2020-2021

Exhibit Columbus: New Middles

From Main Street to Megalopolis, What is the Future of the Middle City?

TAGS

Architecture, David Schalliol, Dream the Combine, Exhibitions, Iker Gil, Jeremiah Chiu, Natalie Yates, Sam Jacob Studio, Virginia Hanusik, Ang Li, Derek Hoeferlin, Ecosistema Urbano, Future Firm, Jei Jeeyea Kim, Joyce Hwang, Olalekan Jeyifous

View Original

For the Fall 2021 Exhibition, co-curators Iker Gil and Mimi Zeiger have invited exhibition participants to create site-specific, future-oriented installations, which will be developed over the coming year in response to the theme: New Middles:From Main Street to Megalopolis, What is the Future of the Middle City?

This 2020–2021 cycle of programming explores the future of the center of the United States and the regions connected by the Mississippi Watershed. New Middles speculates on the heartland, an ecology stretching beyond political borders—from North to South—from the Canadian Border to the Gulf, and from East to West—from Appalachia to the plains. Embracing a long timeline of cities past, present, and future, New Middles builds upon Columbus’ legacy as a laboratory for design as civic investment. In a moment when we most need reflection, creativity, and innovation to envision new ways of being, New Middlesconsiders Columbus a place to destabilize assumptions, and imagine new architectures and landscapes as a way to positively move our cities forward.

Exhibit Columbus: New Middles Symposium

TAGS

Anne Surak, Architecture, Ash Smith, Chris Cornelius, Dan Hill, De Nichols, Events, Iker Gil, Iñaki Alday, Joar Nango, Kate Orff, Marcus Fairs, Paola Aguirre, Radha Mistry, Wes Jackson, Matthew Fluharty

View Original

The 2020 Exhibit Columbus Symposium: New Middles gathered national and international thought leaders in architecture, art, design, and landscape architecture together with Columbus stakeholders to explore the question, What Is The Future of The Middle City?

The Symposium examined this question through the lens of four topics:

Futures and Technologies: Dan Hill, Vinnova, Stockholm, Sweden; Radha Mistry, Autodesk, San Francisco CA; Moderated by Marcus Fairs, Editor-in-Chief, Dezeen

Resiliency and Climate Adaptation: Iñaki Alday, Tulane University / aldayjover architecture and landscape, New Orleans; Kate Orff, SCAPE, New York, NY; Moderated by Iker Gil
2020–21 Curator, Exhibit Columbus

Arts and Community: Paola Aguirre, Borderless Studio, Chicago IL; Matthew Fluharty, Art of the Rural & M12 Studio, Winona MN; De Nichols, Civic Creatives, St. Louis MO; Moderated by Anne Surak, Director, Exhibit Columbus

Indigenous Futures and Radical Thinking: Chris Cornelius (Oneida), studio:indigenous, Milwaukee WI; Wes Jackson, The Land Institute, Salina KS; Joar Nango (Sámi), FFB, Alta, Finland; Ash Smith, Carson Center of Emerging Media Arts, Lincoln NE; Moderated by Mimi Zeiger, 2020–21 Curator, Exhibit Columbus

Each topic was explored weekly through Thematic Conversations, hosted in partnership with Dezeen, featuring international thought leaders. They were followed by Columbus Conversations featuring community stakeholders in conversation with 2021 Miller Prize recipients highlighting forward-thinking initiatives happening in our community of Columbus, Indiana.

These dialogues have served as foundational research for all New Middles participants—as a kind of Exhibition Design Brief and Community Design Brief — identifying topics, themes, and writings for community partners while growing exhibition participants’ understanding of Columbus’ culture and context as they conceptualize their commissioned installations for the Fall 2021 Exhibition.

