Art Institute of Chicago to Host SHARING SPACE Architecture and Design Exhibition, 4/6-8/18

A new installation drawn from the Art Institute of Chicago's renowned collection of architecture and design explores the common ground between the two fields throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.

On view April 6-August 18, 2013 in Galleries 283-285, Sharing Space: Creative Intersections in Architecture and Design showcases the depth of the collection by presenting works selected with an eye toward mutual creative concepts and strategies rather than the typical categories of media or period. By doing so, the exhibition creates exciting new "conversations" between works that are organized into six creative ideas or themes: color, geometry, structure, hybrid, surface, and technology. The result offers visitors the chance to see new and unexpected relationships among the related areas of architecture, urban planning, visual communications, and industrial design from a global mix of designers and architects spanning over a century of time.

Each of the six sections of the exhibition illuminates underlying formal or conceptual concepts in what might first seem to be disparate works. The use of color to camouflage or blur the boundaries of an object, for example, can be seen in architect Douglas Garofalo's 1991 Camouflage House as well as a vividly hued glass table by Johanna Grawunder (2010). Other groupings ask visitors to find common visual qualities, such as the use of pattern and surface treatments in Hella Jongerius's Embroidered Tablecloth (2002), which features a continuous pattern of stitching across a tablecloth and onto a plate, and Krueck & Olsen's 1983 design for a remodeled interior, Painted Apartment, in which layers of perforated metal screens, glass block walls, and veils of painted dots make surfaces appear to merge and flow, mimicking the experience of living inside a three-dimensional painting.

Another section demonstrates the rapid rise of innovation and technology in the past century from radio design in the 1940s to Yves Béhar's Jambox of 2011 and from Charles and Ray Eames's Leg Splint (c. 1942) to Van Phillips's Cheetah Flex Foot (c. 2000). Through the grouping of work not typically displayed together, questions arise: what might Lauretta Vinciarelli's 1981 conceptual drawings of Marfa, Texas; plywood furniture designed in the 1940s by Rudolph Schindler; and contemporary Pop-inspired posters by the young graphic design firm Sonnenzimmer have in common? Created across 70 years, these objects show the powerful lure of abstraction and geometry in architecture and design.

The juxtapositions offered by Sharing Space create new arguments for underlying relationships that span generations of practice and a large range of media. Highlighting important recent acquisitions and gems of the Permanent Collection, this presentation unveils nuanced relationships, deep structural connections, and shared design methodologies that run through this selection of modern and contemporary works.

Sharing Space: Creative Intersections of Architecture and Design is organized by the Art Institute of Chicago and curated by Alison Fisher, Harold and Margot Schiff Assistant Curator, and Karen Kice, Neville Bryan Assistant Curator, both in the Department of Architecture and Design.

For more information, visit www.artic.edu. Museum Hours: Daily: 10:30-5:00; Thursdays until 8:00. Closed Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Day. Admission: Children under 14 always free; members always free.

City of Chicago residents with Chicago Public Library cards can borrow a "Museum Passport" card from any library branch for free general admission to the nine members of Museums in the Park, including the Art Institute of Chicago.

Pictured: Douglas Garofalo and David Leary. Camouflage House, 1991. Gift of Douglas Garofalo.