If the 2015 debut of the Chicago Architecture Biennial offered a compelling survey of the most intriguing practices around the world, said 2017 co-artistic director, Mark Lee, this year’s exhibition will coalesce around a more cohesive theme, Make New History. “We compare it to a restaurant; the first time you go into a restaurant, you try the tasting menu. You try everything. The second time you concentrate more on one way of consuming,” he said, speaking after a curatorial presentation held yesterday at the Graham Foundation on Chicago’s Gold Coast.
On the third floor of the organization’s Prairie-style mansion, Lee and co-artistic director Sharon Johnston of the L.A. firm Johnston Marklee revealed a first glimpse of significant installations and programming highlights of the 2017 edition, which will include 141 firms from 20 countries and span six museums and three yet-to-be-announced off-site locations. Borrowed from a book of empty white pages by Los Angeles-based artist Ed Ruscha, the theme “suggests history is yet to be written,” Lee said, embracing architecture as “something very physical or visceral as opposed to seeing things that are representational of through a screen.”
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