As a complement to the Lessons from Modernism exhibition, EAM has partnered with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Architecture, Interior Architecture, Designed Objects Department to include Mies van der Rohe’s McCormick House in the discussion of modernism and sustainability. Lessons from the Fick Home is the culmination of two graduate level courses, led by architects and SAIC professors Andrew Santa Lucia and Mary English, that explored the McCormick House through different lenses of sustainability. The project posits that a study of sustainability must acknowledge and examine the user's life within the building. To that end, the team investigated the social and cultural implications of the McCormick House on its former residents, the Ficks, who made the house their home for 30 years.
Through original drawings, diagrams, artwork, models, interviews and texts, this exhibition considers both the personal and the designed, the home and the house. Aside from studies of heating, cooling, sun exposure, materiality and structure, inspired by the type of analyses done for the Lessons from Modernism exhibition, Lessons from the Fick Home also explores prefabrication, mass production, suburbanization, interior renovation and the overall livability of the McCormick House. Exhibition walk-through with Andrew Santa Lucia and graduate students on Saturday, October 10 at 1pm.
