As critical reaction to the 2019 Chicago Architecture Biennial continues to pour in, Archinect has collected some critical highlights from a collection of design writers and critics. (See here for Archinect’s 2019 CAB picks.)

And while this year’s takes on the biennial have been relatively level-headed, the entire affair was kicked off with a searing bit of friendly fire from multiple sources. 

For one, the recent opening of ArchiteXX’s Now What?! Advocacy, Activism & Alliances in American Architecture since 1968 exhibition at the Co-Prosperity Sphere in Chicago was launched as an act of opposition to the Chicago Architecture Biennial itself. The group is officially boycotting CAB due to the financial sponsorship of the event by fossil fuel corporation BP. Though the Now What?! exhibition is open roughly concurrently with CAB, it is officially unaffiliated. 

That’s not all—Before the event, titled ...and other such stories, opened to the public, Blair Kamin, architecture critic for The Chicago Tribune, filed a controversial column that questioned the ethics underpinning the types of press junkets that accompany international art and architecture openings like CAB. For the uninitiated: major events like the Chicago Architecture Biennial are often foregrounded by press previews that sometimes see event organizers pay for airfare and hotel costs for visiting critics and journalists. In an era marked by the dwindling finances—and prestige—of legacy publications, increasingly independent journalists and critics rely on these types of junkets to gain access to events and to help cover costs. The arrangement, according to Kamin, potentially calls into question the honesty of the work produced by these journalists. Kamin writes, “Should consumers trust the reporting and criticism of journalists whose travel costs are paid for by the event they’re covering?” 

As might be expected, Kamin’s thoughts in the column touched off controversy within the architecture community. Specifically, Kamin received push-back to the piece from several architecture critics, including Mimi Zeiger, who said Kamin’s critiques are “hugely ungenerous to his fellow critics, reflecting his privilege/power while casting shade on the ethics of others.” Writing via Twitter, Zeiger added, “FWIW, I've written both negatively & positively on CAB wo PR pressure.” 

Back on Twitter for this: @blairkamin on junkets is hugely ungenerous to his fellow critics, reflecting his privilege/power while casting shade on the ethics of others. FWIW, I've written both negatively & positively on CAB wo PR pressure https://t.co/jBtF7WqTMJ
— mimi zeiger (@loudpaper) September 17, 2019

The conversation took a turn in the wrong direction when Kamin retorted, “I've raised questions that make you and other free-lancers uncomfortable. That much is clear from your agitated, overheated response.” The patronizing, gaslighting comments were not taken lightly by Zeiger or others, though a few onlookers did manage to turn the exchange into an opportunity to have fun at Kamin’s expense.  

Um, so is someone on the whole “Agitated, Overheated Woman” t-shirt game? Because I’m XL and all-in on it https://t.co/Yv3vy2mSv1
— Gina Ford (@ginamariefordLA) September 21, 2019

In a pointed rebuttal of Kamin’s column, Curbed urbanism editor Alissa Walker writes, “to insinuate that other journalists somehow can’t be ‘trusted’ because they don’t have the same level of access is a troubling message in a field overwhelmingly dominated by white male voices. Being paid to write in-depth, nuanced architecture criticism by a publication that gets first dibs on stories and can fund your trip remains an exclusive, paywalled club of which women and critics of color have been largely locked out. Reader beware.”

The conversation effectively foregrounded the Chicago Architecture Biennial overall, as many of its exhibitions serve to annotate, disclaim, and footnote a collection of conveniently ignored truths and histories embodied by the built environment. In that vein, criticism of the actual exhibitions took on a more somewhat more staid perspective, though a general lack of flashy images and installations associated with the biennial gave many critics reason to pause. 

Writing for Dezeen, critic Mimi Zeiger has mixed feelings about the biennial’s output, overall, despite some refreshing installations that lend “a deepened sense of architecture's complicity, rather than it's saviour complex” with regards to larger society. Summarizing the exhibition program, Zeiger writes: “Within the halls of the Chicago Cultural Center, notions of visibility, surfacing, and transparency play out in both the strongest and weakest presentations. This makes for an uneven and not particularly photogenic display.” According to Zeiger, the exposition suffers from an “under-designed feeling” resulting from the fact that “the scaling back [from more flashy topics and installation formats] has left many circulation areas not only free of artworks, but also with little to remind visitors that this is a multi-million dollar architecture exposition.” The emphasis of text over eye-candy in the exposition made some installations “impenetrable” for Zeiger, while other exhibitions left the critic asking “what are we left with when architecture is stripped of its spatiality, materiality and aesthetics?”

