91. STUDIO BLUE
“These days,” says Studio Blue partner Cheryl Towler Weese, “we’ve lost interest in giving aesthetic facelifts. We want to spend time wrapping our heads around content, and develop a response in that process.” In the case of their exhibit design for Five Architects, a 2005 show at the Chicago Architectural Foundation, that process involved six months of collaborative content development.

In addition to five time-based videos, the exhibition’s key feature is a long, undulating table made of a stretchable material called Newmat. On it, the spines of five rubbery books, developed by the designers at Studio Blue and written by architecture writer Ellen Grimes, are sewn into v-shaped divots.

Small type invites visitors to engage intimately with the books, while 200-point texts can be read from across the room. As such, the books explore the manner in which visitors interact with the elements of the exhibition, just as each featured architect investigates the way people interact with their buildings. “We think a lot about concept and research, in addition to form-making,” says Studio Blue partner Kathy Fredrickson. “That’s very much who we are and how we work, because the results of that immersion make for a more resonant project.”
Tiffany Meyers