SHIFT: The GSD at the 6th Chicago Architecture Biennial 

About this Event

In a dynamic, PechaKucha format, the GSD presents and celebrates a sampling of projects exhibited at the sixth edition of the Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB 6), which takes place on sites throughout Chicago from September 19, 2025, to February 28, 2026. The biennial theme, SHIFT: Architecture in Times of Radical Change, signals the opportunity to change direction—an invitation to think with others and to set new grounds for the interpretation and design of our built environment. Featuring over 100 projects by architects, artists, and designers from 30 countries, CAB 6 explores how architecture engages with the profound cultural, social, and environmental transformations shaping our world today, and considers possibilities for envisioning alternate paths forward.  

This event features presentations by several GSD-affiliated exhibitors—including Sean Canty, Abigail Chang, Iman Fayyad, Jenny and Anda French, Lap Chi Kwong and Alison Von Glinow, Grace La and James Dallman, Alex Yueyan Li, and Oscar Zamora—followed by a conversation about the biennial and its curatorial aims, moderated by the biennial’s artistic director Florencia Rodriquez. 

Moderator

Florencia Rodriguez is the artistic director of the sixth edition of the Chicago Architecture Biennial and founding principal of -NESS, an international cultural platform for architecture. As an editor, writer, and educator, she creates and leads initiatives related to architecture and design that span publishing, exhibitions, and consultancy, and her work is grounded in the belief that architecture is a vital cultural practice. Rodriguez is also associate professor at the University of Illinois Chicago School of Architecture (UIC/SoArch), where she was director between 2022 and 2025. Before coming to UlC, Rodriguez was a lecturer in architecture at the Harvard GSD. Rodriguez has received awards for her editorial work and guest-edited America, the 48th issue of the Harvard Design Magazine with Mark Lee. Her most recent book, MCHAP 2 Territory & Expeditions was published in 2022, by IITAC, Actar, and -NESS. Rodriguez is editing the book Machado Silvetti / Drawings 1975–1999, to be published by Harvard Design Press, and she is working on a collection of her writing to be published by Park Books.

Speakers

Abigail Chang is an artist, architect, and critic at Yale School of Architecture. Her multidisciplinary practice responds to contemporary culture through installations and objects that emphasize materials, subtle encounters, and perceptual framing. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Lisbon Triennale (2019), Seoul Biennale (2021), and the Design Museum of Chicago. Solo projects include Reflections of a Room at Volume Gallery and Display Window, a site-specific installation transforming a building façade into a visual stage. She received the Chicago Architectural Club’s Emerging Visions Award (2023) and research grants from the Graham Foundation and UIC. Her critical writing, including “Screen Time” and “Reflection: Literal and Phenomenal,” explores the intersection of art, architecture and technology.

Iman Fayyad is the founding director of project:if, a design and research practice based in Cambridge, MA, exploring geometry, material efficiency, and the politics of building. She is an assistant professor of architecture at Harvard GSD and a 2024 MacDowell Fellow. Her work has been published in the New York Times, Technology: Architecture and Design, Nexus Network Journal, Log, and The Avery Review, and exhibited at venues such as the Carnegie Museum of Art and the Roca Gallery in London. Her zero-waste construction research has received support from the MetLife Foundation, Architizer’s Design For Good Award, and the ACSA Faculty Design Award. Fayyad holds degrees from MIT and Harvard GSD and has previously taught at Syracuse, MIT, and Princeton.

