[chicagoarchitecturebiennial]

Assaf Evron: The Sea Was Smooth, Perfectly Mirroring The Sky

The Israeli artist Assaf Evron uses photography and sculpture to investigate the optical qualities of everyday phenomena that constitute perception. The Sea Was Smooth is a deceptively simple series of photographs stemming from the artist’s interest in the aesthetic philosophy of Leon Battista Alberti, the fifteenth-century innovator of linear perspective. Evron created the images with the help of an X-Box Kinect gaming system, which casts a field of infrared light in order to detect motion in three dimensions. After carefully composing a series of still lives, Evron used an infrared camera to photograph both the objects themselves as well as the shimmering, violet blanket of light emitted by the Kinect. The Sea Was Smooth was exhibited at Andrea Meislin Gallery in New York City this Spring. Evron’s work will be on view at the Water Tower Gallery this fall as part of the Chicago Architecture Biennial.

[chicagoarchitecturebiennial]

Cape Town’s Wolff Architects Brings a Subtle Modernism to the South African Landscape

Wolff Architects is a design studio based in Cape Town, South Africa, concerned with developing an architectural practice of consequence through the mediums of design, advocacy, research, and documentation. The office is led by husband-and-wife couple Ilze and Heinrich Wolff. For the Inkwenkwezi Secondary School, located in an impoverished area of Cape Town, Wolff Architects sought to participate in local building traditions and employ conventional building techniques as a way to provide construction training for members of the community. It also participates in the culture of painting graphics on public buildings to announce their use. In addition, the school’s hall functions as both a space for school assembly and religious practice. This dual character allows the school to rent out the hall for a variety of neighborhood gatherings, including religious services. In this way, the hall becomes an income generator for the school already functioning on limited public funds. Prior to establishing Wolff, Heinrich led Noero Wolff Architects with Jo Noero. Wolff Architects, along with Jo Noero’s firm, Noero Architects, are participating in the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial this fall. 

[chicagoarchitecturebiennial]

On the Edge: Al Borde Pushes Outside the Comfort Zone to Build Both Structures and Communities

The Quito, Ecuador-based architecture office Al Borde seeks consistent solutions to common problems. The four-member team often works with low budget projects and takes a homespun approach to design, creating community-oriented structures in a manner that is profoundly populist and devoid of fixed dogmas. Perhaps the project that most typifies Al Borde's design ethos is its Esperanza, or Hope, series in Manabi, a coastal village in rural Ecuador. In 2009, they were asked by a local teacher to design a one-room schoolhouse and community center. Relying on traditional construction techniques and materials, including palm branches and wood, and enlisting the community to help, they executed the project with a budget of $200. Two years later, they completed an extension there for $700, Esperanza Dos. In 2013, they embarked on Ultima Esperanza—Last Hope—a program to teach villagers to be their own architects. This humble project was a finalist for the London Design Museum's 2015 Architecture Design of the Year awards, alongside projects by Frank Gehry and Herzog & de Meuron.

[chicagoarchitecturebiennial]

Sio2 arch’s Mind Bending Exhibition Design for the Spanish Pavilion’s “Interiors” at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale

Sio2 arch was founded by Esther Segura, Santiago Ibarra, Xavier Osarte and Lluis Ortega after ten years of fruitful collaboration under the name of F451. In 2014 they relaunched their collaborative practice, expanding its cultural profile with a wider and more international scope of work. For the Spanish Pavilion at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale curated by Iñaki Abalos, Lluis Ortega, Enrique Encabo, and Inmaculada El Maluenda, Sio2 arch created an interactive exploration of Spanish modernism throughout the last century. The multi-faceted display of ultra-high resolution spaces folded this historical viewpoint with more current issues like the influence of digital technology and the relationship between traditional and contemporary practice. Sio2 arch will participate alongside over 100 architects, artists, and designers at the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial this fall. 

[chicagoarchitecturebiennial]

Landon Bone Baker Architects Restore a Chicago Landmark to Create Housing for the Recently Homeless

Chicago-based office Landon Bone Baker Architects seeks a community-based approach, working closely with neighborhood organizations, not-for-profit associations, and developers of affordable housing. Harvest Commons Apartments, formerly known as the Viceroy Hotel, is an affordable residential and supportive services project and a historic and green rehabilitation on Chicago’s Near West Side. The six-story, terracotta- and brick-clad building is both a classic example of Art Deco architecture and an innovative model for community-based sustainable preservation. The revitalization of the landmark building included major restoration to the historic lobby and exterior façade; reconfigured residential floors to reduce the number of units from 150 to 89; green features, such as geothermal heating and cooling, a solar-thermal domestic hot water system, and extensive native planting; and a social enterprise café, an urban farm, and a teaching kitchen out of which Heartland Housing will provide classes to residents about nutrition and food preparation. Landon Bone Baker are taking part in “BOLD: Alternative Scenarios for Chicago” as part of the Chicago Architecture Biennial. Curated by Iker Gil of MAS Studio and MAS Context, the exhibition will showcase work by Chicago-based architects and will present new ideas and alternative development scenarios for the city.