May 26, 2018

Dimensions of Citizenship

2018 US Pavilion

Venice Architecture Biennale

TAGS

Amanda Williams, Andres L. Hernandez, Ann Lui, Architecture, Art, Design Earth, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Estudio Teddy Cruz, Exhibitions, Fonna Forman, Frances Bodomo, Iker Gil, INFO_CO, Keller Easterling, Laura Kurgan, Liam Young, Robert Gerard Pietrusko, SCAPE/Landscape Architecture, Shani Crowe, Studio Gang, David Rueter and Marissa Lee Benedict, Mandana Moghaddam, Mika Rottenberg

View Original

US Pavilion, Venice Architecture Biennale: May 26–November 25, 2018

Wrightwood, Chicago: February 28–April 27, 2019

Curators: Niall Atkinson, Ann Lui, Mimi Zeiger, and Iker Gil

Commissioners: University of Chicago and School of the Art Institute Chicago

Participants: Amanda Williams + Andres L. Hernandez in collaboration with Shani Crowe, Studio Gang, SCAPE, Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Laura Kurgan, Robert Gerard Pietrusko, with the Columbia Center for Spatial Research, Keller Easterling with MANY, and Design Earth

Films: Frances Bodomo, Mandana Moghaddam, David Rueter and Marissa Lee Benedict, Mika Rottenberg, and Liam Young

Exhibition and graphic design: INFO_CO

Photos: Tom Harris Read More …

May–November 2018

Dimensions of Citizenship

US Pavilion, 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale

Venice Architecture Biennale

TAGS

Ann Lui, Iker Gil, Niall Atkinson

View Original

Dimensions of Citizenship challenges architects and designers to envision what it means to be a citizen today. As transnational flows of capital, digital technologies, and geopolitical transformations expand, conventional notions of citizenship are undermined. How might architecture, then, express today’s rhizomatic and paradoxical conditions of citizenship?

The US Pavilion explores seven spatial scales: Citizen, Civitas, Region, Nation, Globe, Network, and Cosmos.These scales, telescoping from body to city to heavens, broadly position citizenship as a critical global topic. Installations by architects, landscape architects, artists, and theorists investigate spaces of citizenship marked by histories of inequality and the violence imposed on people, non-human actors, and ecologies. These works do not solve the complex relationships of governance, affinity, and circumstance that bind us. Instead, they use architecture’s disciplinary agency to render visible paradoxes and formulations of belonging.

Commissioners
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
The University of Chicago

Curators
Niall Atkinson
Associate Professor in the Department of Art History and the College, The University of Chicago

Ann Lui
Assistant Professor in the Department of Architecture, Interior Architecture, and Designed Objects at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and co-founder of Future Firm

Mimi Zeiger
Los Angeles-based critic, editor, and curator; faculty member in the Media Design Practices MFA program at ArtCenter College of Design

Associate Curator
Iker Gil
Lecturer in the Department of Architecture, Interior Architecture, and Designed Objects at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, director of MAS Studio, and founder of MAS Context

March 2018

Citizen Sound

Arkkitehti

TAGS

Ann Lui, Architecture, Art, Articles, Bjarke Ingels, Iker Gil, Niall Atkinson, Raven Chacon

View Original

Sometimes the ending is the beginning. Curation, as with criticism, hinges between the labor of production and turning that work to face the public. As such, the opening of an exhibition represents an end point for the curatorial team and the start of an audience’s engagement with the ideas, materials, and experiences on view. Which is why, when reflecting on representation and a broad interpretation of the term to convey both the mechanical processes of display and the making seen and heard the bodies and voices structurally left out of the discourse, it makes sense to begin at the inauguration of the U.S. Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale.

Chatter Chat

Art Institute Chicago

TAGS

Agata Siemionow, Architecture, Digital Culture, Ellen Grimes, Erin Besler, Events, Grant Gibson, Iker Gil, Jonathan Mekinda, Urtzi Grau

View Original

The Chatter Chat series are salons held in conjunction with the Architecture and Design Department’s exhibition Chatter: Architecture Talks Back that use the exhibition as a platform to discuss critical issues in the field of contemporary architecture.

This Chatter Chat invites two architects and a writer, all of whom are featured in the exhibition, to frame their projects relative to history (as a precedent and as an element to build upon), as well as discuss the productive ways in which architecture can be communicated. Each panelist presents their work through this lens as a prompt for discussion among a panel of Chicago-based architects and scholars, offering up insights for questions such as:

How do architects summon the material, formal, and sociocultural lessons from history without being beholden to them?
How do we reframe architecture through history’s most valuable architectural inheritances?
How does communication advance architectural representation and discussion?
Can architecture be communicated in a way that goes beyond the approved (but void-of-content) press release?
Can it empower, challenge, reveal, critique, reinterpret, and diagnose the discipline and our times?

