OPEN: New Designs for Public Space

Location and Dates:
The Art Institute of Chicago
June 11 – October 31, 2003

National Building Museum
January 5 – May 15, 2005

Chicago Architecture Foundation
January 28 – May 7, 2006

Curators:
Raymond W. Gastil and Zoë Ryan

Exhibition Design:
Freecell

Graphic Design:
Flat

Publication:
OPEN: New Designs for Public Space,
VAI/Princeton Architectural Press, 2003

Publication Design:
Freecell

This exhibition explored the increasingly vital role that public spaces play in contemporary cities in an era of heightened security and increased mobile communications. With projects by some of the most innovative architecture, landscape, and urban design from cities across the globe, including: Will Alsop, Elizabeth Diller, Ricardo Scofidio, and Charles Renfro, Craig Dykers, Peter Eisenman, Zaha Hadid, Walter Hood, and Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi, the exhibition made the case for the importance of well-designed spaces that can contribute to civic life. More than 300 images, digital animations and videos, and models, many commissioned for this groundbreaking exhibition, illustrated a range of projects from memorials to new types of urban plazas and parks, from Macon, Georgia to Melbourne, Australia, to Johannesberg, South Africa.