Chicago Architecture

Chicago Architecture Biennial has half a million attendees

Chicago Architecture Biennial 2015: organisers of the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial have counted more than 500,000 visitors and the city has renewed its commitment to host another edition in 2017.
“The first-ever Chicago Architecture Biennial was an unequivocal success, exceeding our expectations for attendance and bolstered Chicago’s reputation as the vanguard of architectural thinking on the national and international stage,” said Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
The Chicago totals far exceed those of the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, which counted 228,000 visitors.
Writing in Dezeen, Sam Jacob hailed the biennial as being “rooted in the visionary, imaginative tradition (rather than history) of Chicago itself.”
An outgrowth of the city’s Cultural Plan, the city created the biennial to showcase Chicago’s legacy as a birthplace of modern architecture and reassert its centrality to global architectural discourse.

Chicago Architecture Biennial 2015: a stark installation on the Chicago lakefront by artist Sarah FitzSimons features the outline of a traditional two-storey American house (+ slideshow).
Her work has been exhibited in cities around the US.
House is on view in Chicago through 25 October.
Titled House, the structure sits on a beach along Lake Michigan, with a part of it submerged in water.
The temporary installation has no roof, walls, nor cladding – leaving it intentionally open to the elements.
FitzSimons used aluminium poles and joints to create the outline of a typical two-storey home found in the American Midwest.