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Taubman College Faculty Participating in the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial

Taubman College Faculty Participating in the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial

Header Image: Photo Credit: Kendall-McCaugherty

The second edition of the Chicago Architecture Biennial kicks off on September 14 – 16, 2017 and includes exhibited work by Taubman College faculty as well as several public programs taking place in the opening weeks. 

Assistant Professor Ellie Abrons will be participating in the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial’s launch event, the Make New History symposium hosted by the Biennial’s artistic directors Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee of Johnston Marklee on Thursday, September 14 at 11:30am in the Cultural Center’s Claudia Cassidy Theater. Abrons will be representing her design practice, T+E+A+M, which she co-founded with colleagues Thom Moran, Adam Fure, and Meredith Miller. T+E+A+M is participating in this year’s Biennial exhibition with their project, Ghost Box, which imagines a strategy of “redistribution,” in which the physical elements of a big box store are “taken apart, moved around, piled up, and mixed with new construction to create alternative uses.” They are also mentioned in Architectural Record as a “Name to Know” at this year’s Biennial and were also featured on the cover of Metropolis Magazine.

Also participating in this year’s exhibition, lecturer and former Oberdick Fellow, Hans Tursack, was a member of the SAA/Stan Allen Architect team and worked on the design and the model for the project, “The Balloon Frame Revisited.” 

Associate professor Claire Zimmerman is participating on two panels. On Friday, September 15 at 9am in the Art Institute of Chicago’s Fullerton Hall, she will speak at Taking Positions: Architecture and Design Exhibitions with Andrew Blauvelt, Sylvia Lavin, Mirko Zardini, Sharon Johnston, Philip Ursprung, led by the Art Institute’s Zoë Ryan and Alison Fisher. This symposium will bring together renowned curators, critics, and thinkers to consider the critical role that exhibitions continue to play in defining the practice and discourse of architecture and design and in shaping the legacy of these fields.

Zimmerman is also co-organizing and participating in Evidence and Narrative in Architectural History on Saturday, September 15 at 10am. Hosted by Jonathan Solomon and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, this panel is organized by The Aggregate Architectural History Collaborative (Aggregate) which is dedicated to advancing research and education in the history and theory of architecture. Aggregate’s board of directors includes Taubman College Dean Jonathan Massey and many of the top history and theory scholars across North America. Presenters in the panel include Daniel Abramson, Zeynep Celik Alexander, Timothy Hyde, and Michael Osman.

At the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Assistant Professor Kathy Velikov spoke on Saturday, September 15 as part of the discussion Aerial Futures: New Functions. Looking at the present to make sense of a new history, a select group of architects and experts, including Velikov, discussed both the history of airport design as well as critical themes for airports today, such as life-cycle and adaptive reuse of terminal buildings, strategies for human-based design, and the nature of public space in light of complex business models. Velikov joined speakers Cynthia Davidson, Ginger S. Evans, Curtis Fentress, Geoff Goldberg, Max Hirsh, Agatha Kessler, Thomas Kong, Clare Lyster, Juergen Mayer H., Andres F. Ramirez, Hennie Reynders, Jonathan D. Solomon, Charles Waldheim, and John Zukowsky.

Dean Jonathan Massey and CCA Professor David Gissen organized a panel discussion Building With Digital Fragments, which occurred Wednesday, September 15, 2017. The panel examined the ways that emerging digital preservation tools open new perspectives on history while giving historical material a new role in contemporary design practices. The invited panelists were Morehshin Allahyari, Brandon Clifford, Brendan Cormier, Mark Foster Gage, Pamela Karimi, Mari Lending, and Carla Schroer.

On Saturday, November 19th, Catie Newell, Director of the Master of Science in Digital and Material Technologies, participated in a panel discussion and lecture event called The World is Old, History Is New. The panel was organized to “explore the ways that reception, revision, or rejection of the past helps us make sense of how we live now.” Each of the eight guests represent different design disciplines and have all received the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome.

Ellie Abrons was also invited to a panel discussion entitled Characters in the Theater Of Everyday Life, held Tuesday, October 24th. This discussion anticipates the release of MAS Issue 32, which focuses on the topic of Character in architecture.

For more about the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial: http://chicagoarchitecturebiennial.org/