Layers of a City

July 2022

Design Museum of Chicago
72 E Randolph St
Chicago, IL 60601

The Chicago Pattern Project embraces the non-visible, experiential, historical, political, economic, and often very personal aspects of the city to aid in understanding urban shifts and in celebrating its communities. In this interactive installation, abstract patterns highlight history-driven, and personal narrative-driven facts about the Near West Side of Chicago. This neighborhood experienced a multitude of challenges that shaped American inner-cities over the last century. Visitors are invited to create patterns to retell stories of vibrant, diverse communities as well as large-scale erasures, displacement, redlining, multiple failed social housing initiatives, concentrated poverty, and gang dynamics.

PETRA PROBSTNER is an Associate Professor of interior architecture, a practicing designer, and an urban explorer. She has worked as an architect and designer in her native Kecskemét, Glasgow, London, Buffalo, Toronto, Budapest, and Chicago focusing on human-centered and sustainable experimental spatial design both in research projects, built spaces as well as award-winning competition entries.