Celebrating architecture in a unique location

The inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial was held in 2015. The event was designed to remind people about the architectural history of the city, including the many innovations that have happened there, and highlight its continued central role in the future of the field. The huge event involved a diverse array of attractions and installations all across the city.The Biennial proved to be a great success and attracted 530,551 visitors. To put this into perspective, the Venice Architecture Biennial in 2014 saw 276,806 visitors. The result is even more impressive when you consider the Venice event has been running since 1975 whilst this was the very first year for Chicago.The success of the event has led the organisers to reaffirm their commitment to future events and start planning the next one in 2017. The first designers taking part are expected to be announced later in 2016 alongside the partners who will be participating. The dates will also be released so people can start planning their visits early.One theme that regularly came up at last year's celebration of architecture was solutions to housing shortages. This is a topic that is close to our heart as we seek to contribute valuable residential architecture in London and create homes that work in areas where space is limited. Several architects and designers put their ideas on display to show various strategies that could be employed to resolve the problem. The designs took many forms, including prototypes for flexible buildings and pre-fabricated ones. There was even a design of a modular home which used corridor and hallway style spaces that could be interconnected in a number of combinations.The Chicago Architecture Biennial is a fantastic platform for architects, designers and artists from various disciplines to show their ideas to a wider audience. The whole event creates a feeling of creativity and innovation, added to by the history and culture of the location.At Coffey Architects we enjoy seeing this kind of event because it helps to shed light on the different solutions architects come up with to create spaces for people to live, work and play in. We believe that by sharing ideas and taking inspiration from a variety of areas, architects have the best chance of coming up with a suitable solution to each issue.