As part of the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial, the University of Chicago will be hosting events, exhibitions, and programs in and around campus to celebrate its rich architecture.

Tours and Events

The UChicago Architecture Biennial Shuttle
Southside Self-Guided Tour
Saturdays, Sept 16, Oct 7, Nov 4, and Dec 2
Every Hour 10am-5pm | Guided architecture tours at 1pm
Free | Reservations required for 1pm tour, tickets.uchicago.edu.
The UChicago Architecture Biennial Shuttle will run on an hourly loop to various sites of architectural activity and speculation on and around the University's Hyde Park campus, including the new Campus Residence Hall designed by Studio Gang; the Arts Block, envisioned by Theaster Gates; the site for the Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park; and the campus' landmark Mid-century buildings by Eero Saarinen and Mies van der Rohe. Other tour highlights include the Logan Center for the Arts designed by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien Architects, and the Rebuild Foundation's Stony Island Arts Bank. Visitors can use the shuttle as a hop-on, hop-off means to stop at various destinations including two of the Chicago Architecture Biennial's Community Anchor sites, the DuSable Museum of African American History, the Palais de Tokyo, the Hyde Park Arts Center, and transportation stops. Shuttle will pick up and drop off at the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts at 915 E 60th St.

Cinthia Marcelle and Tiago Mata Machado: Divine Violence: Opening Reception and Artist Tour
Friday, September 8, 6-8pm | Free
Logan Center Gallery
Please join us for an artist tour with Cinthia Marcelle followed by a reception to celebrate the opening of Cinthia Marcelle and Tiago Mata Machado: Divine Violence.

Terence Gower: Havana Case Study
Opening Reception and Artist Talk: Tue, Sep 12, 6–9pm (Artist Talk 7pm)
Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society (5701 S Woodlawn Ave) 

Based on extensive research in Cuba and in U.S. archives, this exhibition uses American diplomatic architecture as a lens through which to explore U.S. international relations. Comprising models, photographs, collages, and archival documents, the project centers on the history of the US embassy in Havana. On the Neubauer Collegium’s terrace, a monumental sculpture presents a 1:1 scale outline of the ambassador’s balcony, a potent symbol of diplomatic stalemate and its political and economic fallout.

Ogrydziak Prillinger Architects (OPA) in Conversation with Sean Keller
Sat, Sep 16, 2pm | Free
Henry Moore’s Nuclear Energy sculpture (5625 S Ellis Ave)

In conjunction with the opening of the Chicago Architecture Biennial on September 16, UChicago Arts presents an informal in-progress conversation with OPA, the design team behind the Nuclear Thresholds installation, and Sean Keller, Associate Professor in the IIT College of Architecture.

Matter/Structure/Architecture: A Conversation with Yasmil Raymond and Tomás Saraceno
Thu, Oct 5, 6pm | Free
Chicago Cultural Center (78 E Washington St)

Berlin-based Argentinian artist Tomás Saraceno creates large-scale installations informed by his ongoing research into the worlds of art, architecture, natural sciences, astrophysics, and engineering. Join us for a conversation between Saraceno and MoMA curator Yasmil Raymond, in which she will delve into the artist’s work and current ideas and interests. Presented by the Arts, Science & Culture Initiative and the Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry at UChicago, the Chicago Architecture Biennial, and the Goethe-Institute Chicago.

Logan Five Year Bash
Sat, Oct 7, 11:30am–11:30 pm | Free
Logan Center (915 E 60th St)

Celebrate the 5th year anniversary of Tod Williams and Billie Tsien’s iconic arts center during a 12-hour arts festival with architecture tours, family-friendly hands-on art making workshops, music, theater, lectures, visual art exhibitions, films, and more. Gather and explore the best in architecture and all the treasures the Logan Center has to offer.

Martin Beck
Sat, Nov 4, 3pm | Free
Swift Hall (1025 E 58th St)

The Renaissance Society presents a performative lecture by Martin Beck, an artist whose work cannily examines the intersections of art and architecture and the paradoxes of history. Beck’s new project draws out wide-ranging insights and hidden narratives, branching out from his explorations of Chicago and its design histories.

