The Chicago Architecture Biennial 2023 ('CAB 5', the event's fifth edition) has opened, filling galleries with architecture-adjacent installations and dispersing pop-up projects across the city. Though Chicago is a place packed with iconic architectural moments – from the likes of SOM, Frank Lloyd Wright, Jeanne Gang, and Mies van der Rohe – CAB 5’s title, 'This is a Rehearsal', draws attention to architecture as a collaborative process to develop future worlds, rather than celebrating a singular architectural object.
This year’s edition is curated by arts collective Floating Museum, formed of poet avery r. young, architect Andrew Schachman, sculptor and community facilitator Faheem Majeed, and artist Jeremiah Hulsebos-Spofford. Their diverse vantages into cities and communities shape the biennial’s broad offering – though with only one architect in the collective, it is perhaps no surprise that CAB 5 doesn’t include much traditional architectural presentation. This is not a biennial of foam models, scale drawings, and manifestos stuck onto walls.
