In October, the Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB) confirmed that the citywide exhibition’s 2021 edition, The Available City, is indeed a go under the artistic directorship of designer, educator, and researcher David Brown. (You can read Brown’s December 2020 interview with AN’s executive editor Samuel Medina here.)

At the time, CAB announced a major partnership with the Copenhagen-based Danish Arts Foundation (DAF), which was to commission a major work by a Danish artist or team to respond to the themes explored in The Available City while involving community residents, stakeholders, students, and others. Today, CAB and DAF revealed the winner of the DAF Open Call as Soil Lab, a project that builds upon previous efforts to transform vacant lots across Chicago into vibrant, multifaceted community assets. Soil Lab will focus squarely on North Lawndale, a West Side community described by Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago as one of the “most architecturally eccentric and socially complex” neighborhoods in the city that’s also the home base of Brown.

As described in a press announcement, Soil Lab was inspired by the work of Jens Jensen, a Danish-American landscape architect who, during the first half of the 20th century made a significant mark on several major public West Side parks including Douglass Park, Garfield Park, Columbus Park, and Humboldt Park. For the project, the Soil Lab team will work with the community to design and erect structures built from bricks, rammed earth, and tile as well as communal gathering spaces.

Headed by an international (half-Danish) design team that includes Eibhlín Ní Chathasaigh, James Albert Martin, Anne Dorthe Vester, and Maria Bruun, work on the Soil Lab project is set to kick off this spring with a series of virtual conversations with local collaborators, including community groups CCA Academy and the Young Men’s Employment Network (YMEN). From there, the larger project team, in collaboration with local residents, will come together to craft a design for a disused lot on the corner of 13th and Pulaski that, according to CAB, will include “various proposed built elements such as benches, tables, and a gallery wall made from brick” and be engineered to foster “movement, interaction, pause, and conversation.” The space will be activated throughout the run of the Biennial, which will open in September.

“Soil Lab revolves around a workshop in North Lawndale where the community can come together to build from readily available materials: creating fired bricks and unfired rammed earth components through interaction and play,” elaborated the Soil Lab team in a statement. “Our hope is that Soil Lab won’t just be a meeting point during the Biennial, but that it will allow the community to build new meeting points around their neighborhood long after the event has ended.”

To realize this singular neighborhood space, DAF has awarded the Soil Lab team with a $192,000 project budget, part of the $300,000 commitment that DAF has made toward community-based programming during the 2021 Biennial. As noted in the announcement, the DAF project “represents a global collaboration—between cultures and between disciplines.”

In total, the DAF Open Call received 22 submissions with Soil Lab ultimately being selected by a jury composed of members appointed by both CAB and DAF. As for the winning team, Martin and Ní Chathasaigh are both Dublin-based architects while Vester and Bruun—an architect and furniture designer, respectively—comprise the Copenhagen-based cross-disciplinary design studio MBADV.

“The winning project by an international design team takes a close look at materials and systems of building to shape a new kind of gathering space that directly responds to the theme of The Available City,” said Brown, who also sat on the jury for the DAF Open Call, in a statement. “The jury was excited to see a team use the invitation to produce a site-specific project in collaboration with community stakeholders to create something rooted in history and materiality while at the same time open to new ideas and activities.”

A special virtual program on the collaboration between CAB and DAF will be held on March 16 at noon CST as part of a year-round programming series that aims to engage the public and build excitement and momentum ahead of the Biennial’s official launch this fall.