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.

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 expansive, real and imaginary. Presenting an evolving tapestry of unique facades, the home shifts with a boundless energy, unfolding outwards from its center.

The exhibition for the Chicago Cultural Center attempts to distill the design duo’s adaptive approach to the realization of this project. Totems is comprised of a row of three totems stacked with portions of the materials used in the Petralona House. Employing the totem as a vehicle to express the spiritual significance of these objects, this secondary act of bricolage serves to equalize any original differences in valuation of these materials, whether new, handmade or found. Opposite these totems is a wall of photographs, the History Wall, once again weaving together formal images of the completed home with depictions of historical and personal references––such as an ancient mosaic of a Greek vase and pictures of traditional Greek architecture. These images serve as a kind of referential map, tracing how the couple married their personal connection to Greece’s creative heritage with the economic conditions of the present day.

Providing one of the strongest responses to the theme of "Make New History" in the Biennial, Point Supreme’s installation would seem to suggest a powerful understanding of history, not as one centralized narrative, but rather as a collection of personal memory and desire.