Thiago de Paula Souza
Sat, Oct 7, 2pm | Free
Logan Center Performance Penthouse

Please join us and Brazilian curator Thiago de Paula Souza for a talk on the exhibition Divine Violence. de Paula Souza will examine the sociopolitical context of ocntemporary Brazilian society as shown through Marcelle and Mata Machado's videos, tracing the ways these works offer a non-binary reading of recent events in the country. 

Arts & Innovation Series: Shaping Shifting Publics with Emmanuel Pratt and Dan Borelli
Mon, Nov 13, 6pm | Free
Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (1452 E 53rd St)

This talk will unpack how two different creative practices work within their localities and how they came to collaborate on a discourse around the urgency for defining ‘Publics’. Chicago-based practitioner Emmanuel Pratt will guide us through the evolution of the Sweet Water Foundation’s ongoing work with ecologies—human, social, vegetable, and economic. Dan Borelli, a Boston-based practitioner, will give us an overview of his project in Ashland, Massachusetts that addresses the contested histories of a contaminated community and it’s Superfund site. Emmanuel and Dan will share their collaboration at the Harvard University Graduate School Design entitled We The Publics, an open call to define publics today, creating a discursive archive, and thereby reestablishing truth in democracy. Part of a series presented by the Logan Center and Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. This session is co-presented by the Smart Museum in conjunction with Emmanuel Pratt’s Threshold installation Radical [Re]Constructions.

Arts and the Nuclear Age: 1942 | 1967 | 2017
Sat, Dec 2, 4:15–6:15pm | Free
Reynolds Club, McCormick Tribune Lounge (5706 S University Ave)

Throughout the fall, artists and scholars from across campus will convene for the Arts and the Nuclear Age lecture series, commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Chicago Pile-1 experiment and the concurrent 50th anniversary of artist Henry Moore’s Nuclear Energy sculpture. Three culminating lectures and several performances—including a daytime performance by renowned artist Cai Guo-Qiang and new music compositions—will mark the December 2 anniversary. Speakers include Anne Wagner, eminent Henry Moore scholar and former Henry Moore Foundation Research Curator at the Tate; Ludovico Centis, architect and designer of An American Temple; and Luke Ogrydziak and Zoë Prillinger, principals from California-based firm OPA, the design team behind Nuclear Thresholds, a temporary architectural installation on the CP-1 site. Lectures are followed by a reception in the McCormick Tribune Lounge.

Exhibitions

Building/Environments
Aug 29, 2017–Jan 28, 2018 | Free
Opening Reception: Wed, Sep 27, 6:30–8:30pm
Smart Museum of Art (5550 S Greenwood Ave)

Building/Environments is a collection-based exhibition that questions the ways we occupy and perceive the built environment. The project dramatically reconfigures the Smart’s collection and own interior environment, opening up new perspectives on works by beloved artists and art objects.

Cinthia Marcelle and Tiago Mata Machado: Divine Violence
Sep 8–Oct 29, 2017 | Free
Opening Reception: Fri, Sep 8, 6–8pm
Logan Center Gallery (915 E 60th St)

Since 2008, artist Cinthia Marcelle and filmmaker Tiago Mata Machado have produced a suite of moving image works that reflect on notions of confrontation, order and chaos in contemporary society.

Black Hole (2008) depicts two opposing air currents scattering a mass of white powder across a black ground. In the constant push and pull between forces, this video offers subtle commentary on the shifting dynamics between individuals and contesting positions. Exploring the poetics and politics of urban life in Brazil and other global locations, The Century (2011) and One Way Street (2013) are interrelated pieces that provide different viewpoints on a shared event—a street protest. These two works function as an anatomy of the event, deconstructing its actions and impact on civic space. Yet, there is no indication of the underlying cause of the unrest, highlighting the spontaneous and often unwieldy process that leads to a complete breakdown of social order. Community (and the other process) (2016) contends with the invisible bonds and rules that keep people and by extension our social milieu together. This two-channel piece—split across two separate spaces in the Logan Center Gallery—presents two versions of an orderly line on the precipice of rupture, one depicted through a group of individuals standing in wait, and the other through an animated line drawing.

