Here Comes Chicago's Architecture Bonanza

In 2015, Chicago launched the largest contemporary architecture event in North America—the Chicago Architecture Biennial. Staged at multiple sites around the city (including the lakefront) and drawing more than half a million visitors over three months, it was a wide shotgun blast in terms of content, with techno-psychedelic body-horror sketches, demonstrations of material fabrication, and social design proposals for bringing police and neighborhoods together. It all happened under the broadest of themes: “The State of the Art of Architecture.”

This year’s edition, led by artistic directors Mark Lee and Sharon Johnston of the Los Angeles-based architecture firm Johnston Marklee, is narrowing the focus. At Chicago’s Graham Foundation on June 27, the directors unveiled conceptual sketches for some of the 120 or so participants as well as four subthemes that will organize the exhibition. It’s not quite honed to a laser focus, but the second biennial will open on September 16 with something closer to a telescopic view of architecture’s days ahead—which may in some ways look uncannily like its days past.