Architecture and Art at the Chicago Architecture Biennial This Fall

The Chicago Architecture Biennial, which will take place September 16, 2017 – January 7, 2017, is an exhibition of more than 100 international architecture firms and artists. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who also served as White House Chief of Staff to former President Barack Obama, spoke recently at a breakfast where he announced the participants in the second Chicago Architecture Biennial.

James Welling, “8482,” 2016, from the series “Chicago, 2016-2017,” Courtesy the Artist and David Zwirner, New York and London

The Chicago Architecture Biennial is intended to foster discussion about the future of cities worldwide, as well as their role in the current political climate. The first such event became the largest international architecture event in North America, with attendance of participants from 30 countries and more than half a million visitors.

Mayor Emanuel spoke of “a major renaissance in cities right now, across the globe and at every level,” and that Chicago is an architectural mecca that should be central to that discussion.

Included in the discussion are broader areas of design, and urban planning as well as ways to honor the past while at the same time rethink public spaces and design to address the needs of a growing diverse population in major cities.

James Welling, 8183, 2016 from the series Chicago, 2016-2017, Courtesy the Artist and David Zwirner, New York/London

“I refer to Chicago as the most American of American cities,” Emanuel said. “It’s the capital of the heartland in America. And what better city to hold a conference such as the Chicago Architecture Biennial, he added, than a city that is home to the first skyscraper, to numerous schools of architecture, and that was the first place to re-imagine the city as a modern metropolis, following the Chicago fire of 1871.”

Mayor Emanuel made note that this conversation would take place around the world for all cities. “How do we look to the past, and draw our intellectual energy from that, and then look to the future and work together in rethinking this urban renaissance in a way that makes our cities not just places for great commerce, but for great public life,” he said.

“It’s a life that is balanced, and one that embraces the shared goals of tolerance, inclusion and thinking about what public space means in the modern world,” he said.

Recently the Chicago Architecture Biennial announced a group of special projects by designers, artists, and performers presented in partnership with five extraordinary venues in and around Chicago. These projects are part of Artistic Directors Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee’s vision for Make New History, which asks innovative designers and artists to reinterpret a series of historic spaces from contemporary perspectives.

The Philharmonic Hall of Szczecin by Barozzi / Veiga. Photo © Simon Menges.

What is interesting is that these projects and installations address various materials and how to use materials in developing microclimates, addressing environmental crises, exploring intimacy in space, and reinterpreting the past in a modern setting. From the Biennial’s materials, these are particularly relevant for our AEC readers:

Francois Perrin and SO–IL with Ana Prvački at the Garfield Park Conservatory

At the Garfield Park Conservatory, Biennial participant Francois Perrin will install an architectural experiment in the tropical microclimate of the Palm House entitled Air Houses: Design for a New Climate. The lightweight, fabric structure will offer a new perspective on environmental crisis by reinterpreting long-standing traditions of design in harmony with nature.

The Conservatory will also be the site of a poetic collaboration by architects SO–IL and artist Ana Prvački called L’air pour l’air. They have created an ensemble of air-filtering mesh enclosures, designed to be worn by musicians playing a composition for wind instruments by the composer Veronica Kraussas. The musical piece will debut during the Biennial’s opening week and the public will then be invited to learn more about mask/shelter enclosures, which are inspired by the plants in the Conservatory, during ongoing educational sessions taking place throughout the Biennial. The project touches on the continuities between people, objects, and nature through a medium as ubiquitous as air.

Gerard & Kelly at the Farnsworth House

Multidiscplinary performance artists Gerard & Kelly will bring a new chapter of their site-specific project, Modern Living, to the iconic Farnsworth House in nearby Plano, IL, designed in 1945 by Mies van der Rohe for the patron Edith Farnsworth. With public performances on September 16 and 17, the choreographed dance piece will delve into the sense of solitude that Farnsworth experienced there and propose new modes of intimacy grounded in architectural space and the theatrical encounter.

James Welling, 8554, 2006/17, from the series Chicago, 2016-2017, Courtesy the Artist and David Zwirner, New York/London.

The City Gallery in the Historic Water Tower

The Historic Water Tower arts space in downtown Chicago will host a video installation of Gerard and Kelly’s two previous chapters of Modern Living, which were staged at Phillip Johnson’s Glass House in New Canaan, CT, and the Rudolph Schindler House in West Hollywood, CA — homes that sheltered relationships as radical and experimental as their designs.

The gallery will also feature an exhibition of James Welling’s psychedelic, colorized images of the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) and Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive Apartments, both also by Mies van der Rohe. Welling’s layered, multiple-exposure images breathe new life into these modern masterpieces and suggest infinitely new ways of reinterpreting the past.

Tags: 3D, AEC, architects, architecture, building design, CAD, Chicago Architecture Biennial, collaboration, construction, design, engineering, engineers

Categories: 2D, 3D, AEC, AECCafe, architecture, BIM, collaboration, construction, rendering, simulation, site planning, sustainable design, video, visualization

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