[chicagoarchitecturebiennial]

Contact High: The Countercultural Visions of L.A.’s Environmental Communications 

Environmental Communications: Contact High is the first major exhibition of the prolific west coast media collective, Environmental Communications. The exhibition was organized at Columbia University GSAPP by Wark Wasiuta, Marcos Sánchez, and Adam Bandler, and is traveling to Chicago this fall for the Chicago Architecture Biennial. Formed by a group of young architects, photographers, and psychologists in the Venice Beach of the late 1960s, Environmental Communications honed an image practice that aimed to constitute a new visual syntax for the late-20th-century city. The group speculated that their “environmental photography” would alter architecture and transform the consciousness of architecture students via the university slide library. Organized into thematic slide sets with titles such as “Human Territoriality in the City,” “Ultimate Crisis,” and “Hardcore LA,” they experimented with the behavioral capacity of images as they pursued their goal of developing “systems of perception.” Through their media experiments, events and slide catalogs they positioned themselves as interpreters and purveyors of new trends, assembling a mass design imagery to resist the buildings and monuments that dominated architecture and its institutions.

[chicagoarchitecturebiennial]

Ultramoderne’s Lakefront Kiosk for the Chicago Architecture Biennial is the First of its Kind

Architecture studio Ultramoderne has completed its competition-winning Chicago pavilion, which was built using the largest lengths of timber that can be shipped across North America. Named Chicago Horizon, the pavilion was the winning design in the Chicago Lakefront Kiosk Competition, organized as part of the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial that opened to the public on October 3rd. Ultramoderne architects Aaron Forrest and Yasmin Vobis collaborated with structural engineer Brett Schneider, a senior associate at Guy Nordenson and Associates, on the project. Their aim was to create a wall-less pavilion with as large a roof as possible. The entire structure was built using cross-laminated timber (CLT)—a strong engineered wood formed by glueing together layers of lumber at right angles to each other. Its square 56-foot-wide roof is supported by just 12 columns. "This is the first time anything like this has been done in North America and likely it is the only type of structure like this in the world," says Schneider. The pavilion is located in Millennium Park, on Chicago's waterfront, where Forrest hopes it will become “part of the legacy of the Biennial.”

[chicagoarchitecturebiennial]

Sarah FitzSimon’s Ghostly House Installation Temporarily Inhabit’s Chicago’s Lakefront

A stark installation on the Chicago lakefront by artist Sarah FitzSimon, part of the Chicago Architecture Biennial, features the outline of a traditional two-story American house. The minimal structure, constructed from aluminum poles, has no roof, walls, nor cladding, leaving it intentionally open to the elements. Titled “House,” the project sits on a beach along Lake Michigan, partially submerged in water. ATOM-R, a Chicago-based art collective, staged a performance within FitzSimon’s work that "respond[ed] to the house by exploring how bodies are simultaneously liberated and contained within space.” House will remain installed on Ohio Street Beach until October 26th. 

[chicagoarchitecturebiennial]

Gramazio Kohler’s 3-D Rock Printer Constructs Intricate Architectural Columns 

For the next three months, visitors to the Chicago Cultural Center downtown will be greeted by a monolithic 13-foot rock formation installed as a part of the Chicago Architecture Biennial. What looks at first to be a naturally eroded rock formation is actually made up of thousands of artificial rocks held together only by string. Even more impressive: “Rock Print” was tediously assembled by a very precise robot. The project was a joint effort between Gramazio Kohler Research, ETH Zurich, and the Self-Assembly Lab at MIT to test the capability of a 3-D printing process to create an intricate architectural structure using inexpensive materials. To build the rock formation, the team created an algorithm that guided a robotic arm through the process of laying down nearly five miles of recycled textile string in a geometrically complex pattern. The robot alternated the string with layers of a loose granular material (made by heating and expanding crushed glass), which are crammed together tightly so that they hold their shape.

[chicagoarchitecturebiennial]

The MIT Self-Assembly Lab is Pioneering the Brave New World of “4D Printing”

MIT’s Self-Assembly Lab defines “self-assembly” as “ a process by which disordered parts build an ordered structure through local interaction.” In other words, the cross-disciplinary MIT team works to build materials and components that can then autonomously build themselves into larger structures. They have developed woods, polymers, balloons, magnets, and other materials that self-assemble in a variety of ways. Some are activated as they are submerged in water. Others are tumbled in cages like lottery balls until they find the right connection with other pieces. The Lab’s researchers believe that these prototype techniques could one day lead to major breakthroughs in a whole range of applied fields. For the Chicago Architecture Biennial this fall, members will be collaborating with the Gramazio Kohler research unit at ETH Zürich to debut a new method of self-assembly.