Zeiger also questions the reasoning for the relatively artist-heavy showing that is somewhat slim in terms of its contributions from bonafide architects relative to previous years, writing that the notable absence “leaves an uncomfortable question: were the curators simply unaware of these projects or were they deliberately avoiding architects as central figures in an architecture biennial?”

In his own, mostly positive, review for The Chicago Tribune, Blair Kamin describes CAB as “an exhibition that revels in digging below the surface to reveal disturbing narratives” by blending “a searing critique of the environmental consequences of free-market capitalism with visions of a more equitable, sustainable future.” Highlights for Kamin include the mixed-media installation by Chilean architects and scholars Alejandra Celedon, Nicolas Stutzin and Javier Correa that delves into the “disturbing link between the free-market policies championed by the renowned Chicago economist Milton Friedman and the suburban sprawl that proliferated outside their home city of Santiago, Chile,” as well as the “massive photo-mural of the Cook County Jail, by Chicago artist Maria Gaspar” that “shows how the building’s concrete walls brutalize people on the outside as well as the inside.”

Summing up his thoughts, Kamin writes, “So, go, despite—or rather because of—the disruptive sensations the show is likely to produce. The explanatory wall text is, for the most part, written in lucid English, not the ‘archi-babble’ that bewildered crowds at the first two biennials. The theme is equally clear: For better and for worse, architecture and all aspects of design shape our identity, our memories, and how we relate to each other (or don’t).”

Rowan Moore, writing in The Guardian, said that the program CAB artistic director Yesomi Umolu has put together combines “sometimes grim histories with inspiring reactions to them.” For Moore, highlights included the Chicago Architectural Preservation Archive’s Mecca Flats Archives installation at Crown Hall on the Illinois Institute of Technology campus, Sweet Water Foundation’s Re-Rooting + Redux installation, as well as MASS Design Group’s Gun Violence Memorial Project, the latter two being highly rated among many reviews of the biennial. 

Anjulie Rao, writing in The Chicago Reader highlights the 2019 CAB offerings as a relative breath of fresh air when compared to previous runs of the event. Rao writes that this year’s showcase presents “something different, exciting, and deeply uncomfortable: architecture as a form of power,” and that this focus, counter to previous, more academic and star-studded iterations of the biennial, at least attempts to paint a more complete picture of how architecture and Chicago intersect. For Rao, who also covered the Biennial’s 2017 run for The Chicago Reader, the 2019 showcase “inspires the public to see architecture and the building of cities as a part of a political process in which they have a megaphone.” 

A favorite of this critic is the Settle Colonial City Project led by Ana Maria León, Andrew Herscher, and the American Indian Center. Rao writes, “The project's premise is a perfect example of evolved architecture programming: celebrating beautiful buildings is a skin-deep practice; a thorough airing of problematic histories of buildings and the people who made them is greatly needed.” Another highlight for Rao is the Community Futures Lab, a story-focused installation created by Black Quantum Futurism Collective that uniquely addresses gentrification and displacement as architectural issue through an emotional lens, according to Rao. 

A lowlight? Gamborg/Magnussen’s Cabbage Patch the Garfield Park Conservatory, a tone-deaf installation that exists as “another reminder of how easily architects can enter a community and erase that community's history by focusing on the white, European figure within their field.” 

The verdict, if there is one, is that this year’s curators have, at the very least, invigorated architectural discourse with a sense of nuanced social urgency that was perhaps missing from years prior. From the concerns over who funds—and who gets paid to write about—CAB to the program’s efforts to expose the ways in which buildings and design are often parties to injustice, the 2019 Chicago Architecture Biennial both intentionally and unintentionally touches on some of the most vexing issues architects face today. 

As the run of the biennial continues, and the event’s associated programming initiatives take shape, it will be interesting to see how these critiques hold up and whether Chicago’s rich and complicated relationship to the issues that surround the built environment becomes more or less legible to the general public.