Please join us for a reception and exhibition featuring final student projects emerging from the team-taught course Architectural History and Critical Media Practice.  

Reception: Tuesday June 2, 5:00-7:00p

Open hours: Wednesday June 3 (check back for hours or contact Mike Schuh, Program Coordinator.

About the course:

In this advanced studio course we investigated how creative practice can engage specific architectural sites and explore the erased or disappeared cultural histories, real and/or imagined, inscribed in those spaces.  Our focus was the history of “The Mecca” apartment building on the south side of Chicago. In the face of great protest, The Mecca was demolished in 1952 as part of the expansion of the Illinois Institute of Design according to plans developed by Mies van der Rohe.  This site and its Bronzeville environs thus present a variety of opportunities for exploring themes of displaced architectures, competing visions of modernism and utopia, and conflicts in popular and cultural memory. 

The course was team-taught by Victor Burgin (visiting Mellon Fellow) and DN Rodowick (Cinema & Media Studies) as part of Overlay, their Mellon Collaborative Fellowship for Arts Practice and Scholarship.