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UPCOMING

Framed Views 2025

Back for its second year, Framed Views presents 60 curated photographs from the Open House Chicago competition at the Chicago Architecture Center, revealing diverse perspectives on the city’s architecture, culture and character.

Date

November 22, 2025 - February 22, 2026

Location

Chicago Architecture Center Usher Lambe Gallery

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  • looking up at a tall pink building that is c shaped.looking up at a tall pink building that is c shaped.

    Edgewater Beach Apartments. Photo byJohn Sanford.

The Exhibition

Open House Chicago (OHC) is the Chicago Architecture Center’s biggest event of the year, in which visitors gain access to places of architectural, historical and cultural significance throughout the city. For OHC 2025, we hosted over 200 sites, and for the second consecutive year held a photography competition open to people of all ages and abilities, encouraging visitors to capture their unique perspectives of the festival weekend. 

This year we received over 1200 submissions to one of five categories: Interior, Black & White, Exterior, People & Buildings, and Detail. Our curators selected 60 photographs that represent a wide range of experiences and interpretations, and collectively point to the incredibly rich tapestry of Chicago’s architecture and built environment. Also featured in the exhibition will be the best in each of the four categories of the 2024 OHC photography competition.

  • Black and white photo of a building reflecting the silhouette of another building

    Fourth Presbyterian Church. Photo by Sean Helle.

  • A lake in the foreground surrounded with greenery and a large structure with columns in the background.

    Graceland Cemetery and Arboretum. Photo by Jessica Nguyen.

  • Tall round tower building with trees in front.

    Hilliard Tower Apartments. Photo by Greg Willis.

  • Sculptures of faces looking up and to the right with more painted faces in the back.

    Intuit Art Museum. Photo by Wendy Akers.

  • Large 3 story grey building with columns at the front and a dark cloud in the sky behind it.

    Stony Island Arts Bank. Photo by Adrian Diaz.

  • Black and white photo of ivy growing up gothic windows.

    Joseph Bond Chapel at the University of Chicago. Photo by Ka Lam Nguyen.

  • A round mirror in the top left corner reflects a line of bikes while more bikes are also visibile in the background behind the mirror.

    Working Bikes. Photo by Brian Lowry.

  • Looking up at an ornate ceiling decorated in gold and white.

    Auditorium Building, Roosevelt University. Photo by Julian Badillo.

Headshot of a woman with dark hair and bangs in a black button up. Headshot of a woman with dark hair and bangs in a black button up.

Ellen Harvey

Ellen Harvey is a British-born, Brooklyn-based conceptual artist whose work ranges from guerrilla street interventions such as her iconic New York Beautification Project for which she painted miniature landscapes over New York’s graffiti sites to immersive institutional installations and large-scale public artworks. Her work is often painting-based but utilizes a wide variety of media and participatory strategies to explore several recurring themes such as the social and ecological implications of the picturesque, the revolutionary potential of nostalgia, the conflict between advertising and ornament in public space and the relationship between art and tourism. Her work frequently centers the viewer and involves direct participation by the public.

Read more about Ellen

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