The Hallway is an exhibition space for sharing the work of students, alumni, and faculty in the Department of Architecture, Interior Architecture, and Designed Objects. It is also a space for sharing contemporary work from practices in the city and the world with the design community at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. At the center of the life of the Department, exhibitions in The Hallway are frequently integrated into teaching in the department's courses. Gallery programs include class visits and gallery talks with exhibiting architects, designers, and artists.
Discard Archive
March - May 2020: These casts, repurposed molds used in the production of a ceramic data mountain, embody plaster’s dual role as a tool for copying and as a sculptural material in its own right.
Polling Place
January - February 2020: Polling Place investigates the spatial design and identity of the physical voting stations where we exercise our democracy. This exhibition asks SAIC’s most recent alumni to speculate on new narratives and identities for these important civic apparatuses.
Crossing the Skyline
November - December 2019: As architectural types, the prison and the library are opposites: one is designed for physical confinement, the other for intellectual expansiveness. What happens when we blur the line between these buildings—between freedom and captivity?
Book Nooks
October 2019: Book Nooks is a pop-up reading room to amplify joy through book-bound storytelling. Each book is selected by a faculty member from AIADO, and is on loan from their personal library. The temporary collection is at once a snapshot of the department's current interests and an opportunity to expand the community's cultural and literary references.
QUEUE: An Exhibit about Waiting in Line
August - September 2019: Queue, an Exhibit about Waiting in Line is a 100’-0” long drawing. The drawing can be read like a graphic novel from two points of view and two different endpoints, exploring the banal and spectacular possibilities faced by citizens moving through a continuous queue line.
whatnots
May - June 2019: Positioned as a commercial brand, whatnot has been a progressive educational platform focused on creative inquiry matched to iteration, systems of production, and the nuances of the marketplace. This exhibition gathers an eclectic mix of whatnots from the past seven years.
Objects and Spaces for Angels and Machines
April 2019: Objects and Spaces for Angels and Machines is a studio seminar on contemporary issues by Matylda Krzykowski. This exercise offers space for experiment and gives an insight into how to place individual practices. The challenge is to create new context; that is, the transformation of reality.
Calibrated Lens: A Focus on South Side Narrative
March 2019: Calibrated Lens portrays the multi-dimensional built environment that has evolved over decades on Chicago’s South Side, and acts of resilience and relaxation cultivated by residents in these spaces, through home movies, photographs, and constructed objects.
Golden Stature
January - February 2019: The Golden Stature project re-explores the historical value of the golden statue "The Republic" of the 1893 Columbian Exposition, and reclaims its glory for Woodlawn's current community, revisioning a framework for growth into the future.
7 Degrees
December 2018: From the Fall 2018 class of Designed Objects 4: "The title of our exhibition 7 Degrees is a play on six degrees of seperation, the idea that every person is linked to every other person on the planet by six or less connections."
Infinite Games: An Extended Invitation
October - November 2018: John Preus' 2017 show Infinite Games 50/50, which featured the works of 50 artists, designers, and architects, has been reimagined as an extended invitation for new participants. Twenty-seven participating artists have produced a rich assortment of objects, installations, instruments, and functional prototypes.
Realizing Chambord
September - October 2018: Realizing Chambord was created for the 500th anniversary of the beginning of construction for the Chateau de Chambord in 1519. Students from around the world have been asked to imagine the future of Chambord while considering the overarching concept of utopia that is deeply embedded in the chatequ's creation and history.
A Brief Anthology of Faculty Sketchbooks
August - September 2018: Sketchbooks have been our personal receptor for cataloging ideas, notable moments, and projects. We fill them with writing, drawings, inspirations, receipts, and errands; they grow into a mental map that we keep close to our chest. It is a format that is accessible, one that we trust, and that we always return to.
