Making history: highlights from the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial
The second edition of the Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB) is the largest architecture and design exhibition in North America, showcasing the transformative global impact of creativity and innovation in these fields. Curated by Los Angeles firm Johnston Marklee, designers of the soon-to-be-renovated UCLA Department of Art Margo Leavin Graduate Art Studios, the biennial features over 141 practitioners from more than 20 countries addressing the 2017 theme “Make New History.” Included in the lineup are UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design faculty members Erin Besler, Andrew Kovacs, Jimenez Lai, and Sylvia Lavin.
"Chicago’s second Architecture Biennial, curated by architects Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee of LA-based architecture practice Johnston Marklee, sent out a challenge to a contemporary generation of architects to ‘Make New History’. The theme is drawn from Ed Ruscha’s artwork of the same name – a book with 600 blank pages – and is a comment on the ‘eternal present’ that we have found ourselves swimming around in, with the Biennial an attempt to cast new anchors back in time.
While modernism abstractly departed from history, and postmodernism abstractly returned to it, today we find ourselves absorbed in the present within parameters that have changed so drastically through technology that history often no longer feels like a necessary resource (sometimes science fiction feels like a better one).
Yet, the curators challenged their sample of international participants to look again; and not just look, but rediscover, reassess and rethink beyond reposted images, regurgitated models, re-edited memes. After all, history is hindered by the limitations of accessibility: confined by search engines, obscured by colonialism and biased by the routes of globalisation. Expanding the ‘entry points’ to history was a way to find a new understanding of the developments that have defined the chronology of architectural progression."— Chloe Veltman, Nov. 28, 2017
This post is an excerpt, read the full article at the Wallpaper Magazine website.