The first Chicago Architecture Biennial, which brings together projects by over 100 designers from more than 30 countries on six continents, is, by turns, surprisingly streetwise, maddeningly megalomaniacal, deeply humanistic, playfully forward-looking and head-scratchingly intellectual.

The Chicago Cultural Center's Randolph Street lobby has been playfully reinvented for the biennial, with rocking chairs and globe lights, by Pedro & Juana architects of Mexico City.
The Chicago Cultural Center's Randolph Street lobby has been playfully reinvented for the biennial, with rocking chairs and globe lights, by Pedro & Juana architects of Mexico City. © Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune

Helmed by Chicago's Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events and the Graham Foundation, a Chicago-based architectural grant-making organization, the privately-sponsored, $6.5 million exhibition gathers an impressive array of models, renderings, films, installations and doodles (even in the digital age, some architects draw).

All gain stature from being displayed in the sprawling biennial's headquarters: the Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington St., which superbly echoes the monumental classicism of Chicago's first big architectural party, the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition.

To their credit, the show's co-artistic directors, Sarah Herda and Joseph Grima, have encouraged the participating architects, most of whom are under 50, to boldly interact with the building. The exhibition appears on the building's first, second and fourth floors, but spreads to Grant Park, the Museum Campus and beyond.

Some of the best strokes are the opening ones, including representations of windows from notable Chicago buildings in the windows of the Cultural Center's Michigan Avenue facade. These white-cut vinyl inserts, by the Norman Kelley design collaborative of Chicago and New York, both trumpet the show's presence and hint that it will present multiple points of view.

Instead of advocating for a single aesthetic approach, the biennial embraces many (though traditional architects will likely complain that they are barely represented). We see the transnational priorities of a generation that will replace today's "starchitects," from architectural research to public space. Such pluralism turns out to be a strength and a weakness.