American Framing, an exhibition now on view until July 30 at Wrightwood 659 in Chicago, seeks to challenge the common form of timber framing – while exploring its ubiquitous and predictable history and patterns.
The exhibit seems to both praise the tradition of stick-built construction, but also criticize its banality as a way to push boundaries to explore more creative and structurally interesting uses for lumber frames. As author Vladimir Belogolovsky concludes in his article, “Yet, it is an array of examples from different times and regions that could provide a meaningful cross-section for potential directions in terms of challenging the expected geometry of forms, the solidity of walls and roofs, or, for example, mixing wood with other materials. It is by comparing and contrasting these unorthodox case studies, either subtle or cutting-edge, that the building industry can be truly reinvented.
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