[chicagoarchitecturebiennial]

The Art of Living Lightly: All(zone)’s Light House Micro-dwellings at the Chicago Architecture Biennial

Bangkok studio All(zone) has conceived a small temporary home intended to be set up inside unfinished high-rise buildings in tropical cities. The project, called Light House, is featured in the Chicago Architecture Biennial, which opened on October 3 and continues to January 3, 2016. Encompassing 11.5 square metres, the boxy micro dwelling sits on a floor made of plastic-laminated plywood. The home's frame consists of a polyethylene-coated metal grid, which also serves as shelving inside the structure. Designed on a $1,200 budget, the dwelling was conceived in response to rising living costs in tropical cities such as Bangkok. The house is intended to be erected within unfinished high-rise buildings that are abandoned due to economic crashes or obsolete building systems – buildings that are often occupied by squatters. "The prototype house could lead to a new type of housing with less rigid materiality and energy," says the firm. 

[chicagoarchitecturebiennial]

The Chicago Architecture Biennial Opens This Saturday!

There are just 4 more days until the official opening of the Chicago Architecture Biennial! Starting October 3rd, we're taking over the Chicago Cultural Center along with a number of venues around the city. There will be more than 200 events held over the course of the Biennial in partnership with over 100 cultural institutions in the city and region, so stay tuned to find out what's coming up next. See you all in a few days!

[chicagoarchitecturebiennial]

Superstructure: Helmut Jahn’s Chicago Legacy

Although born and trained in Germany, Helmut Jahn has been living and practicing architecture in Chicago since the mid-1960s. His designs there have had a major impact on the urban landscape and some of the city’s major institutions, including IIT, the University of Chicago, and O’Hare International Airport. Jahn has said that his philosophy of innovation in design “has to do more with the elimination of the inessential, than inventing something new.” From the monumental, steel-frame atrium of the Thompson Center (top) down to a series of power stations designed for University of Chicago (bottom), Jahn’s preoccupation with structure has defined his frank, gestural approach to architectural form. JAHN will be featured alongside more than a dozen other local design offices at the Chicago Architecture Biennial as part of BOLD: Alternative Scenarios for Chicago, curated by Iker Gil of MAS Context.

[chicagoarchitecturebiennial]

We Know How to Order: Bryony Roberts, the South Shore Drill Team, and Mies van der Rohe

For the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial, architect Bryony Roberts and the South Shore Drill Team will be performing the site-specific "We Know How to Order" on October 1st and 2nd at Mies Van Der Rohe's Federal Center. The performance, a combination of high-energy drill routines infused with street choreography, responds to this iconic space through dynamic physical movement. 

Join the free event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1656648911279081/

[chicagoarchitecturebiennial]

Superpowers of Ten: A Performance by Andrés Jaque / Office for Political Innovation

For three days from October 1st through 3rd, Superpowers of Ten, an alternative version of Charles and Ray Eames’ film Powers of Ten, will be shown in Chicago for the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial. Created by architect Andrés Jaque/Office for Political Innovation, whose recent water filtering installation at MoMA PS1 won the Young Architects Prize, Superpowers of Ten transforms through live performance the narrative and ideas at the heart of the original Eames film.

Join the free event: https://www.facebook.com/events/473104882868687/

[chicagoarchitecturebiennial]

House of One: Kuehn Malvezzi Designs a Space in Berlin for Three Religions Under the Same Roof

The German architecture office Kuehn Malvezzi has won a competition to design a space as unique as it is improbable. Three different religious communities in Berlin, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim, are joining together to commission a shared structure that serve not only as a house of worship, but a center for learning and dialogue between faiths. The House of One will be built on the Petriplatz, a site at the nucleus of the old city that contains the foundations of some of its oldest churches. Kuehn Malvezzi’s design incorporates the forms of these historical structures as well as a space for viewing what remains of them. Kuehn Malvezzi will be displaying models and drawings of the project at the Chicago Architecture Biennial this fall.

[chicagoarchitecturebiennial]

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Iconic SC Johnson Wax Headquarters: Now Open Every Weekend

Located in Racine, Wisconsin, the SC Johnson and Son Administration Building and connected Research Tower are one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s most important statements about the nature of office buildings. For Wright, the Johnson Buildings represent a break from the Prairie style, infusing aesthetics from streamline modern into his materially rich and light driven vocabulary. Photos by the acclaimed architectural photographer Ezra Stoller, who captured the complex’s innovative structure and details, are shown above. 

For the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial, SC Johnson is making the iconic Frank Lloyd Wright-designed headquarters open for tours every Thursday to Sunday throughout the Biennial. Free shuttles transport visitors to Racine, Wisconsin, for the day to explore the SC Johnson complex, including the new Fortaleza Hall, designed by Foster + Partners. RSVP for the free shuttle and tour here.