In October 2015, the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial officially will open. “A platform for groundbreaking architectural projects and spatial experiments that demonstrate how creativity and innovation can radically transform our lived experience”, the CAB is a celebration of Chicago’s rich architectural past, present and future. The Chicago Cultural Center, Millennium Park, Water Tower Place, the Lake Michigan shoreline and 72 E. Randolph will all serve as sites for the presented works. Entitled The State of the Art of Architecture (after Stanley Tigerman’s symposium at the Graham Foundation in 1977), the Biennial seeks to generate thinking about architecture in our time.
Interestingly, the CAB does not feature the older generation of celebrities who have dominated the international architectural circuit in recent years – Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, Frank Gehry, Renzo Piano, Norman Foster, Jean Nouvel. The next generation is the focus – Spain’s Andres Jaque, Mexico’s Tatiana Bilbao, Denmark’s Bjarke Ingels and Japan’s Junya Ishigami and Sou Fujimoto, all born in the 1970s. David Adjaye’s exhibition at the AIC is well-timed, he is now 49.
The CAB has a very different dialogue than the Venice Architectural Biennial: the CAB will run on odd years whilst in Venice the exhibition is every even year. In Venice, the biennale is structured around a series of national pavilions; The CAB is able to concentrate on the local and the global.
For more information, make sure to visit Chicago Architecture Biennial’s website. This is a very big deal!
Chicago artist Theaster Gates seen here inside his Stony Island Arts Bank, a building he is turning into a cultural center and whose opening is timed with the Biennial.
Image courtesy of Chicago Tribune.
Additionally, Dutch photographer Iwan Baan has been commissioned to create a series based on Chicago’s residential, vernacular buildings.
The Rem Koolhaas designed tube for the Green Line on top of the McCormick Tribune Campus Center at IIT, photographed by Iwan Baan.
Image courtesy of The New York Times.
The Biennial will also feature the three architecture schools in town. Illinois Institute of Technology, University of Illinois at Chicago and the School of the Art Institute will each pair with a design firm to create a Lakefront Kiosk to celebrate Chicago’s architecture. A fourth kiosk will be designed and built by the winner of a design competition.
IIT, alma mater of our architect Ben Glaser, will partner with Pezovon Ellrichshausen, a Chilean art and architecture studio.
UIC will work with NLE, a Dutch architecture firm.
Finally, SAIC, alma mater of our Senior Designer Gosia Podosek, will team with Paul Andersen from Denver-based Indie Architecture and Paul Preissner of Chicago-based Paul Preissner Architects.
Arco House by Pezo von Ellrichshausen.
Image courtesy of Dezeen Magazine.
Bloomsbury Waterfront Development in Lagos, Nigeria, designed by NLE.
Image courtesy of NLE.
Two Barns, a temporary structure for the 2013 Biennial of the Americas designed by Paul Andersen and Paul Preissner.
Image courtesy of Architect.