12-Aug-11 – A two-year project to document the homes of Marina City residents will open at the Art Institute of Chicago next month.

Inside Marina City will run September 17, 2011 through January 15, 2012.

When Iker Gil, an architect who lives at Marina City, started the project in July 2009, he called Marina City “a fantastic architectural and social project.”

“These iconic buildings have a heterogeneous group of residents,” said Gil, referring to Marina City’s diverse population, “from those that have lived there since the complex first opened, to young students, renters, [and] designers.”

Seeing the diversity reflected in the interiors of each home, Gil and photographer Andreas Larsson set out to photograph residents and residences, and not just homes that looked good.

In May, Gil said the Marina City project was an attempt to showcase not so much the architecture of the complex but the real environments in which residents live. “It is a study of the stories told within architecture rather than an understanding of the building itself.”

An adjunct professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Gil is also director of MAS Studio, an architecture and urban design firm. Larsson, a native of Sweden, has photographed on assignment for Chicago Magazine, The New York Times, Dwell, Harper’s Bazaar, and Billboard.

Goldberg exhibit will be next door

The images will be on display in gallery 286 of the Art Institute’s new modern wing at the same time as an exhibition celebrating the work of Bertrand Goldberg, Marina City’s architect. That exhibit will run September 17 through January 15 in galleries 283, 284, and 285.

According to the Art Institute’s website, the exhibit, designed by John Ronan Architects of Chicago and graphic design firm Studio Blue, will feature “over 100 original architectural drawings, models, photographs, and little-known examples of [Goldberg’s] graphic and furniture design.”

On October 29, Goldberg will be examined for four hours by a panel of architecture experts at the Art Institute. Bertrand Goldberg: Contemporary Perspectives will be presented in the institute’s Fullerton Hall from 1 to 5 p.m. Participants include Sarah Whiting, dean of the Rice University School of Architecture, Elizabeth Smith, executive director of the Art Gallery of Ontario, and Art Institute of Chicago curators Zoe Ryan and Alison Fisher.

Websites:

• Bertrand Goldberg: Architecture of Invention
• Inside Marina City: A Project by Iker Gil and Andreas E. G. Larsson