Names to Know at the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial: Design With Company
Porch Parade by Design with Company
Vancouver, Canada
In 2015, using front porches designed on either side of a single party wall, the designers created this temporary plaza to engage passersby with an abstracted version of a familiar domestic sight.
Photo courtesy Design With Company
Farmland World by Design with Company
The American Midwest
The designers created a conceptual chain of agro-tourist resorts in 2011 that would function simultaneously as theme parks and farms. The proposal was intended to question whether new identities could address the crises of the farming industry.
Image courtesy Design With Company
Hedge H.U.G. by Design with Company
Dublin, Ireland
This conceptual project, created in 2016 for the Science Gallery, explores the idea of bringing the city to the farm. The designers stacked an urban landscape into hedge-like blocks, basing the city’s structural elements on the traditional uses of hedges.
Photo courtesy Design With Company
Stewart Hicks and Allison Newmeyer of Design With Company
Photo © Jeremy Lawsons, courtesy Chicago Architecture Biennial
Stewart Hicks and Allison Newmeyer founded Design With Company in Chicago in 2010. RECORD asked the designers five questions about their work as they prepare to participate in the upcoming Chicago Architecture Biennial. Scroll through the slideshow above to see some of their key projects.
Architectural Record: Tell us about your practice. What differentiates you from other firms?
Our work explores the intersection between literature and architecture through exhibitions, speculative urban scenarios, and temporary pavilions. Stories sometime serve as the context for a project or as a means to engage people in unexpected ways through built form. We like humor and use it carefully as a layer of meaning within the constellation of associations that buildings provoke.
How do you get into a creative headspace?
We brainstorm a lot and value lateral thinking. We make lists of words and ideas related to a project and try to make oblique connections between unlike things. We play word games and ask “what if?” as a means to conjure unlikely scenarios and arrive at solutions that would not present themselves through more logical processes.
Who are your design heroes?
Jean-Jacques Lequeu; John Hejduk; Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates; and Charles Moore.
What do you hope to contribute to the Chicago Biennial?
We are studying the steel frame of early Chicago skyscrapers for their geometric complexities.
Most importantly, when it comes to pizza, deep dish or thin crust?
Both—either way you’re eating pizza.
The Chicago Architecture Biennial runs from September 19, 2017, to January 7, 2018. Read more of our coverage of the event here.
