CITATION OF MERIT
INTERIOR ARCHITECTURE
Chicago, Illinois
| Architect: | Tigerman McCurry Architects Ltd. |
| Client/Owner: | The Art Institute of Chicago |
| General Contractor: | Chicago Scenic Studios Inc. |
| Photographer: | Karant + Associates, Barbara Karant |
"This temporary exhibit reflects well the period of the architecture that is on display." -Jury Comment
The architecture of Karl Friedrich Schinkel was influenced as much by the principles of theater as by the principles of architecture. The expression of this important, and often overlooked, aspect of his work was hindered by the half-oval racetrack shape of the architecture gallery at the Art Institute of Chicago. The very shape of the gallery is antithetical to Schinkel's perspectival theory of space. In the gallery visitors walk through the curved space towards a never quite perceivable end; in Schinkel's drawings both proscenium and vanishing point are clearly delineated.
Given this considerable restriction, the exhibits drew upon other aspects of Schinkel's architectural vocabulary. Coming into the gallery down a flight of stairs, the first space evoked the Altes Museum in Berlin. The next series of chambers recalled the Schauspielhaus of 1818-1821. Finally the last two "Schinkel-after-Schinkel" chambers suggested the enormous influence that Schinkel had on architects after his death, including Mies van der Rohe and Albert Speer. Chronologically structured, the installation of the exhibition represented an unbroken cycle of design that stretches from Neoclassicism to Postmodernism, when theatricality was reintroduced into building design. The dramatic quality of the exhibition's installation, achieved through the use of flattened classicism (in this case, literally painted on the gallery walls) creates an appropriately theatrical milieufor Schinkel's original drawings and opera-set renderings.
