Redirect Your Attention at the 2025 Chicago Architectural Exhibition
The 2025 Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB) is set to run from September 19, 2025, to February 28, 2026, across venues citywide. This year's edition, titled SHIFT: Architecture in Times of Radical Change, is led by Latina artistic director Florencia Rodriguez. The focus of CAB 2025 is on addressing how architectural design can respond to and mitigate ecological, political, and spatial crises by rethinking resources, community engagement, and the built environment’s social fabric.
CAB 2025 engages with these crises by emphasizing architecture’s role in confronting scarcity and inequality. The Biennial calls attention to what's still at stake in Chicago: land use, equity, and belonging. Notable contributors include MASS Design Group, Breathe Architecture, APPARATA, SO-IL, Objects of Common Interest, Plan Común, and many more from various countries, such as Lagos, Zurich, Santiago, Dhaka, and beyond.
Several works in CAB 6 examine how the architecture of borders and transit centers shape our sense of home regarding migration. The Biennial also fosters conversations that link architectural innovation with broader systemic challenges, encouraging designs that are climate-responsive, socially inclusive, and economically mindful to navigate and repair ecological and political fractures in urban spaces.
Design/build approaches are a significant part of CAB 2025, studying how architecture deals with limited resources and social issues, often by involving communities directly in the design process. The Biennial also learns from diverse neighborhoods and contexts to understand complex social, economic, and racial dynamics that influence spatial justice and investment or disinvestment patterns.
Promoting architectural excellence grounded in sustainable practices that contribute to ecological stewardship and reduce environmental impact is another key focus of CAB 2025. Contemporary architecture as media takes on new meaning in CAB 6, with design serving as both messenger and message.
CAB 6 sprawls outward, with installations, dialogues, and ephemeral structures in public schools, neighborhood parks, alternative galleries, and underutilized civic spaces. The Biennial also investigates the ecological and political costs of extraction regarding materials.
Key themes of CAB 6 include material innovation, migration, housing, and design as media. Housing is reimagined as a mutable, collective infrastructure in CAB 6. The Biennial is a platform for firms, researchers, and independent designers to test new frameworks, stake out new territory, and meet collaborators.
SHIFT: Architecture in Times of Radical Change is a provocation, confronting architecture's entanglement with systems like collective housing, forced displacement, material production, and eroding public trust. Several projects blur the line between art and architecture, practice and pedagogy. Projects revealed in CAB often live on in museums, publications, policy circles, and real-world commissions.
DesignDash, an event during Design Chicago at the Merchandise Mart, is helping interior designers reshape their studios with a workshop titled "Build Your Dream Team" on October 8, 2025. This workshop is a testament to CAB's commitment to fostering collaboration and innovation in the field of architecture and design.
[1] Chicago Architecture Biennial. (2025). About CAB 2025. Retrieved from https://chicagoarchitecturebiennial.org/about/ [2] Chicago Architecture Biennial. (2025). Exhibitions and Projects. Retrieved from https://chicagoarchitecturebiennial.org/exhibitions-and-projects/
- The Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB) explores global design and lifestyle, featuring exhibitions and projects by architects and designers from various countries, such as Lagos, Zurich, Santiago, Dhaka, and beyond. (About CAB 2025)
- CAB 2025 emphasizes the role of interior design in reshaping studios, as shown by the DesignDash event during Design Chicago at the Merchandise Mart, offering a workshop titled "Build Your Dream Team" on October 8, 2025. (About CAB 2025)
- The Biennial intends to address ecological, political, and spatial crises by delving into themes like material innovation, migration, housing, and design as media, reimagining housing as a mutable, collective infrastructure. (Exhibitions and Projects)
