bryony Roberts Studio) and choreographed by Asher Waldron (of the South Shore Drill Team in Chicago), the drill team's performance is an extension of Roberts' practice in the emerging architecture discipline of experimental preservation.

Titled "We Know How to Order," the performance elaborates and re-contextualizes the idea of "ordered" space within the public realm, showing how the concept of rigid structures – including both the imposing facades of Mies' plaza buildings and the tight coordination of the drill team's movements – may become elastic within a given space. Scored by a mixture of Philip Glass and House music, and followed by the undeniable intoxication of watching impressive displays of pre...

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Cutting across the Chicago Architecture Biennial: Re-ordering Mies in "We Know How to Order"