Sometimes we need to stretch the conventions and assume different perspectives to see other futures. In Fall 2015, MAS Studio designed the exhibition BOLD: Alternative Scenarios for Chicago as part of the first Chicago Architecture Biennial. The exhibition invited the public to explore architectural and urban planning alternatives for Chicago; the physical and intellectual opportunities that lie between the seemingly rigid constraints and conventions constructed in the city since its foundation 179 years ago. Just as we have come to appreciate the efficiency of the orthogonal grid that organizes Chicago, we have become used to the graphical representation of time passing on a straight horizontal line.
For the exhibition, we wanted to explore that relationship between time and line, projecting us into future while still being connected to the present. Here, we extended the horizontal lines to interrupt the conventional flow thus opening spaces in unexpected places. The (blanks) in the typography offer room for new ideas just as unused urban lots and ill-conceived plans are asking for better answers. Ultimately, it forces the visitors to pause and rethink. Instead of confining the typography to the boundaries of the two-dimensional plane, we applied it onto three-dimensional objects within the exhibition. The visitor was invited to physically move around the objects to make sense of the collection of cryptic fragments and decipher the whole.
- Renata Graw
- Alexa Viscius
