Make New History: Discovering the Chicago Architecture Biennial

Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee are the founding partners of the architecture firm Johnston Marklee. They have taught at major universities including the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Princeton University, the University of California, Los Angeles, the Technical University of Berlin, and ETH Zurich. They have held the Cullinan Chair at Rice University and the Frank Gehry Chair at the University of Toronto.

Since its establishment in 1998 in Los Angeles, Johnston Marklee has been recognized nationally and internationally with awards and publications. To date, the firm has been awarded over 30 major awards, and a book on its work, entitled House Is a House Is a House Is a House Is a House, was published by Birkhauser in 2016. This followed a monograph on the firm’s work, published in 2014 by 2G.

Projects undertaken by Johnston Marklee are diverse in scale and type, spanning seven countries throughout North and South America, Europe, and Asia. Current projects include the Menil Drawing Institute, on the campus of the Menil Collection, complete in September 2017; a renovation of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, complete in the summer of 2017; and the new UCLA Graduate Art Studios campus in Culver City, California.

The firm’s work has been exhibited internationally and is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Menil Collection, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Carnegie Museum of Art, and the Architecture Museum of TU Munich. Johnston Marklee participated in the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial in 2015. 

UrbanLab is an architecture and urban design office founded by Sarah Dunn and Martin Felsen. The office’s realized projects range in scale from small houses to urban districts. UrbanLab’s recent book titled “Bowling” speculates on ways to realign architecture and infrastructure with dwindling natural resources. The firm was awarded the American Institute of Architects College of Fellows Latrobe Prize, the History Channel’s “City of the Future” competition, and many design awards from the American Institute of Architects. UrbanLab’s work has been published and exhibited widely, including in the 2010 and the 2012 Venice Biennale and the 2015 Chicago Architecture Biennial. The office’s work is in the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. Dunn is an associate professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Felsen is an associate professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology.