Remaining in the USA, although skipping ahead to October, the first edition of the Chicago Architecture Biennial is an event worth watching. The biennial is themed around “The State of the Art of Architecture”, a title that perhaps suggests something of the same introspection that marked Rem Koolhaas’s Fundamentals exhibition for the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennial. Yet while Fundamentals focused on “architectural elements” (to, in the minds of many critics, nostalgic and navel-gazing effect), Chicago’s Biennial title suggests a little more freedom and variety, particularly in the way in which contemporary architects interact with culture and society interacts with architecture. Given that one of the biennial’s art directors is Joseph Grima – whose curation of Kortrijk’s 2014 Biennale Interieur admirably dealt with the changing face of the home in terms of both architecture and its wider culture – there is every reason to be optimistic.
