14. septiembre 2017
AGENdA installation (All photographs by John Hill/World-Architects)
The Chicago Cultural Center, the main venue for the Chicago Architecture Biennial, is graced with a few awkward corridors from renovations being done over the long lifespan of the late-19th-century building. As part of CAB these linear spaces have been reimagined as exhibition spaces of note.
In 2015, during the inaugural CAB, Brooklyn's SO-IL activated one of these spaces – a ramp leading to the building's Tiffany-dome-capped Preston Bradley Hall – with Passage, a majestically mundane design made from metal studs. Their installation had remained since 2015 and was kept in place by 2017 CAB artistic directors Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee.
SO-IL installation
A couple floors above Passage is MIES Understandings by Medellín, Colombia's AGENdA with Camilo Echavarría and Camilo Echeverri. As described by the architects, "Disciplinary problems – for example the [modern] period's fascination with see-through glass facades – in the tropics transformed into questions of veiling rather than transparency." Therefore the corridor, which faces glass walls on either side, is lined with velvet curtains printed with Echavarría's tropical graphics. Curved sections break up the long corridor and create intimate spaces for looking at Echeverri's photographs of the Colombian landscape.
AGENdA installation
Lastly, the first-floor corridor is given over to a portion of Jesús Vassallo’s A Love of the World, which consists of photographs by Scott Fortino, David Schalliol, James Welling, and others. A rhythm is created in the linear space through the introduction of glazed-CMU portals designed by architects Paul Andersen and Paul Preissner. Recalling the architecture of Chicago public schools and other relatively vernacular city buildings, the duo's installation is especially fitting when seen juxtaposed with David Schalliol’s photographs of the recent demolition of the city’s public housing.
