The wood-framed pavilion at the center of Wrightwood 659’s "American Framing" exhibition, back stateside after its run at the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale, fills nearly every inch of the building’s concrete-and-brick triple-height atrium. Like a half-built house with an inverted gable roof, the installation gives visitors a visceral sense of the expandability of balloon framing, which blows up to fill the gallery walls much as wood-framed structures spread across the North American continent. As you peer into the pavilion from the upper floors, you perceive a thicket of two-by-fours that lose tectonic focus and dissolve into an abstract collage. Thin metal strip-ties, bent and twisted with inelegance not often seen in design galleries, remind us that wood framing is often provisional.
This collection of furniture, models, and photos, along with the pavilion itself, makes an earnest show that’s most effective when it revels in the overlooked ubiquity of wood framing and doesn’t try to add new layers of mystification. Curated and designed by University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) architecture professors Paul Andersen and Paul Preissner, this new iteration of "American Framing" will be on display through July 16.
You have 0 complimentary articles remaining.
Unlimited access + premium benefits for as low as $1.99/month.