Join the Biennial for a night of architecture, food, drinks, music. Galleries will stay open late. Doors open at 6:00. Event begins at 6:30. Limited capacity.
Free drinks! Bar sponsored by Lagunitas and Perrier.
Designed to Eat pairs a chef and an architect and challenges them to design a dish. Each creation explores ideas common to architecture and food, such as togetherness and nostalgia. The evening begins with a short conversation among the chefs and architects, after which the audience is invited to explore and consume the fruits of the pairs’ collaborations. Architect participants include Ania Jaworska, Norman Teague, and Design With Company. Chef participants include Erling Wu-Bower of Nico Osteria, Jason Hammel of Lula Cafe, and Matthias Merges of Yusho and Billy Sunday.
Hosted by Angel Ysaguirre of Illinois Humanities.
DJ Elbert Philips will be spinning music.
To attend, RSVP Here.
Design With Company, founded by Stewart Hicks and Allison Newmeyer in 2010,
explores the territory between the architectural and the literary, real and unreal, mundane and fantastic. Hicks and Newmeyer believe these qualities can coexist in a type of work they call fabulous architecture, which encompasses buildings that have a story; that look like they might get up and start walking around. They intend their constructions to be characters in the theater of everyday life, not just settings or passive containers of activity. Their design interventions suggest hidden realms within the everyday world through textual and visual stories, speculative urban scenarios, installations, and small-scale interactive constructions, going beyond what the world should be to produce what could be. Things built and things imagined go into rendering the world wondrous, by bringing spectators together in a seemingly endless and pleasurably indeterminate creative process. Ultimately, Dw/Co sets out to reveal the “construction” of reality while giving everyone a good show.
Ania Jaworska is an architect and educator. She currently teaches art, design, and architecture courses at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her practice focuses on exploring the connection between art and architecture through bold simple forms, humor, commentary, and conceptual, historic, and cultural references. Jaworska’s work was presented as part of 13178 Moran Street: Grounds for Detroit in Common Ground, the 13th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale (2012), and CHGO DSGN at the Chicago Cultural Center (2014). She recently completed a design for the bookstore at the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, which is currently on view. Her solo show BMO Harris Bank Chicago Works: Ania Jaworska is on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago until January 31, 2016. She holds a master’s in Architecture from the Cracow University of Technology in Poland and from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan.
Norman Teague is a Chicago-based designer and educator who focuses on projects and pedagogy that address the complexity of urbanism and the history of communities. Teague specializes in custom furniture that delivers a personal touch and unique aesthetic detail; past projects have included consumer products, public sculpture, performances, and specially designed retail spaces. He works with common, locally sourced building materials and local fabricators to create objects and spaces that explore simplicity, honesty, and cleverness as related to the culture of the client and/or community. Teague worked with Theaster Gates on 12 Ballads for Huguenot House dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel, Germany, and served as Lead Craftsman and Co-Founder of the Design Apprenticeship Program at the University of Chicago Arts Incubator. His retail ventures have included partnerships with Leaders1354, the Silver Room, the Exchange Cafe, and Redmoon Theater. Teague holds a BA in Product Design from Columbia College Chicago and an MFA in Designed Objects from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Erling Wu-Bower is Nico Osteria’s Chef de Cuisine and 2015 James Beard Foundation Best Chef: Great Lakes nominee, whose focus and intensity have driven him to great creative heights in his pursuit of invoking the spirit of coastal Italy in the United States. Wu-Bower started his culinary career under Chef Paul Kahan’s tutelage and has worked with One Off Hospitality Group ever since. His mother is an accomplished food writer and his father a food-loving Cajun, and at an early age Wu-Bower found mentorship in acclaimed chef and close family friend Rick Bayless, who inspired his love of seafood. Wu-Bower studied philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, after which he joined Kahan’s culinary team at avec as a cook. He went on to open the Publican as Sous Chef, later becoming Executive Sous Chef of both the Publican and Publican Quality Meats. He returned to avec as Chef de Cuisine before opening Nico in 2013. There, he combines his love of fresh seafood and ingredient-driven fare to produce a singularly memorable dining experience.
Jason Hammel is Executive Chef and Owner of Lula Cafe, established in 1999. Growing up in New Haven, Connecticut, Hammel aspired to be a writer. After graduating from Brown University, he spent a year in Italy, where an amazing local market inspired explorations into seasonal cooking and craft.
Matthias Merges has spent most of two decades living and cooking in Chicago, most notably as the Executive Chef of Charlie Trotter’s for the past 14 years. He has mentored some of the most talented and respected professionals in the restaurant industry.
Angel Ysaguirre has been the Executive Director of Illinois Humanities since 2014. From 1999 to 2005, he was also the Director of Programs, creating programs and series that include The Odyssey Project, Einstein's Revolutions, and Brown v Board 50 Years Later: Conversations on Race, Integration, and the Law. He was Deputy Commissioner at the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events from 2012 to 2014. From 2005 to 2012, he was Director of Global Community Investing at The Boeing Company, overseeing the company's grantmaking program in 60 offices throughout the globe. He began his career in Chicago as a program officer at the McCormick Tribune Foundation.
Native Chicagoan Elbert Philips came of age during the burgeoning local dance music scene in the 1980s. A fast and eager learner of the technical skills of his craft, it has always been his desire to speak to his listeners through musical selections to evoke feelings beyond mere dance floor mayhem; He plays music that makes a difference.
