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Denver Explores the City With "Draft Urbanism" Exposition

Denver Explores the City With "Draft Urbanism" Exposition

The Biennial of the Americas’ 2013 exposition Draft Urbanism, headed by Colorado-based curator Cortney Stell, has rounded up the most engaging art, architecture, and film dialogues from across the Americas to turn Denver into a enormous fair. The exposition kicked off last week on July 16. Now through September 2, four full-scale architecture exhibitions will tackle important urban matters throughout downtown, where new and existing billboards, posters, and other urban signage are used to exhibit art. The public is encouraged to stop by each work and to thereby transform the city itself into a living, urban museum.

The title, Draft Urbanism, refers to Denver’s reputation for craft brewing and the fact that the city is continuously transforming. In an attempt to confront the conventional idea of a biennial, which is generally limited to art and architecture, the curatorial team has incorporated speeches and panels normally coupled with conferences or symposiums.

Architectural installations include:

  • Mine Pavilion by Pezo von Ellrichshausen (Larimer St & Speer Blvd), a display involving several building types that render it a billboard to drivers but a tunnel to pedestrians.
  • The Hotel Rehearsal by Alex Schweder (1535 Welton St), an installation depicting the automobile as an icon of suburban sprawl and the elevator as an icon of urban density.
  • Skyline Cloud by plan:b arquitectos (Skyline Park between 15th & 18th Sts), a collection of matching shade structures in Skyline Park, a notoriously vacant space in spite of its central location.
  • The Mirror Stages by June14 (16th St Mall between Cleveland & Court), a project surrounded by distinct socioeconomic and ethnic populations that forms a shared identity through butterflies.

Check out full descriptions and the complete list of installations, billboards, and urban signage.


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