... and Other Such Stories
de Yesomi Umolu, Sepake Angiama, Paulo Tavares
What constitutes the social context of architecture? What kind of stories can be told about how lived experiences across global communities, cities, territories, and ecologies resonate with architectural and space-making practices? The 2019 Chicago Architecture Biennial explores the implications of architecture and the built environment as they relate to land, memory, rights, and civic participation-drawing buildings, planning, art, policy making, education, and activism into new conversations at global and civic scales. Published in conjunction with the third iteration of the Chicago Architecture Biennial, ...and other such stories extends the exhibition's core questions through a range of essays, interviews, and visual dossiers, along with a section introducing the Biennial's contributors. It is structured by a series of curatorial frames: (1) No Land Beyond reflects on landscapes of belonging and sovereignty that challenge narrow definitions of land as property and commodity; (2) Appearances and Erasures explores both shared and contested memories in consideration of monuments, memorials, and social histories; (3) Rights and Reclamations foregrounds aspects of rights, advocacy, and civic purpose in architectural and spatial practices; and (4) Common Ground addresses practices invested in producing and intervening in public space within and beyond the field of architecture.
