CHICAGO ARCHITECTURE BIENNIAL
Travelled to Chicago with the Danish Arts Foundation to attend the opening of the city’s architecture biennial. For the first time, Denmark was represented at the event with ‘Cabbage Patch’, a project by the artists’ duo Gamborg/Magnussen. The Chicago biennial is the biggest architecture event in North America and attracts more than half a million visitors.
‘Emanating from the central exhibition at the Chicago Cultural Center and extending into the city, the 2019 Biennial — titled … and other such stories — features a series of new commissions, residencies, partner projects, and public programs.
Developed through a research-led approach and led by Artistic Director Yesomi Umolu with curators Sepake Angiama and Paulo Tavares, the biennial addresses the potency of space, architecture, and the natural world as they relate to four areas of inquiry: (1) No Land Beyond, which draws inspiration from indigenous approaches to nature, ecology, and landscape that transcend property ownership; (2) Appearances and Erasures, which explores both shared and contested memories in consideration of monuments, memorials, and social histories; and (3) Rights and Reclamations and (4) Common Ground, which foreground aspects of rights, advocacy, and civic purpose in architectural practice, including affordable and equitable housing.’