French 2D is a studio founded by Jenny French (MArch Harvard GSD, BA Dartmouth) and Anda French, AIA (MArch Princeton, BA Barnard). The practice focuses on uncommon housing types, as seen in their work on cohousing, compact living, and adaptive reuse. They also design civic installations and exhibitions that use the domestic to bring people together for familiar rituals in unfamiliar contexts—through furniture, textiles, and spatial environments. Notable projects include Bay State Cohousing in Boston, the Kendall Square Garage Screens in Cambridge, and the traveling Dinner Cozy series. The studio has received numerous recognitions, including a P/A Award and Architectural Record’s Design Vanguard. In 2024, they were nominated for the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize. Their work has appeared in Domus, AZURE, PLOT, Metropolis, Monocle, and the Architect’s Newspaper, and has been exhibited at MoMA, the Venice Biennale, and UMASS Amherst. Jenny is an assistant professor in practice at the Harvard GSD and Anda is a visiting lecturer at the Princeton SoA.

Kwong Von Glinow is an architecture practice founded in 2017 by Lap Chi Kwong and Alison Von Glinow. The studio transforms familiar elements into innovative yet accessible designs, spanning homes, cultural spaces, workplaces, and public environments. Notable works include a rooftop gallery addition for a Chicago greystone, a landmarked residential renovation in Highland Park, the renovation of the School of the Art Institute Flaxman Library, and the renovation of the Rice School of Architecture in Houston, TX. Their practice has earned recognition from the Rice Design Alliance, the Architectural League Prize, and the Graham Foundation, as well as multiple AIA awards. Their work combines conceptual ambition with broad public relevance.

LA DALLMAN, led by Grace La and James Dallman, is a design practice investigating architecture as site transformation—recalibrating buildings, infrastructures, and landscapes. Based in Somerville, their work spans civic, residential, and public spaces. Honors include the AIA, BSA, and a Progressive Architecture Award, and they were the first U.S. recipients of the Rice Design Alliance Prize. Their projects have been exhibited widely, and featured in Architectural Record, Azure, and Praxis. Grace La chairs the Department of Architecture at Harvard GSD, underscoring the firm’s integration of academic and professional spheres. Their forthcoming monograph Middle Front will be published by Park Books.

11 x 17 is a research-driven design practice founded in 2022 by Mahsa Malek and Alex Yueyan Li. The studio works across scales, producing exhibitions, installations, interiors, furniture, books, and buildings. A winner of the 2025 Architectural League Prize, 11 x 17 begins each project with a critical look at materiality—approaching construction as a conceptual tool to examine labor, form, and resources. Their speculative and built projects are both experientially rich and economically accessible, and have appeared in North America and China. Ongoing projects include a building about leanness and a book on the extended life of buildings. Their work has been featured in e-flux, Architectural Record, AZURE, and Archinect, and in institutions such as the Chicago Architecture Biennial and the Denver Art Museum.

Oscar Zamora is a Nicaraguan architect whose work spans research, design, and pedagogy, with a focus on ecological and social resilience in Latin America. From 2014 to 2019, he co-led Valenzuela+Zamora, gaining international acclaim with projects like Folded Villa, awarded the CEMEX Regional Award. In 2017, Domus named him among Nicaragua’s top emerging architects. He has collaborated with the Inter-American Development Bank and contributed to projects on water, food, and urban futures in Colombia and the Amazon. Zamora holds a master in architecture with distinction from Harvard GSD and has been featured in Domus, L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, and at international exhibitions such as the Biennale d’architecture et de paysage d’Île-de-France.

Due to illness, Sean Canty is unable to attend this event. Sean Canty is an associate professor of architecture at Harvard GSD and the founder of Studio Sean Canty, established in 2017. His practice introduces novel geometries and materials to enrich everyday spaces across residential, cultural, and public programs. His design approach is rooted in formal exploration, engaging contemporary typological and social questions with precision and openness. Canty’s work has been published in PIN-UP, MAS Context, Harvard Design Magazine, and Domus, and exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and A83 Gallery, New York. He has lectured at institutions such as the University of Pennsylvania, UC Berkeley, and the University of Johannesburg. He holds a master of architecture from Harvard GSD and a bachelor of architecture from the California College of the Arts.

