Archinect - News

Chicago Architecture Biennial announces 'Other Such Stories' as theme for 2019 edition

2019-02-06T13:54:00-05:00

Making its return later this year, the third edition of the Chicago Architecture Biennial will go beyond design to address questions of land, memory, rights and civic participation. Announced yesterday, the theme "...and other stories" has been picked by this year's artistic director, Yesomi Umolu, and her team as a way to examine how histories, landscapes, and communities undergird the built environment.

“Our approach to this edition of the biennial has evolved through conversations with architects, spatial practitioners, and everyday people in Chicago and other global locations, including through partnerships fostered in our research initiatives in the cities of Sao Paulo, Johannesburg, and Vancouver,” said Umolu. “Through these engagements, we have drawn out a myriad of stories about how lived experiences across global communities, cities, territories, and ecologies resonate with architectural and space-making practices.”

The biennial will take Chicago's urban history, and the so...

Over a half million visitors attended the second Chicago Architecture Biennial

2018-01-17T14:06:00-05:00

The recently concluded 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial saw over 550,000 visitors. Artistic Directors Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee, of the LA-based firm Johnston Marklee, selected 140 architects and designers from 20 countries to participate. Among the vast number of attendees the biennial also boasts engagement of more than 10,000 students.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced, "The second Chicago Architecture Biennial reinforced Chicago's reputation as the vanguard of architectural, art and design innovation on the national and international stage".

Offering over 273 public programs, the event featured exhibitions by the Alphawood Foundation, Graham Foundation, Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. The Biennial will return September 19, 2019 and run through January 5, 2020, again in line with EXPO CHICAGO.

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...

Are you bored yet?

2017-11-17T15:10:00-05:00

Its forms are basic, totemic: Euclidean shapes dredged from the long memory of the field. It sometimes relies on modules or grids. It’s often monochromatic. It’s post-digital, which means it rejects the compulsion to push form-making to its absolute limits that overtook architecture at the turn of the century. As a result, it sometimes looks ancient or even primordial. It never looks futuristic.

Famed LA Times architectural critic, Christopher Hawthorne, released his view of contemporary architecture that culminates in it being classified as boring, and yet, that might be exactly what the architectural discipline ordered. As a reaction to 'hyperactive form-making,' Hawthorne argues that contemporary architects are getting 'boring.'

One could understand that as an insult or derivative comment, but Hawthorne states that their work is well considered and measured and that the 'Room Temperature' of the work is just right but is also aware of the viability of such a project to be under question and scrutiny.

Johnston Marklee: Newness becomes a disease

2017-09-21T15:18:00-04:00

Christopher Hawthorne interviews Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee about this year's Chicago Architecture Biennial. The two reflect on the theme of the biennial—'Make New History'—and their role as curators.

Hawthorne: What attracted you to history as a guiding idea for this biennial?

Lee: We’re at a moment when we’re just coming out of this fascination with the new. I remember Rem Koolhaas, in [an interview] in the ’90s, somebody asked him, “Where do you think we are now?” And he said, “I think we’re waking up from the semantic nightmare of the ’80s.” So I was thinking, “What is the nightmare that we’re waking up from, if we had to think of the equivalent?” And at least from our point of view, being in L.A., in the schools, there has been a complete fascination with newness — new for new’s sake. To the point where there are architects who do really interesting projects and I would say, “You should also look at [German architect Erich] Mendelsohn,” suggesting it’s something they would b...

2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial Spotlight: Point Supreme collages together a home

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

Returning to the second edition of the Chicago Architecture Biennial is Athens-based architecture studio Point Supreme. Known for their signature rendering style of collage, which produce colorful tableaus weaving together historical elements, memories and dreams from their native city, the studio’s two-part installation in the Chicago Cultural Center displays the material manifestation of this speculative work.

Installation view of Point Supreme, Totems & History Wall, Courtesy of Chicago Architecture Biennial, Kendall McCaugherty © Hall Merrick Photographers.

Totems and History Wall construct the narrative for Petralona House, the personal home of the firm’s partners Konstantinos Pantazis and Marianna Rentzou. Designed and built during the recession in Greece, the home’s construction was defined by the assemblage of a variety of hand-made, found and gifted materials. Like their collages, the Petralona House seems to render a space which is at once personal yet familiar, local and ...

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...

Watch a video preview of this year's Chicago Architecture Biennial

2017-07-27T17:49:00-04:00

With a soundtrack that could be described as whimsical and an aesthetic outlook that encompasses both the old and the new, a video preview of 2017's Chicago Architecture Biennial (which will transpire simultaneously with EXPO CHICAGO this year) is now available for your viewing pleasure:

The Chicago Architecture Biennial announces special projects

2017-07-18T20:01:00-04:00

The 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial will be open to the public and on view from September 16, 2017, through January 7, 2018 at the Chicago Cultural Center, located in downtown Chicago.

The Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB) announces special projects, including a SO-IL and Ana Prvački collaboration and a Francois Perrin installation at the Garfield Park Conservatory, a new performance artwork by Gerard & Kelly at the Farnsworth House, and James Welling photographs and Gerard & Kelly videos at the City Gallery in the Historic Water Tower.

The Chicago Architecture Biennial to partner with six museums and institutions to get visitors to explore beyond downtown Chicago

2017-04-13T12:12:00-04:00

The Chicago Architecture Biennial, curated this year by the Los Angeles-based studio Johnston Marklee, has announced that it’s teaming up with six museums and institutions that will serve as “Community Anchor” sites. In short, these sites will host events, exhibitions and programming intended to bring the Biennial audience out to other parts of the city, and to encourage visiting Chicago’s historic museums. Funded by the Chicago Community Trust, the Community Anchor program “confirms the Chicago Architecture Biennial’s commitment to being a city-wide initiative by expanding beyond downtown,” according to a press release.

The museums and institutions that have partnered with the Biennial are: The Beverly Arts Center, DePaul Art Museum, DuSable Museum of African American History, Hyde Park Art Center, the National Museum of Mexican Art, and the National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture.

“There is no better place than the City of Chicago to come together, share ideas, and focus on...

16 designers to display new "Tribune Tower" models at the 2nd Chicago Architecture Biennial

2017-03-07T19:41:00-05:00

The 1922 contest drew 263 entries from 23 countries and led to the construction of a landmark neo-Gothic skyscraper. In 1980, Chicago architects Stanley Tigerman and Stuart Cohen organized a "Late Entries" version of the legendary contest...Now, the curators of this year's Chicago Architecture Biennial are putting together what might be called the "Late Late Entries" to the Tribune Tower competition.

Although the names of the sixteen designers picked to create a new "Tribune Tower" at the Chicago Architecture Biennial haven't been announced quite yet, according to this article their designs are already being value-engineered in order to be as feasible as possible for potential construction. Whichever design may ultimately go on to the big time of 1:1 scale, the Biennial will be a delightful experience for all of those who still enjoy enormous physical models of both the built and the unbuilt variety:

In addition to the 16 new versions of Tribune Tower, the curators are commissioning two other 16-foot-tall models of designs for the skyscraper from early in the last century. One is a famous, columnlike version by the Austrian architect Adolf Loos that was part of the 1922 competition. The other, which was not officially entered, is a gridded modernist design by the German architect and urban planner Ludwig Hilberseimer.

2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial participants announced

2017-03-06T13:14:00-05:00

Preparations for the second Chicago Architecture Biennial are in full swing, with the big reveal of the 2017 participants today. Titled “Make New History” and with Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee as Artistic Directors, the 2017 roster has the names of over 100 firms — many of them well-known — representing over 20 countries. The 2017 CAB will take place at the Chicago Cultural Center and additional sites across the city from September 16 through January 7, 2018.

Building upon the themes and ideas presented in the successful 2015 edition, the 2017 biennial will showcase a diversity of architectural work from across the globe and will focus on “examining the underpinnings of this resurgence of historical interest” and “the efforts of contemporary architects to align their work with versions of history.”

“We hope to examine, through the work of the chosen participants, the continuous engagement with questions of history and architecture as an evolutionary practice,” Sharon Johnston says.

Her...

Perkins+Will proposes 80-story timber skyscraper in Chicago

2016-10-13T13:56:00-04:00

As part of its ongoing Riverline community project, Perkins+Will has proposed an entirely conceptual 80-story, 300 unit residential skyscraper made from timber called the River Beech Tower.

Announced 145 years after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, this proposed tower would feature a massive central atrium and an aluminum veneer over the exposed diagonal lattice timber beams. While engineers say it is structurally possible, Perkins+Will is currently trying to figure out just how much it would cost to build.

The River Beech Tower distinguishes itself by being one of the tallest wooden structures currently proposed; for a round-up of other tall wooden structures, take a look at these recent news stories:

Johnston Marklee announced as the artistic director of the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial

2016-09-21T12:46:00-04:00

The Chicago Architecture Biennial and Mayor Rahm Emmanel announced the curators of the second iteration of the Biennial: the Los Angeles-based firm Johnston Marklee. The studio, which comprises Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee, will be assisted by Todd Palmer of the National Public Housing Museum, who has been named Executive Director.

The second edition of the Biennial will take place from September 16-December 31, 2017. The two major supporters of the last Biennial will continue their patronage of the event. SC Johnson will provide $2.5 million, while BP will give $1 million. Like last year, the Biennial will be centered in the Chicago Cultural Center in downtown Chicago.

"The Chicago Architecture Biennial's return in 2017 confirms Chicago as an architectural hub," states Mayor Emanuel in the press release. "Last year's edition was a resounding success, and I'm pleased to see the great planning and support for the second Biennial, which will be even better. Not only is the Biennial's r...