Dimensions of Citizenship: investigating pressing issues of our day

The official U.S. entry at 16tht International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale – Dimensions of Citizenship: Architecture and Belonging from the Body to the Cosmos– is on show from February 28 to April 27 at Wrightwood 659, Chicago. The exhibition is dedicated to exploring the notion of citizenship today, and the potential role of architecture and design in creating spaces for it.

The exhibition does so with seven installations created by a team of architects and designers. Each installation explores a different spatial scale: citizen, civitas, region, nation, globe, network, and cosmos. These different scales broadly position citizenship as a critical global topic, marked by histories of inequality. Aiming to address a diversity of issues, they tackle different perspectives. As a result, society’s complex relationship of governance, affinity, and circumstances that bind us are revealed.

From the meaning of ‘home’ to the dynamics of borderlands, pressing issues of our day are investigated: ‘’It would be difficult to think of a more urgent and timely issue than what it means to be a citizen. We hope that this exhibition will provoke visitors to think about multiple aspects of citizenship and how architects, designers, and artists might respond to them’’ – Lisa Cavanaugh, Director of Wrightwood 659

There is no final answer presented to the questions asked. Instead, it concludes with the need for architecture and design to respond to, and shape spaces of citizenship: today and in the future.

Photos © Tom Harris. Courtesy of Wrightwood 659, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Chicago.