Please join us for presentations by Chicago-based designer Kyle Reynolds of is-office and Thomas Kelley and Carrie Norman, co-founders of the Chicago and New York-based architecture collaborative Norman Kelley, whose works are featured in “Treatise: Why Write Alone?”—the Graham Foundation’s current exhibition and publication project that brings together fourteen young conceptual design offices to explore the architectural treatise as a platform for debate. Reynolds, Kelley, and Norman will discuss their design practices and recent projects, which include is-office's speculations about urban forms and conditions using generative Photoshopping and the subverting of Google to Norman Kelley's "Wrong" chairs and site-specific drawings which re-examine architecture’s relationship to vision through deceptive optics.

is-office is a Chicago-based design firm specializing in objects, interiors, and buildings. Founded by Kyle Reynolds and Jeff Mikolajewski, the firm leverages the unique agency of physical form to engage issues of culture, urbanism, lifestyle, and iconography indigenous to the modern metropolis. Kyle Reynolds is an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee’s School of Architecture and Urban Planning. He received an MArch from Princeton University and a BS in architecture with a certificate in urban planning from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. His work and writing have been published in On Farming: Bracket 1, The SANAA Studios 2006–2008, and Pidgin Magazine, among others. Jeff Mikolajewski is a project designer at Johnston Marklee in Los Angeles. He has lived previously in Shanghai, Milan, Copenhagen, and Chicago, all while working for firms such as Bjarke Ingels Group, Andrew Zago Architect, UrbanLab, and Gensler. He received his MArch from the University of Illinois at Chicago and he holds a BS in architecture from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.

Norman Kelley is the architecture and design collaborative of Carrie Norman and Thomas Kelley, based in New York and Chicago. The firm’s work has been published and exhibited widely, most recently in Log 31: New Ancients and the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale. They are the recipients of the 2014 Architecture League of New York Young Architect’s Prize, and their design work is currently represented by Volume Gallery in Chicago. Thomas Kelley received an MArch from Princeton University and a BArch from the University of Virginia. He is the recipient of the Peter Reyner Banham Fellowship from SUNY Buffalo and the Rome Prize in Architecture from the American Academy in Rome. Kelley is currently a clinical assistant professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Carrie Norman received an MArch from Princeton University and a BArch from the University of Virginia. Norman is a licensed architect and a member of the Architecture League of New York’s Young Architects and Designers Committee. She is currently a senior design associate with SHoP Architects in New York.

Image: View of “Treatise: Why Write Alone?”, 2015, Graham Foundation, Chicago. Photo Matthew Messner.

For more information on the exhibition, Treatise: Why Write Alone?, click here.