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New Horizon_architecture from Ireland, a series of presentations of the work of emerging Irish practices in three high-profile venues around the world, opens at Chicago Design Museum on October 3rd and runs until January 3rd, 2016 as part of the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial.
Presented by Irish Design 2015 (ID2015) in partnership with Chicago Design Museum, this flagship exhibition of Irish architecture and the built environment is a key element of ID2015, a year-long initiative backed by the Irish government exploring, promoting and celebrating Irish design throughout Ireland and internationally.
Selected by curators Nathalie Weadick of the Irish Architecture Foundation, and Raymund Ryan of the Heinz Architectural Center at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum of Art, New Horizon_architecture from Ireland will present the work of three practices - A2 Architects (Peter Carroll and Caomhán Murphy), GKMP Architects (Grace Keeley and Michael Pike), and Ryan W. Kennihan Architects - for the first time in Chicago.
Informed by the Biennial’s theme, ‘The State of the Art of Architecture’, the three Irish practices have been tasked to make an intervention – part installation, part exhibition – in the Chicago Design Museum. The architects have collaborated on constructing a temporary mirrored canopy, designing and fabricating a generous communal table, and presenting a selection of work from their offices in Dublin.
The practices have planned an elegant intervention augmenting the structure of the Chicago Design Museum, taking inspiration from Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe’s geometric modernism. Embracing the Biennial’s theme, the installation shines a light on the art of architecture and specific interests of this new generation of architects. They play with preconceptions of old and new, Ireland and America, labour and pleasure, the room and the city. A programme of accompanying events will explore cultural, social and political connections between Chicago and Ireland.
The first installment of New Horizon_architecture from Ireland was at London Festival of Architecture in June, where four Irish practices – TAKA, Clancy Moore, Hall McKnight and Steve Larkin – collaborated on two temporary pavilions in Lewis Cubitt Square, King’s Cross, while a fifth architect, Emmett Scanlon, curated a mini-exhibition, Nine Lives, for the Tank at London’s Design Museum. In December, two further practices – Urban Agency and AP+E - will participate at the Shenzhen/Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture, bringing the total number of practices presented through New Horizon_architecture from Ireland to ten. Each is asked to collaborate and to work within the context of host venues and of host cities.
Chicago Architecture Biennial runs from 3rd October to 3rd January 2016. The practices being presented at Chicago Design Museum as part of the Biennial are: A2 Architects (www.a2.ie), GKMP Architects (www.gkmp.ie), Ryan W. Kennihan Architects (www.rwka.com).
The curators are Raymund Ryan, Curator, Heinz Architectural Center, Pittsburgh and Nathalie Weadick, Director, Irish Architecture Foundation and Built Environment Advisor to ID2015.
A programme of events and talks is being developed to accompany the New Horizon_architecture from Ireland exhibition during the Chicago Architecture Biennial. These will include a drop-in talk with the featured architects discussing the installation in the Chicago Design Museum and a talk by co-curator Raymund Ryan, discussing the international profile of Irish architecture and its relationship with Chicago from historic to contemporary times.