Chelina Odbert, “Situating Justice: Reflections on a Mission-Driven Practice”

Event Description

This presentation explores the ways in which design has a critical but often overlooked role in shaping inclusion, justice, and equity across the public realm. Because they engage in the intersections of environmental and urban systems, the design disciplines are well-equipped to address inequity, injustice, and challenges to inclusivity. The practice of design, however, is not. Relying on an outdated framework that pairs a paying client with a licensed design professional, the prevailing business model works within a system that perpetuates injustice by responding to those priorities set forth by those with access to capital.

From her days as a student at the GSD, Chelina’s goal has been to practice differently. Rather than just responding to briefs, she and her classmates started the Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI) with the belief that another mode of practice was possible, one in which everyday people could identify challenges where they live—particularly at the intersection of environmental and social justice—and design practitioners could assemble the teams and processes to plan, design, and deliver projects.

Chelina’s talk will include a reflection on an unconventional journey to build a mission-driven practice: from high-end residential design, to the GSD, to the informal settlements of Kenya, and, eventually, to the rural and urban communities of Southern California. Chelina will explore the unique opportunities and challenges of a mission-driven practice. She will also share several flagship projects that, when taken together, begin to define what a just public realm could look like.

Speaker

Chelina Odbert is the co-founder and executive director of Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI), a non-profit that uses urban planning, landscape architecture, research, and community organizing to build a more just public realm. Straddling different disciplines, scales, and project types, her work is linked by a common purpose: to build community power and ensure that where you live does not determine how you live.

A leader in her field, Chelina has been recognized by the United Nations, the Aspen Institute, the Knight Foundation Fellows, and Ashoka Changemakers. Because of her ground-breaking work addressing the un-public nature of public space, she and her firm won a 2021 Emerging Voices Award from the Architectural League of New York. In 2022, KDI received the prestigious National Design Award in Landscape Architecture from the Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt Museum.

Chelina has held teaching appointments at Harvard Graduate School of Design, UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, and The Claremont Colleges. She lectures extensively about equitable communities and has written about sustainable development in a range of publications, including authoring The World Bank Handbook of Gender-Inclusive Urban Planning and Design and contributing to Just Urban Design, Designing Peace, and Now Urbanism.

Chelina earned a Master of Urban Planning degree from Harvard Graduate School of Design and a Bachelor of Arts with High Honors from Claremont McKenna College.

Petra Blaisse, “Art Applied, Inside Outside”: In Conversation with Grace La, Niels Olsen, and Fredi Fischli

Event Description

Designer Petra Blaisse discusses her forthcoming publication Art Applied, Inside Outside (2024), a kaleidoscopic view of her work across interior, exhibition, and landscape design over three decades. This comprehensive survey encompasses renowned projects, including the recently completed Taipei Performing Arts Center; the Kunsthal Rotterdam; Biblioteca degli Alberi in Milan, a park spanning almost ten hectares; and LocHal Library in Tilburg, a vast factory repurposed using an architecture of semitranslucent curtains. Joining the conversation are the GSD’s Grace La, Chair of the Department of Architecture; Niels Olsen, John Portman Design Critic in Architecture; and Fredi Fischli, John Portman Design Critic in Architecture.

Speaker

Petra Blaisse, Inside Outside’s lead designer, works in a multitude of creative areas including interior design, landscape architecture, exhibition and textile design. After an education in the visual arts and work for commercial photographers and filmers she became assistant curator at the Applied Arts department of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. In 1986 she became free-lance exhibition designer.

While realizing a series of experimental installations and exhibitions with the Rotterdamse Kunststichting (1988) and OMA (1987-1992), Blaisse’s assignments extended to the architectural field, where her focus on interior interventions (material, colour, light) and large-scale curtains developed, parallel to her life-long passion for gardening. After a two-year period of practical schooling in the early 90’s to gain botanical knowledge, Blaisse decided to add garden design to her practice.

Since 2016 Inside Outside is led by Blaisse and partners Aura Luz Melis (architect) and Jana Crepon (landscape architect) in collaboration with long-time colleague Peter Niessen (fashion designer). The studio specializes in the creation of dynamic, ever-changing environments of various levels of complexity, both inside and outside.

