The Chicago Architecture Biennial has just finished their presentation week and it’s now full blast with it’s great program. Here are last week’s highlights:
1.EXPO CHICAGO
Short and intense, this collection of Modern and Contemporary Art only takes place during 5 days, the first of which is only open to press and VIP. A very “international” event with 25 countries and 56 different cities represented within a 135 of mostly North American Art Galleries. However, it’s huge selection of mostly contemporary art was really interesting, with what I have interpreted as political references (picture below), and more experiential installations. However, if you are really interested in art next year (since today was it’s last day), you should go any day other than opening. The interest on Wednesday shifted from Art to People´s Outfits though.
EXPO CHICAGO Official Press Release
2. SOM: Engineering x [Art + Architecture]
Following the presentation of “Worlds Voices” by Jaume Plensa on Sunday 9/10 at the ACE Hotel; this exhibition opened it’s doors on Thursday 9/14. The exhibit is clearly designed by architects for architects. There is an experiential aesthetic to the way it’s laid out. Entering through a dark room with video projection, you then walk into a white box where models and hand drawn walls become the center of attention. The center of the exhibition is the 30 models that SOM built of their tallest towers, past, present, and future!
Even though I was expecting a better documentation of the Burj Khalifa’s World Voices, which is set aside in a corner; it’s a beautiful exhibit to visit in the West Loop. It will be open until January 7th, 2018 at 345 N Morgan St. The exhibition was organized in collaboration with Mana Contemporary Chicago.
2017-0910-ChiArchitectureBiennial_PressRelease
3. CHICAGO ARCHITECTURE BIENNIAL OPENING NIGHT
Architects know how to throw a party! It was a great event, where exhibition & fun came together seamlessly. There is much left to see as there was too much drinking and eating involved on Friday, and I am planning on breaking down each exhibition individually during the length of the Biennial, but for starters the highlights are the following:
My favorite: the Tribune Tower models by different architects. Though there is a plain white 16-foot rhomboid column, there are interesting models like Tatiana Bilbao’s crazy tower, interesting from both far away and close up.
My least favorite: the unnecessary big model fruit fruit of the collaboration between SANAA & IIT. It takes up an entire room for no reason at all, just to include a couple of randomly shaped mountain in the middle of a sparse campus white on white model.
Keep coming for more weekly posts on CAB’s events.
