This is a Rehearsal
The fifth edition of the Chicago Architecture Biennial, CAB 5: This is a Rehearsal, curated by the interdisciplinary arts collective the Floating Museum, takes an expansive view of design as an iterative rehearsal process to explore architecture, cities, and the different social, ecological, economic and political forces that shape them. From artists, architects, engineers, performers, poets, scientists, and others, the practitioners represented in CAB 5 collectively set the stage for the cross-pollination of ideas in order to challenge and envision alternatives for the following: how we understand and address the needs of a city, who plays a role in imagining and making the city, and how our potential solutions attend to the overlapping crises that now inform our everyday lives.
Cities are always evolving—continuously shaped and reshaped by the millions of people who inhabit them through a process of action and reaction. Over time, the accumulation of buildings and infrastructure creates a layered index of the ideals and policies of past generations. Rehearsal invites new possibilities through open dialogue, creative invention, and a generative process of discovery to understand how hope and care can emerge in architecture. Harnessing dialogue is paramount to CAB 5’s conception of rehearsal. It is a productive tool that establishes new lines of thinking that question the status quo through modes ranging from conversations and performances to installations, drawings, and new technologies. In this sense, CAB 5 welcomes alternative ways of making architecture and engages everyone to rethink, rework, and reimagine the present and future of cities.
The Biennial will open on September 21, 2023, and run through January 2, 2024, with major installations and programming at the Chicago Cultural Center and at sites across the city. The opening preview will take place September 21–24, 2023, with a schedule of public and special events. The citywide exhibition will feature an extensive network of creative practitioners and community partners whose programs in art, architecture, design, and performance will provide a strong foundation for CAB’s dynamic return.
CAB is also pleased to announce that Helmo, has been commissioned to design the identity for CAB 5.
The Paris-based graphic design studio co-founded by Thomas Couderc & Clément Vauchezworks in an expanded field of graphic design: images, posters, visual identity, signage, typography, editorial design, etc. They mainly collaborate with cultural institutions and festivals in France and abroad.
Both precise and innovative, Helmo’s identity for CAB 5 This is a Rehearsal becomes a graphic object that is characterized by a dynamic relationship between text and image that explores the paradox of a consistent identity for the biennial with the ever-evolving creative process of rehearsal.