 

 

James Wines

A recording of this event is available with audio description.

Speaker

James Wines – born in Chicago, IL 1932 – is the founder and president of SITE , an environmental art and architecture organization, chartered in New York City in 1970. He is the former Chairman of Environmental Design at Parsons School of Design and a retired Professor of Architecture at Penn State University. His architecture, landscape, and public space projects are based on a site-specific response to surrounding contexts. Prof. Wines’ educational philosophy advocates ‘integrative thinking,’ as a means of including multi-disciplinary ideas from outside the design professions. He has written seven books on art and design, including ON SITE-ON ENERGY – Scribners & Sons 1974, DE-ARCHITECTURE – Rizzoli International 1987, and GREEN ARCHITECTURE – Taschen Verlag 2000. He has designed more than one hundred and fifty buildings, public spaces, exhibitions, landscapes, and environmental art works for private and municipal clients in eleven countries. He was awarded the Smithsonian Institution’s 2013 National Design Award for Lifetime Achievement, the ANCE Annual Award for an International Architect (Italy 2011), and the Chrysler Award for Design Innovation (USA 1995). He is also the recipient of fellowships and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Kress Foundation, American Academy in Rome, Guggenheim Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Graham Foundation, and Ford Foundation. In 2021 there was a retrospective of his drawings for SITE at the Tchoban Museum in Berlin. Prof. Wines continues to work on international art and design projects, write, lecture, and engage in educational programs based on environmental initiatives.

Jade Kake, “Indigenous Urbanism”

Registration Information

The GSD’s Fall 2021 Public Programs are all virtual and require registration. Click here to register for Margaret McCurry Lectureship in the Design Arts: Jade Kake, “Indigenous Urbanism”. The event will also be live streamed to the Harvard GSD YouTube page. Only viewers who are attending the lecture via Zoom will be able to submit questions for the Q+A. If you would like to submit questions for the speaker in advance of the event, please click here.   Live captioning will be provided during this event.

Event Description

Jade Kake (Ngāpuhi, Te Arawa, Te Whakatōhea) leads a small team at Matakohe Architecture + Urbanism, a kaupapa Māori design studio based in Whangārei in the Te Tai Tokerau region of Aotearoa New Zealand. The architectural department of the studio is focused on working primarily with Māori community clients on their papakāinga, marae, commercial and community projects, whilst the pūrākau (culture narrative) integration strand focuses on working to facilitate meaningful hapū participation in the design of major civic, commercial and education projects within their rohe. Matakohe are also involved in cultural landscape research and the development of digital tools. In the talk, Jade will present a number of recent projects, as well as reflecting on the philosophy behind Matakohe and approach to practice.

After Jade’s lecture, she will be joined in conversation by Grant Fahlgren, Elyjana Roach and Zoe Toledo from the Harvard Indigenous Design Collective and by Dan D’Oca, GSD Assistant Professor in Practice of Urban Planning.

This event is organized in partnership with the Harvard Indigenous Design Collective .

Speaker

Jade Kake was born on Bundjalung Country, and received her training in architecture at the University of Queensland and UNITEC Institute of Technology in Auckland. Of Māori and Dutch descent, her tribal affiliations are Ngāpuhi, Te Whakatōhea and Te Arawa. She leads a small team at Matakohe Architecture and Urbanism, a Whangārei-based design studio which she founded in mid-2018. Matakohe works with Māori organisations to progress their multi-residential, community and commercial projects, and with mana whenua (local tribal) groups to express their values, aspirations and narratives in the design of civic, commercial and education projects within their rohe (tribal area).  
 
In 2018, she hosted and produced Indigenous Urbanism , a podcast about the spaces we inhabit, and the community drivers and practitioners who are shaping these environments and decolonising through design. She has written for a variety of housing and architecture magazines and contributed chapters to several books on architecture and urbanism.  

