Excerpt from the official catalog: “According to curator Alexander Eisenschmidt, in our age of extreme urbanization architects have been placed in the critical predicament that calls for a new attitude towards the city that highlights its potentials, engages with its problems, and understands itself as a catalyst. As urmetropolis and prototypical American city, Chicago has been particularly receptive to this attitude. This concept is pursued through the presentation of projects—both real and imagined—by Chicago-based practices. These include Eisenschmidt’s Phantom Chicago Panorama, where the city is recreated through unbuilt visionary projects across the twentieth century . . . what unites the historical and the current scene in Chicago is an attitude toward the city, one that understands it as a catalyst and is determined to find within it potentials for spatial, material, programmatic, and organizational invention.” (David Chipperfield, Common Ground: 13th International Architecture Exhibition. La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, 2012.)