Caruso St John has teamed up with architectural photographer Hélène Binet and artist Thomas Demand for an exhibition made entirely from paper and cardboard, showed in the Chicago Cultural Center, in the Chicago Architecture Biennial.
Caruso St John shows at the center of the room, a city-like tableau of five large models, ‘constellation of figural volumes’, surrounded by an brownd color walls; only at second glance does the viewer see that this is a wallpaper designed by the artist Thomas Demand. A selection of reference images depicting places, works of art, and architecture, is mounted directly onto the wallpaper, alongside a series of photographs by Hélène Binet.

A selection of reference images has been integrated directly onto the wallpaper. They depict places, works of art, and architecture from the broad history of Western culture. Many of these images have been repeatedly referenced by Adam Caruso and Peter St John for different competitions. On the two side walls hang large color photographs of their current projects by Hélène Binet, who has photographed all of Caruso St John’s projects to date.

The room shows us models and the circulation of images, references, and histories from its practice, stripped of their contexts to stand as isolated architectural objects and images, interpreted by Thomas Demand and Hélène Binet.

Demand makes mural-scale photographs, but instead of finding his subject matter in landscapes, buildings, and crowds, he uses paper and cardboard to reconstruct scenes he finds in images taken from various media sources. Once he has photographed his re-created environment—always devoid of figures but often displaying evidence of recent human activity—Demand destroys his models, further complicating the relationship between reproduction and original that his photography investigates.
The main exhibition is free and open to the public from September 16, 2017 through January 7, 2018.

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Caruso St John Architects established their practice in 1990. The office of approximately 30 work in an open studio in a 1930s factory building in East London which the practice converted to studio use for themselves. In 2010 a second office was opened by the practice in Zurich.

Adam Caruso studied architecture at McGill University in Montreal. He worked for Florian Beigel and Arup Associates before establishing his own practice with Peter St John in 1990.

He taught at the University of North London from 1990-2000, and was Professor of Architecture at the University of Bath from 2002-2005. He has been Visiting Professor at the Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio, at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, at the ETH Zurich, and on the Cities Programme at the London School of Economics. In 2011 Adam Caruso was appointed Professor of Architecture and Construction at the ETH Zurich.

Peter St John began his architectural studies at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, completing them at the Architectural Association in 1984. He worked for Richard Rogers, Florian Beigel, Dixon Jones, and Arup Associates prior to establishing his own practice with Adam Caruso.

Peter taught at the University of North London from 1990-2000. He was a Visiting Professor at the Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio, Switzerland from 1999-2001, and Visiting Professor in the Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering at the University of Bath from 2001-2004. In 2005 he was a visiting critic at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. From 2007 to 2009 he was a visiting professor at ETH in Zurich. He is currently an external examiner at the Scott Sutherland School of Architecture in Aberdeen and Cardiff School of Architecture.

Rod Heyes studied architecture at Cambridge University and the University of North London (now London Metropolitan University). He joined Caruso St John in 1998 and was made a senior associate in 2005. He plays a major role in the management of the practice, dealing specifically with resourcing and programming. He was project architect for the Brick House, the refurbishment of the Barbican Concert Hall, Spike Island in Bristol and Chiswick House Cafe. Rod is currently leading the practice's work at Tate Britain. He has taught architecture at the University of Bath and at London Metropolitan University and has led Diploma Unit 4 at Kingston University for the last three years. He has lectured widely in the UK including Plymouth Univeristy, the Univerity of Greenwich and Edinburgh University.

www.carusostjohn.com

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+44 20 7613 3161

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Act.>. 01/2013 - 06/2016

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Hélène Binet was born in 1959 in Sorengo and is of both Swiss and French background. She studied photography at the Instituto Europeo di Design in Rome, where she grew up, and soon developed an interest in architetural photography.

Over a period of twenty-five years Hélène Binet has photographed both contemporary and historical architecture. Her list of clients include architects Raoul Bunschoten, Caruso St John, Zaha Hadid, Daniel Libeskind, Studio Mumbai, Peter Zumthor and many others. While following the work of contemporary architects – often from construction through completion – Hélène Binet has also photographed the works of past architects as Alvar Aalto, Geoffrey Bawa, Le Corbusier, Sverre Fehn, John Hejduk, Sigurd Lewerentz, Andrea Palladio, Dimitris Pikionis and Nicholas Hawksmoor. More recently, Hélène Binet has started to direct her attention to landscape photography, wherein she transposes key concerns of her architectural photography. Hélène Binet’s work has been published in a wide range of books, and is shown in both national and international exhibitions. Hélène Binet is an advocate of analogue photography and therefore she exclusively works with film.

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Thomas Demand studied with the sculptor Fritz Schwegler, who encouraged him to explore the expressive possibilities of architectural models at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where Bernd and Hilla Becher had recently taught photographers such as Andreas Gursky, Thomas Struth, and Candida Höfer. Like those artists, Demand makes mural-scale photographs, but instead of finding his subject matter in landscapes, buildings, and crowds, he uses paper and cardboard to reconstruct scenes he finds in images taken from various media sources. Once he has photographed his re-created environments—always devoid of figures but often displaying evidence of recent human activity—Demand destroys his models, further complicating the relationship between reproduction and original that his photography investigates.

Demand (born 1964) has been the subject of one-person exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, and he has represented Germany at the Venice Biennale and the Bienal de São Paulo. Demand is currently based in Los Angeles.

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Published on: September 25, 2017
Cite: "Models, papers and photography by Caruso St John, Hélène Binet and Thomas Demand at CAB" METALOCUS. Accessed
<http://www.metalocus.es/en/news/models-papers-and-photography-caruso-st-john-helene-binet-and-thomas-demand-cab> ISSN 1139-6415
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