Follow Jade Kake on Twitter and Instagram.

Sierra Bainbridge and Lisa Tziona Switkin, “Growth and Grit: Cultivating a Life’s Work”

The GSD is pleased to present a series of talks and webinars broadcast to our audiences via Zoom.

*This lecture will be ONLINE ONLY. For security reasons, virtual attendees must register. Scroll down to find complete instructions for how to register.

Event Description

Sierra Bainbridge, senior principal and managing director at Mass Design Group, and Lisa Switkin, senior principal at James Corner Field Operations, know the challenges of living and working through the growth of a design practice from start-up to international renown. Moderated by Anita Berrizbeitia, together they will discuss both the constant struggle and deep satisfaction of cultivating vision and voice, at work and at home. This will be a candid conversation about their experiences being with a firm from its inception, and about remaining as key leaders in those firms for nearly two decades. Switkin and Bainbridge have had significant roles in projects such as the High Line in New York, Freshkills Park in Staten Island, Tongva Park in Santa Monica, the Butaro Hospital Campus in Burera, Rwanda, the Memorial to Peace and Justice Campus in Montgomery, Alabama, and many others.

Speakers

Sierra Bainbridge  was a co-founding member of MASS in 2008, and oversaw design and construction of the Butaro Hospital in Rwanda. As cross disciplinary Senior Principal and Managing Director, architect, licensed landscape architect, and educator, Sierra oversees MASS’s landscape architecture department; and the design and implementation of MASS’s projects in the United States and Africa. By working deeply across disciplines to radically reshape the material supply chain project by project, Sierra is pushing to help shift MASS’s portfolio to approach carbon neutrality as close to project completion as possible.  This began with Ilima Primary school in the DCR, and continues to be tested at scale on campuses worldwide including Farm Hub in the Hudson Valley, and the Rwanda institute for Conservation Agriculture in Bugesera, Rwanda. Sierra has also worked on various memorials including EJI, the King Memorial, and the Kendall Memorial. Sierra has held an adjunct professorship at the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Landscape Architecture, Visiting Lectureship at Harvard University’s GSD. She served as Chair of the School of Environmental Design at the University of Rwanda, where she assisted in the inception and built out of the curricula of the first architecture program in Rwanda, for the African Design Center and for RICA.

Lisa Switkin is a Senior Principal at Field Operations , a leading-edge landscape architecture and urban design practice based in New York City. With a background in urban planning and landscape architecture, Lisa is committed to improving cities through the design of a holistic and vibrant public realm, inspired by place, people, and nature. For 20 years, Lisa has helped to shape New York City’s public spaces including the design and delivery of the High Line since 2004; Domino Park in Brooklyn; the transformative master plan for Staten Island’s Freshkills Park; Gansevoort Peninsula in Hudson River Park; and most recently the “Neighborhoods Now” initiative, in collaboration with the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, Urban Design Forum, and the Van Alen Institute, to develop safe and inspirational reopening strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic. Other signature projects include Santa Monica’s Tongva Park, Philadelphia’s Race Street Pier, Nicollet Mall in Minneapolis, Newark’s Riverfront Park, The Underline in Miami, Shelby Farms Park in Memphis, and Seattle’s Central Waterfront. 

Lisa currently serves as President of the Landscape Architecture Foundation . She was a Rome Prize recipient in 2008 and has taught graduate level design studios and lectured at universities, symposiums, foundations, and institutions around the world.

How to Join

Register to attend the lecture here . Once you have registered, you will be provided with a link to join the lecture via Zoom. This link will also be emailed to you.

The event will also be live streamed to the GSD’s YouTube page . Only viewers who are attending the lecture via Zoom will be able to submit questions for the Q+A. If you would like to submit questions for the speakers in advance of the event, please click here .

Live captioning will be provided during this event. A transcript will be available roughly two weeks after the event, upon request.