Presenters
Erin Besler, University of California Los Angeles
Urtzi Grau, Fake Industries Architecture Agonism
Mimi Zeiger, critic, editor, curator, and instigator

Interlocutors
Grant Gibson, CAMES/Gibson
Ellen Grimes, School of the Art Institute
Jonathan Mekinda, UIC
Agata Siemionow, Illinois Institute of Technology

Moderator
Iker Gil, director of MAS Studio and editor in chief of MAS Context

Exhibition catalogue launch and signing follows the roundtable discussion.

April 11–July 12, 2015

Chatter

Architecture Talks Back

Art Institute Chicago

TAGS

Architecture, D-Crit, Design, Digital Culture, Exhibitions, Iker Gil, Karen Kice, Neil Donnelly, School of Visual Art, Urbanism

View Original

Curators: Karen Kice, with Iker Gil

Mimi Zeiger and Neil Donnelly with the School of Visual Arts Summer Design Writing and Research Intensive

Architecture is a perpetual conversation between the present and the past, knowing full well that the future is listening. So what happens when this dialogue is influenced by contemporary modes of communication such as texting, Twitter, and Instagram? Chatter happens: ideas are developed, produced, and presented as open-ended or fragmented conversations and cohere through the aggregation of materials. Chatter: Architecture Talks Back looks at the diverse contemporary methods and approaches wielded by five emerging architects: Bureau Spectacular, Erin Besler, Fake Industries Architectural Agonism, Formlessfinder, and John Szot Studio. Read More …

January 19, 2015

MAS CONTEXT x LOS ANGELES

MAS Context

TAGS

Andrew Clark, Architecture, Bruce Mau Design, David Yoon, Deborah Richmond, Events, Iker Gil, Joshua Stein, Julia Luke

View Original

On Monday, January 19, 2015, MAS Context and five LA-based contributors will provide a behind-the-scenes look at the publication and discuss the work they contributed. The event will be hosted at Bruce Mau Design Los Angeles.

Contributors:
Julia Luke (Creative Director, Julia Luke Design)
Deborah Richmond (Architect, Deborah Richmond Architects)
Joshua G. Stein (Architect, Radical Craft)
David Yoon (Engineer, YoonCo)
Mimi Zeiger (Critic, editor, curator and instigator)

Moderated by Iker Gil (Editor-in-chief, MAS Context) and Andrew Clark (Director, BMD Los Angeles).

June 14, 2014

Our Public Space

Who Owns It, Who Shapes It, and Who Benefits From It

TAGS

Architecture, Events, Iker Gil, John Preus, Patrizia di Monte, Quilian Riano, Urbanism

View Original

Our Public Space is a two-day program of lectures and a workshop presented by a concise list of national and international architects, designers, and artists addressing the current state of public space and the built environment. This program is organized by Dilettante Studios, MAS Context, and the Hyde Park Art Center and will take place on June 14 and June 15, 2014. With Iker Gil, John Prius, Quilian Riano, Patrizia di Monte, and Mimi Zeiger. Read More …

March 22-26, 2014

Mextropoli

First International Festival on Architecture and the City

Mextropoli

TAGS

Andres Jaque, Architecture, Ethel Barona Pohl, Events, Iker Gil, Urbanism

View Original

Mextropoli, the First International Festival on Architecture and the City, organized by Arquine and directed by Andrea Griborio, takes place in Mexico City March 22-26, 2014.

Panel Discussion: Habla ciudad: la crítica
Iker Gil (Chicago), Andrés Jaque (Madrid), Ethel Baraona Pohl (Barcelona), Mimi Zeiger (Los Angeles)

Habla ciudad: la crítica
Date: Wednesday, March 26, 2014
Time: 5 pm – 6:30 pm
Location: Plaza de la Santa Veracruz