Encompassed within the 2017 Chicago Biennale of Architecture, Francois Perrin’s project, titled Air Houses: Design for a New Climate, is set within the majestic Palm House at the Garfield Park Conservatory, whose tropical microclimate provides an ideal setting for an architectural experiment that proposes new directions for building in relationship to landscape and climate.
Perrin puts forth an alternative to a culture of mass consumerism that has produced buildings disengaged from their context (at ever greater environmental cost).
Perrin puts forth an alternative to a culture of mass consumerism that has produced buildings disengaged from their context (at ever greater environmental cost).
Air Houses: Design for a New Climate looks back to look forward, and references the vernacular traditions that have developed in response to nature throughout most of human history.
The silver fabric structure suspended above the Palm House canopy prototypes a futuristic interpretation of these first principles that have driven myriad chapters of architecture’s performative response to weather and climate.
The main exhibition is free and open to the public from September 16, 2017 through January 7, 2018.
