Architecture biennials are created to take the pulse of the profession, to display what architects are making, thinking about, and valuing. If a pulse is what we were looking for, I would have put the Chicago Architecture Biennial in an ambulance years ago. Past editions were missing the critical, complicated histories of segregation and redlining; the grand, hopeful construction and spectacular destruction of large-scale public housing were glossed over; the seemingly unfixable disrepair that blight clearance brought was barely addressed. It’s less complicated to focus on what’s easier on the eyes: wealth, intellectual analyses, and sexy historic buildings make for a comfortable and satiating architecture survey. Yet the new exhibition opening on September 19 might revive this corpse by presenting something different, exciting, and deeply uncomfortable: architecture as a form of power.
Based on many of the contributors’ projects, the theme references the ways architecture has been negligent of the environment and destructive to already-disinvested communities. It’s these “other stories”—the uncomfortable, unsparkling stories—that are front and center at this year’s biennial, with Chicago, in all of our complexities and discomforts, acting as a lens through which they’re told.
The only questionable project is Cabbage Patch by Danish artists Gamborg/Magnussen at the Garfield Park Conservatory, at which 10,000 cabbages have been planted in the rear grassy field designed originally by Danish-American landscape architect Jens Jensen. The installation also includes a functional kitchen and is intended to create “a gathering spot for local community groups, school programs, and visitors to Garfield Park.” Organized by the conservatory as a partner project, low expectations abound: While the Danish invade a park designed originally by one of their own, how does the cabbage patch address East Garfield Park’s condition as a gentrifying Black neighborhood? Or its history as the site of the MLK riots of 1968? And why cabbages? Though it’s a cute idea, it’s another reminder of how easily architects can enter a community and erase that community’s history by focusing on the white, European figure within their field.
