Space Popular
Vienna, Austria and Asturias, Spain
Space Popular is led by Lara Lesmes and Fredrik Hellberg, an architecture practice exploring the relationships between media and the built environment through research, design, and artworks. Their portfolio includes buildings, exhibitions, public artworks, furniture, and virtual architecture. Lesmes and Hellberg are professors of Architecture at the University of Applied Arts Vienna and have held positions at UCLA, the Architectural Association, the University of Toronto, and INDA Chulalongkorn University. Their clients include institutions such as MAK Vienna, MAXXI Rome, ArkDes Stockholm, RIBA London, MMCA Seoul, and independent galleries including MAGAZIN (Vienna) and Sto Workshop (London).
2025 Biennial Project
Project Overview
The Global Home
The Global Home is an immersive film exploring how we might live together in virtual space. It follows a group of avatars as they move through connected digital rooms, sharing everyday moments.
As more people gather in virtual environments, the physical home becomes the foundation for these new shared spaces. Our living rooms, kitchens, and hallways shape where we can stand, walk, or sit in a virtual world. These hidden physical boundaries influence the design and use of virtual rooms, revealing new patterns of movement, behavior, and social interaction.
In this future, virtual homes are built together—co-decorated, co-inhabited, and deeply personal. Over time, they form a vast, borderless network of overlapping spaces: a global home without a fixed location, owned and shaped by everyone inside it.
Venue
View moreChicago Cultural Center
Address
78 E. Washington St., Chicago, IL 60602
Neighborhood
The Loop
Description
Completed in 1897 as Chicago’s first central library, the building was established as the Chicago Cultural Center, the nation’s first and most comprehensive free municipal cultural venue, in 1991. One of the most visited attractions in Chicago, the stunning landmark building is home to two magnificent stained-glass domes, as well as free art exhibitions, performances, tours, lectures, family activities, music, and more – presented by the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) and many others.
