IN OTHER ROOMS, 2025
We’ve got some explaining to do. Why put 1500+ pounds of high-density polyethylene (HDPE) plastic in the entry to an exhibition titled “Ecologies”? To answer this, we direct you to Reyner Banham’s 1973 book, Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies. Banham’s first three ecologies track with our shared definition of ‘ecology’: the relationship between living organisms and their surrounding environment(s). However, it’s the fourth ecology which Banham definesas the freeway system (Autopia) that, while puzzling as an ecology, is perhaps the most fitting descriptor of the time, if not still today. A quick scan of our current ecological landscape (endless roofscapes of HVAC ventilation pipes or snaking networks of floodwater managements pipes to name a few) reveals the byproducts of architecture’s effects, typically materialized in the hidden elements of architecture: pipes, conduits, and ducts.
Commissioned to design the entry to the Chicago Architecture Biennial we return to Banham’s description of Autopia where he posits “that coming off the freeway in coming in from outdoors”2. This suggests that the concept of entry begins far from the threshold of a door, an experiential process that prompts us to bring the outside in and along with us. In Other Rooms unearths the often-sublime industrial materials typically deployed far from Michigan Avenue, making them visible and habitable. It extends and multiples thresholds from the outside world of today to the futureworlds proposed in the Biennial inside.As rooms that delineate between realms, entryways of buildings operate as both boundaries and portals. In Other Rooms is a spatial preamble that transitions visitors from the realities of our built environment to the projective worlds exhibited inside.
Designers: Kelly Bair & Kristy Balliet
Location: Chicago, Illinois
Photography: BairBalliet and Jonas Mikosch Mueller-Ahlheim
Fabrication : 1830 Creative
Support: ADS Pipe
* Thank you Florencia Rodriquez
