It takes many conversations with many cultural and political gatekeepers to arrive at such a simple question to replace the familiar greeting, “how do you do?” The banality of the question, however, is its most provocative quality. By calling into question the way we look into and out of architecture, the audience in question is immeasurable. For the inaugural 2015 Chicago Architecture Biennial, we are tasked by its curators to make a drawing that is one part sign, one part invitation, and all parts spectacle. The site is the Chicago Cultural Center, designed in 1897 by the Boston firm of Shepley, Coolidge, and Rutan (i.e. the people’s palace). More specifically, our sites are the sixty-five reflective windows on the building’s Michigan Avenue façade. For this drawing, or drawings, each window is lined with cut white opaque vinyl to moderate how one looks into the building and out onto the city. The graphic motif presents an oversized survey of historical window mullions and dressings, ranging in style from Arts & Crafts to both Chicago Schools as well as a range of vernacular window treatments, like Venetian blinds. This is not to say that the project is entirely indexical of what has happened or is happening. At times, the drawings exist only to mitigate views. By sourcing new, old, historical and common ways through which Chicagoans look at their city, we present a plurality of points of view as a collective vision of the city.
Design Team:
Carrie Norman
Thomas Kelley
Spencer McNeil
Carrie Norman
Thomas Kelley
Spencer McNeil
elevation
