TRACES
A Project with Balsa Crosetto Piazzi and Giorgis Ortiz
TRACES is a site specific installation of 10,000 dry stacked bricks located on the former grounds of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. The project reflects on the Fair’s monumental ambitions and the construction methods that enabled its temporary grandeur, particularly the use of staff, a plaster and fiber material that simulated permanence.
The installation traces the footprint of the Fair’s Great Buildings through a long, shallow brick form, using a durable material in a deliberately impermanent way. Unbound and unaltered, the bricks create space without enclosure and mass without permanence. By turning inward rather than outward, TRACES offers a place for gathering and reflection, challenging conventional ideas of monumentality.
I served as a construction team leader for the installation, coordinating on site layout, sequencing, and assembly with a team of builders. This role required translating drawings into full scale construction, maintaining precision across a large footprint, and managing material organization and installation to ensure the project’s spatial and conceptual intent was realized on site.