This is a Studio #2: Flex Space Residency
Architects in Residence
Ryan Gann works at the cross section of architecture and urbanism. He received his Bachelor of Architecture from the Illinois Institute of Technology. As a designer at Ross Barney Architects he has collaborated on some of the studio’s most ambitious civic projects. These design investigations have allowed him to work with communities across Chicago and the world; investigating the role public space plays in our everyday life. Recent projects include many of the studio’s river-centric interventions including the Great Rivers Chicago vision, Ass(et) Creek, and the River Edge Ideas Lab; a exhibition at the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial, which Ryan also designed.
A recipient of the Schiff Foundation Fellowship, his design ideas have been exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago Architecture Biennial and the Chicago Architecture Foundation.
As an inaugural Architect-in-Residence at the Hyde Park Art Center, Ryan’s work will focus on the most ubiquitous construction material: brick. The result will be a process focused exhibition that decodes the physicality, construction methodology, aesthetics, and future potentials of this popularized modular unit. In the words of Louis Kahn – “Even a brick wants to be something.”
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Karl Ochmanek is a trained architect, and self-taught photographer. His work primarily deals with themes surrounding the ordinary. Ochmanek’s process consists of dissecting and re-framing objects or places that are familiar with.
The work is an invitation to others to develop a new-found appreciation for everyday objects, sights, androutines. Ochmanek believes acute observation will allow a deeper appreciation for our lives. What we are familiar with may be the most exciting experiences or objects if we push ourselves to re-examine them.
Ochmanek graduated Cum laude with a Bachelors of Architecturefrom the Illinois Institute of Technology in May of 2016. Currently, he keeps an active architectural sketchbook and experiments with photographic processes.
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A graduate of Cornell University, and a native of Chicago’s Auburn Gresham neighborhood, Amanda Williams is interested in how combining art and architecture might help make all parts of cities thrive. Her work spans the fields of painting, installation, and photography, and reflects the cultural relationship between color, race, and space. In addition to her visual arts practice, which includes traditional paintings, cut paper maps, and public art, Amanda has served as an Adjunct Professor of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago and is currently a visiting faculty member at Washington University’s Sam Fox School of Art and Design in St. Louis, Mo.
Amanda is a sought-after lecturer, an alumnae of Hyde Park Art Center’s Center Program, and has participated widely in individual and group shows, including an entry in the 2015 Chicago Architecture Biennial, and forthcoming exhibitions at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, The Arts Club of Chicago and the MCA Chicago. She is based in Chicago.
RELATED EVENTS
RESIDENCY PROJECT
Amanda Williams will run an IIT Undergraduate Studio class addressing the social, cultural and economic value of the materials commonly and uncommonly use to create buildings. The class will conduct their materials lab from the Art Center’s Reva and David Logan Studio and feature selected developments made in the class in Gallery 5. The architectural objects in the exhibition will evolve and rotate as the research into materials digs deeper throughout the run of the show. Here, the students will research materials and explore alternative uses for brick remnants as well as create viable materials to replace or repair brick. As a result, the show will have a pedagogical component that presents architecture, and even existing buildings and materials, as an evolving field and arena of thought. This exhibition will run the duration of the Architecture Biennial and provide a South Side platform to highlight emerging practices in art, architecture and design.
Materials Decoded is held in partnership with the Chicago Architecture Biennial .
