What to See at Chicago’s Architecture Biennial With Maya Bird-Murphy

Birthplace of the modern skyscraper, Chicago's architectural impact in the world is undeniable. Now in its sixth edition, the Chicago Architecture Biennial celebrates, enriches, and extends the city’s standing as a hub of architecture and design.

Since it started in 2015, the Biennial has brought together millions of visitors to reflect on how architecture and transformative design capture shifts in culture, politics, and ideas. As the hometown of numerous notable figures in the field—from Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Bertrand Goldberg to John Moutoussamy, and Natalie Griffin de Blois—Chicago’s contribution to global design and spatial planning cannot be underestimated. The Biennial was established to consolidate and build upon this rich heritage.

Maya Bird-Murphy is a Chicago-based architectural designer, educator, and cultural producer. She launched the award-winning nonprofit Mobile Makers, which makes design education accessible through workshops, community engagement, public installations, and pop-ups hosted out of a retrofitted mail truck.

Maya has been involved with the Biennial in varying capacities since its inception in 2015. In 2023, Mobile Makers was the official CAB education partner, and this year the nonprofit will present Mobile Makers: The Design Summit for Friends of Friends, a CAB Partner Program, on September 26–28.

Below she shares her top picks to see at the Biennial.

1

Common Chicago at the MAS Context Reading Room

1564 North Damen Avenue, Suite 204, Chicago, Illinois 60622

Common Chicago is a group show featuring local architecture firms. It asks how designers can create shared spaces that catalyse equitable community-building. Participating firms created drawings, models, and collages to advance their visions of a Common Chicago. Some of my favourite responses include The Right to Deep Water / In Praise of Wild Swimming by Future Firm, which explores swimming as “civic culture” and how even with 26 beaches, Chicagoans carve out their own spaces to gather and swim in deeper parts of the lake, and Creative Grounds by Borderless Studio which amplifies the unprecedented closing of 50 Chicago public schools and how these buildings can be re-energised as holistic community assets.

2

Variations in Mass Nos. 5, 6, 7 / Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork at the Chicago Cultural Centre

78 E. Washington Street, Chicago, IL 60602

You can hear Variations in Mass before you see it. As I was walking down the hall of the Cultural Center, I was looking around to try to find where the drone of string instruments was coming from. This installation draws us to it and makes us pause. Patience is required to watch as the inflatable brick walls inflate and collapse over and over again. Variations in Mass is a commentary on the temporality of architecture, inviting us to think about how space can be shaped, reshaped, and reshaped again as we evolve. It makes us question the permanence of the built environment.

3

Cornerstone / Yasmin Spiro at the Hyde Park Art Center
5020 S Cornell Ave, Chicago, IL 60615

In this exhibition, Yasmin Spiro continues her exploration of vernacular building, mainly drawing from forms and textures from her homeland of Jamaica, and how places shape our identity. Woven sculptures explore the relationship between “land, architecture, memory, and the body.” A live dance performance will take place on October 9th in the gallery, activating Yasmin’s sculptures. While you are in Hyde Park, be sure to make a reservation at one of my favorite restaurants, Virtue.

4

Surfaces in Flux at the Chicago Cultural Center / Objects of Common Interest & LOT office for architecture

78 E. Washington Street, Chicago, IL 60602

Surfaces in Flux speaks to the re-imagination of public spaces that bring us closer together. After COVID, we are reevaluating our physical boundaries and the distance between each other. This inflatable installation welcomes us to sit and lie next to one another. Maintaining balance on the translucent “bubbles” can be tricky, which forces us to engage playfully with those sitting around us. Even though the installation has no walls, it holds us.

5

A LOUDREADING Tribune / WAI Think Tank at Stony Island Arts Bank
6760 S Stony Island Ave, Chicago, IL 60649

Cruz Garcia and Nathalie Frankowski created an exhibition at the Stony Island Arts Bank that includes a resource library, artwork, and pieces of old monuments, which question the Colonial stories we’ve been told and encourage us to dream and visualise a post-colonial world where we can learn collectively and freely. The location of this exhibition is equally profound, as it is a former bank that was slated for demolition and renovated by Theaster Gates and the Rebuild Foundation. This building houses the preserved archives of Johnson Publishing Company, the former publisher of Ebony and Jet magazines.

6

Beauty for All / R&R Studios at the Chicago Cultural Center

78 E. Washington Street, Chicago, IL 60602

One of the overarching themes of the biennial is a reminder to slow down and appreciate the architecture in the mundane, simple, and everyday. Beauty for All is an incredibly clear response to the prompt. Through a seemingly common “billboard,” it conveys a vision for a city where everyone has access to beauty and an equal participation in the shaping of space. It employs the typical form of an advertisement to critique consumerism, envisioning an American urban landscape where people are prioritised over profit and privatisation.