Bringing these works together for the first time in the United States, Cinthia Marcelle and Tiago Mata Machado: Divine Violence speculates on the potential for revolution in everyday life. In doing so, the exhibition attends to the artists’ reflections on violence (and by extension anarchy) as a means to undercut the forces of law, power, and capital.

Terence Gower: Havana Case Study
Sep 12–Dec 15, 2017 (Gallery Hours: Mon–Fri, 11am–5pm) | Free
Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society (5701 S Woodlawn Ave)

Based on extensive research in Cuba and in U.S. archives, this exhibition uses American diplomatic architecture as a lens through which to explore U.S. international relations. Comprising models, photographs, collages, and archival documents, the project centers on the history of the US embassy in Havana. On the Neubauer Collegium’s terrace, a monumental sculpture presents a 1:1 scale outline of the ambassador’s balcony, a potent symbol of diplomatic stalemate and its political and economic fallout.

Emmanuel Pratt: Radical [Re]Constructions
Sep 12, 2017–Spring 2018 | Free
Opening Reception: Wed, Sep 27, 6:30–8:30pm
Smart Museum of Art (5550 S Greenwood Ave)

Emmanuel Pratt’s interdisciplinary approach to regenerative placemaking on Chicago’s South Side mixes art, architecture, community, and economic development. His new, site-specific installation transforms the Smart Museum’s lobby and courtyard. The installation features a large, three-dimensional representation of a house, set against the Museum’s central lobby wall, and constructed from salvaged materials by master craftspeople and youth apprentices from the Sweet Water Foundation. Other features include architectural wall drawings, video elements, and a functional front porch stoop. The installation extends to the sculpture garden, where a network of sculptural furniture made from reclaimed wood provides inclusive spaces to sit, meet, and eat.

Nuclear Thresholds
Sep 16, 2017–Jan 7, 2018 | Free
Henry Moore’s Nuclear Energy sculpture (5625 S Ellis Ave)

As part of the 75th anniversary of Chicago Pile-1 (the site of the first man-made, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction), UChicago Arts and Ogrydziak Prillinger Architects present a temporary architectural installation at the location of the original pile, marked for the last 50 years by Henry Moore’s Nuclear Energy sculpture. Based on computational modeling of unstable processes, the installation creates a material threshold around Nuclear Energy that resonates at radically different scales. It invites visitors to interact physically with the shape and patterns of criticality that drove the experiment, provoking deep questions about the scientific, historical, and existential thresholds CP-1 crossed.

Rare Earth
A speakeasy of sound and images Organized by Theaster Gates
September 22 – November 17, 2017
Rare Earth invites the viewer to experience chance arrangements and discover new correlations between built environments from around the world. The exhibition mines a broad survey of architectural and design images from the archives of Rebuild Foundation. Using roulette projections of 35mm slides and film, and accompanied by live performances by Chicago-based sound artists, image and sound combine into a score that offers a poetic imagining of the speculative city. Groups interested in visiting Rare Earth should email Nikki Patin at npatin@uchicago.edu.

DAN PETERMAN: Slipping and Jamming: Variable Installation of Z-Forms
Oct 3 – Nov 30, 2017  
Opening: October 3, 2017, 6pm
Gallery Hours: Mon-Fri 9 am–5pm; Sat–Sun by appointment (jmlemon@uchicago.edu)
William Eckhardt Research Center lobby (5640 S Ellis Ave, Chicago, IL 60637)

The Arts, Science & Culture Initiative at UChicago presents a temporary sculpture by Dan Peterman, MFA’86, a Chicago-based artist recently represented in the 2017 Documenta. The installation is composed of thousands of “Z-Forms”— post-consumer reprocessed plastic cut in the form of a Z. Slipping and Jamming is an installation created from randomly placed elements linked solely by friction rather than fasteners and that autonomously configure to attain load-bearing capability. Peterman’s sculpture will be installed on the University of Chicago campus for the during the Chicago Architecture Biennial. This installation is supported by the University of Chicago’s Public Art Committee.