Assistant Professor Leandro Piazzi Invited to Participate in Chicago Architecture Biennial

Assistant Professor Leandro Piazzi along with his firm BALSA CROSETTO PIAZZI and GIORGIS ORTIZ will be participating in this year's Chicago Biennial.

TRACES—Chicago Architecture Biennial

Authors: BALSA CROSETTO PIAZZI (Juan Manuel Balsa, Rocio Crosetto Brizzio, Leandro Piazzi)

GIORGIS ORTIZ (Adriana Giorgis & Evan Ortiz)

Location: The Griffin Museum of Science and Industry

Year: 2025

Supported by: Chicago Architecture BiennialVirginia Tech—School of Architecture,College of Architecture, Arts, and Design(AAD)Massachusetts Institute of Technology—MIT Office of the Arts—MIT Fay Chandler CAST GrantBricks Incorporated

TRACES is a site-specific installation composed of 10,000 dry-stacked bricks, located onthe grounds of the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry, where the 1893 ChicagoWorld’s Fair once stood.The project invites reflection on the monumental ambitions of the Fair and the constructionlogics that made them possible, specifically the use of“staff,”a mixture of plaster and fiberapplied over wood, which enabled the rapid fabrication of neoclassical facades. Thesegrand buildings, though monumental in appearance, were temporary by design,constructed to simulate permanence and lend theatrical weight to a short-lived project.The installation takes the form of a long, shallow brick line, 250 feet by 50 feet, that tracesthe original footprint of the Great Buildings of the Fair.These structures representedinnovation and spectacle, both in scale and symbolism, yet their facades served as four-sided stage sets rather than the buildings they were meant to represent. TRACESreconsiders this paradox by employing a durable material,brick, in a deliberatelyimpermanent way. The bricks are unbound and unaltered, forming spaces withoutenclosure, mass without permanence.This reversal is both formal and conceptual. Where the World’s Fair buildings facedoutward, toward display and spectacle, TRACES reorients its spaces inward, creatingmoments for gathering, reflection, and shared presence. The project becomes a quietcritique of architectural values: challenging the illusion of permanence while embracingimpermanence as an intentional and constructive act.The bricks, donated by Brick Incorporated, will be reused in a permanent constructionfollowing the Biennial. In this way, the installation produces no waste, requires noextraction, and leaves no material trace, only the memory of a spatial one.TRACES is both a reconstructed footprint and a new collective platform: a space situatedbetween past and future architectural events, between the spectacle of the White City andthe material experiments of our time.