“Beauty for all,” declares a giant red-orange neon sign in the gallery at the Chicago Cultural Center, which is hosting the Architecture Biennial. Produced by R&R Studios, the film evokes advertising, flashing roadside attractions and, of course, Jenny Holzer’s ironic, elliptical neon text art sculpture. The sign is kitschy and silly—but also poignant in the current context. Chicago today is a city under siege. President Donald Trump has repeatedly insulted the city, describing it as a “hellhole” and a “disaster.” Although Crime in the city has dropped dramaticallyTrump has falsely claimed the city is violent and unsafe—and used that as an excuse to flood the city with masked, heavily armed ICE troops tasked with harassing and kidnapping immigrants and anyone they see as un-American. There are these soldiers Biswas shot leaders with pepper ballsOne to turn on Brutal raid on a South Shore building And sow terror among immigrant and Latino communities that restaurants may be forced to close because diners and workers are afraid to leave their homes.
Biennial does not directly mention federal presence in the city. But it’s hard not to think about what’s going on outside as you travel through the diversity of urban spaces and celebrations A vision of Chicago as a world cultural center and world leader. The biennial and the city want “beauty for all”—but can that broad vision survive the siege? The Chicago Architecture Biennial is an international exhibition of architectural ideas, projects and artworks held annually in Chicago since 2014. This year’s theme is officially “SHIFT: Architecture in Times of Radical Change”—a title that offers many opportunities for a range of ideas from different designers and artists. It is staged at several sites around the city, but is centered in the downtown Chicago Cultural Center.
A dramatic starting point for the biennial is the room that describes a range of global building projects through pamphlets and short documentary films, which play three at a time against the walls. Integrating the range of approaches and spaces is both overwhelming and exhilarating. A 3 Generation House Two apartments built by the BETA office in the Netherlands are stacked on top of each other, creating a multigenerational household not unlike the two-flats in Chicago where my multigenerational family lives. Liu Xiaodu and Meng Yas Urban Tulu An affordable housing circular building design in Guangzhou based on the 300-year-old Hakka Tulu – a large, shared house. of MASS Design Group Motherhood waiting village Efforts to address high maternal mortality in Malawi by constructing maternity care facilities consisting of clusters of buildings and courtyards. Comfortable space may seem like a luxury, but in reality it is life or death; When women are forced into an office environment with no family facilities, they often find it so isolating that they simply leave, putting themselves and their children at risk.
These designs don’t exactly emphasize “radical change”. Rather, they are all trying to use traditional elements in new settings in an effort to welcome public and private spaces for individuals, communities, and families. The architects here all suggest that housing, design and—implicitly—public funds should be used in ways that address and affirm the pasts, identities, and needs of diverse peoples.
Some on-site exhibits carry a similar message. Ignacio G. Galan, David Giessen, and Architecture’s “Disability Fiction Pieces,” for example, use models and a narrated video to envision a utopian, climate-friendly, accessible, creative New York City—including the reconstruction and redevelopment of Rikers Island and other institutions that house people with disabilities. Farat Erdim’s “Field Harp” is a series of wind-activated instruments that can be held and moved by the performers – a reimagining of street performance that turns the environment into a collaboration in itself.
Other installations seem less focused on creating new, welcoming spaces and more interested in celebrating life in urban architecture and all its messy weirdness. RADDAR’s installation “Our Second Skin, The Skin of the City” is a circular alcove made of overlapping glass panes—a tribute to the ubiquity of semi-miraculous transparent materials, even as they cover houses, cars, and offices. Jason Campbell/ElProjects’ “The Linen Closet” performs a similar alchemy for the softer aspects of our environment; The piece is cosy, a large rack of quilts and textiles, suggesting that the world we live in is made of folds and fabrics as well as rigid structures. Cristobal Palmer Common Place (or Common Place) is a series of photographs of odd details in Latin American cities—a shapely bush outside an apartment building, a car partially visible through a parking structure, an arcade.
Perhaps the standout of the biennial—and the kids’ favorite if the student groups I saw walking through are any indication—is Jacqueline Kiyomi Gorke’s. Alteration of mass nos. 5, 6, 7. The piece is a room with three large inflatables that look like brick walls. Viewers stand in the middle of the crowd watching them blow up and create a constantly changing series of low curved, irregular and collapsed spaces. Romantic music plays in the background but is often overshadowed by the hum and roar of ambient air blowers. Watching the exhibition is like a city rising triumphantly and then collapsing upon itself, creating its own ruins. It’s a vision of the urban landscape that constantly morphs into the mock-heroic pratfall—a place lovable in both its aspirations and its inevitable failures.
You can see part of that love for the cities expressed in the signage. As with most Chicago museums, the biennial’s explanatory text is provided on plaques in both Spanish and English. It’s an acknowledgment that our city has a large, significant Latino population, and it’s not something a reviewer would normally comment on or think about. But right now, as the federal government repeatedly says—with guns and violence—that some people aren’t welcome, signaling to our neighbors that this is their place too is hard to ignore.
People are being terrorized, kidnapped, and even murdered by the government outside the cultural centers. Inside, there are Spanish-language texts; There are plans for accessible cities; There are plans for multigenerational homes and birthing centers; There’s a neon sign that says, “Beauty for All.” You can see the biennial as an act of resistance and hope; You can see it as a harmless exercise to whitewash and erase the current attack on the city. In fact, it probably works as both. Chicago, like the country, faces a dark time. Biennial admits that only on the side, dreams of creating a new place where we are all at home.
D Chicago Architecture Biennial Runs through February 28, 2026.
Industrial fairs, biennial and triennial are more