Norman Kelley, “Things not as they are”

A close examination of architecture and design’s relationship to translations in two- and three-dimensions.

Norman Kelley is an architecture and design collaborative based in Chicago and New Orleans. Founded in 2012 by Carrie Norman and Thomas Kelley, their work draws on the limits between two- and three-dimensions. Results vary in scale and medium: site-specific drawings, furniture, and architectural interiors. Thomas Kelley is an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a fellow of the American Academy in Rome. Carrie Norman is a registered architect (Louisiana, Illinois, and New York) and an Assistant Professor at Tulane University. The collaborative has contributed work to the 14th Venice Architecture Biennial (2014), the Chicago Architecture Biennial (2015, 2017) and is a recipient of the Architectural League of New York Young Architects Prize (2014) and a United States Artists Fellowship (2018). Their design work is represented by Volume and Friedman Benda galleries. Both partners received a Bachelor of Science in architecture from the University of Virginia and a Master’s in architecture from Princeton University. Past and current collaborations include Brendan Fernandes, Whitney Museum of American Art, Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Sylvia Lavin, Reversible Destiny Foundation, Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery, Juan Garcia Mosqueda, LAMPO, Aesop, and Notre.

Jan Boelen, “Design as Learning”

Why do design? What is it for? These are forward-looking questions for a creative discipline that seems more slippery to define than ever. In a world of dwindling natural resources, exhausted social and political systems, and an overload of information there are many urgent reasons to reimagine the design discipline, and there is a growing need to look at design education. Learning and unlearning should become part of an on-going educational practice. We need new proposals for how to organize society, how to structure our governments, how to live with, not against, the planet, how to sift fact from fiction, how to relate to each other, and frankly, how to simply survive.
This lecture Design as Learning asks: can design and design education provide these critical ideas and strategies?

 

Jan Boelen (b. 1967, Genk, Belgium) is artistic director of Z33 House for Contemporary Art in Hasselt, Belgium, artistic director of Atelier LUMA, an experimental laboratory for design in Arles, France, and curator of the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial (22 Sep–4 Nov 2018) in Istanbul, Turkey. He also holds the position of the head of the Master department Social Design at Design Academy Eindhoven in the Netherlands.

Since the opening, Z33 House for Contemporary Art has been fashioning projects and exhibitions that encourage the visitor to look at everyday objects in a novel manner. It is a unique laboratory for experiment and innovation and a meeting place with cutting-edge exhibitions of contemporary art and design. With Z33 Research, design and art research studios established in 2013, Boelen is transforming Z33 from exhibition-based to a research-based institution. At the initiative of Z33 and the Province of Limburg, Manifesta 9 took place in Belgium in 2012. As part of his role at Z33, Boelen curated the 24th Biennial of Design in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in 2014.

Boelen holds a degree in product design from the Media and Design Academy (now the LUCA School of Arts) in Genk, Belgium.

Ross Lovegrove

Ross Lovegrove is a designer and visionary whose work is widely considered to be the very apex of his field, stimulating a profound change in the physicality of our three-dimensional world. Inspired by the logic and beauty of nature, his designs embrace technology, materials science, and intelligent organic form, creating what many industry leaders regard as the aesthetic expression of the 21st Century. Lovegrove’s designs reflect his deeply human and resourceful approach; he strives to imbue everything he designs—from cameras to cars to trains, aviation, and architecture—with optimism, innovation, and vitality. His work has been published widely in design journals and he is author of Supernatural: The work of Ross Lovegrove (Phaidon, 2004) with essays by Greg Lynn, Tokujin Yoshioka, and Cecil Balmond. Lovegrove has won numerous international awards and his work has been exhibited internationally for over twenty years, including shows at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Guggenheim Museum NY, Axis Centre Japan, Pompidou Centre, Paris and the Design Museum, London.

Supported by the Margaret McCurry Lectureship fund, and part of the Rouse Visiting Artist Program