New Horizon_architecture from Ireland presents the work of emerging Irish architecture practices in three major venues around the world. On Friday October 2 the second instalment of New Horizon opens in Chicago as part of the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial.

Selected by curators Nathalie Weadick, director of Irish Architecture Foundation, and Raymund Ryan of the Heinz Architectural Center at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum of Art, New Horizon_architecture from Ireland will present the work of three practices – A2 Architects (Peter Carroll and Caomhán Murphy), GKMP Architects (Grace Keeley and Michael Pike), and Ryan W. Kennihan Architects – for the first time in Chicago.

In response to the Biennial’s theme, ‘The State of the Art of Architecture’, the three Irish practices have been tasked to make an intervention – part installation, part exhibition – in the Chicago Design Museum. The architects have collaborated on constructing a temporary mirrored canopy, designing and fabricating a generous communal table, and presenting a selection of work from their offices in Dublin. The intervention takes inspiration from Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe’s geometric modernism and shines a light on the art of architecture and specific interests of this new generation of architects. They play with preconceptions of old and new, Ireland and America, labour and pleasure, the room and the city. A programme of accompanying events will explore cultural, social and political connections between Chicago and Ireland.

The first installment of New Horizon_architecture from Ireland was at London Festival of Architecture in June, where four Irish practices – TAKA, Clancy Moore, Hall McKnight and Steve Larkin – collaborated on two temporary pavilions in Lewis Cubitt Square, King’s Cross, while a fifth architect, Emmett Scanlon, curated a mini-exhibition, Nine Lives, for the Tank at London’s Design Museum. In December, two further practices – Urban Agency and AP+E – will participate at the Shenzhen/Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture, bringing the total number of practices presented throughNew Horizon_architecture from Ireland to ten. Each is asked to collaborate and to work within the context of host venues and of host cities.

A programme of events and talks is being developed to accompany the New Horizon_architecture from Ireland exhibition during the Chicago Architecture Biennial.  These will include a drop-in talk with the featured architects discussing the installation in the Chicago Design Museum and a talk by co-curator Raymund Ryan, discussing the international profile of Irish architecture and its relationship with Chicago from historic to contemporary times.

Presented in partnership with Chicago Design Museum, this flagship exhibition of Irish architecture and the built environment is a key element of ID2015.