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 socio-economic conditions that have made it what it is today, as the starting point for which to explore global issues beyond the built world. Participants from a wide range of disciplines—such as planning, visual art, policy making, education and activism—will look at how the city's role in civil rights, segregation, and housing movements have impacted urban development.
Beyond Chicago, the biennial will be informed by research initiatives in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Johannesburg, South Africa, and Vancouver, Canada, that have focused on how architecture can be used as a space for advocacy for social justice and as a form of protest. Along with co-curators Sepake Angiamo and Paulo Tavares, the team has identified four key topics the work will address: indigenous approaches to nature and land ownership, the social histories of monuments and memorials, rights and reclamations, and architecture’s civic purposes.
“We are thrilled that this year’s curatorial focus will open up the architectural conversation on key socio-political and environmental issues that shape our present reality and introduce new voices and perspectives" noted Biennial Executive Director Todd Palmer in a statement. "Through the dialogue they catalyze, we expect this Biennial to inform a collectively imagined future.”
The Chicago Architecture Biennial—the largest architecture and design exhibition in North America—will run from September 19th, 2019 to January 5th, 2020. The Chicago Cultural Center will serve as its central location with commissions, events, and programming spread throughout citywide locations.
4 Comments
is it too much to ask that we get an architecture biennial focused on... Architecture?
how quaint
It is too much to ask because saying “focus on Architecture” is so broad and vague it really means zilch.
If the forces that shape Architecture aren’t something you think are worthy why even post a comment?
Then again – this is almost everything except for the kitchen sink:
“indigenous approaches to nature and land ownership, the social histories of monuments and memorials, rights and reclamations, and architecture’s civic purposes”
“we expect this Biennial to inform a collectively imagined future”
“tyranny of newness” had such a powerful vagueness
As long as they don't charge admission, the Chicago Biennial is okay.
A percentage of the work shown is pretty good and another percentage of it is drivel.
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