Chicago Architecture Biennial 2015: a stark installation on the Chicago lakefront by artist Sarah FitzSimons features the outline of a traditional two-storey American house (+ slideshow).

FitzSimons used aluminium poles and joints to create the outline of a typical two-storey home found in the American Midwest. The temporary installation has no roof, walls, nor cladding – leaving it intentionally open to the elements.

Titled House, the structure sits on a beach along Lake Michigan, with a part of it submerged in water.

"Dream-like, the structure is placed half on land and half in the lake, to reference Chicago's real and metaphorical connections to water," said FitzSimons, who is based in Madison, Wisconsin.

"Blending the inside and outside of architecture, its minimal lines define the space of a house, yet it physically and psychologically opens and exposes the architecture and how we metaphorically view, think and dream about homes," she said.

A performative art piece by ATOM-R – a Chicago-based art collective – was staged within House on 1 October 2015. A pair of artists conducted various acts inside the structure, such as inserting themselves within a wooden object with openings large enough for a human.

The performance was intended to "respond to the house by exploring how bodies are simultaneously liberated and contained within space," said ATOM-R.

House was created in conjunction with the Chicago Architecture Biennial, which opened on 3 October 2015 and continues to 3 January 2016.

FitzSimons' installation is one of three currently presented by 6018north, a cultural organisation and Biennial partner. The others are a rendition of a chapel by Mexican artist Rodrigo Lara Zendeja and an exhibition by a group of artists that presents fundamental building components, such as doors and ceilings, that are stripped of "design and art".

FitzSimons creates both temporary and permanent installations using sculpture, photography and video. Common themes in her work include rivers, oceans, deserts and mountains – and "the collision of the physical and metaphoric," she said. Her work has been exhibited in cities around the US.

House is on view in Chicago through 25 October.

The Biennial features the work of more than 100 designers around the globe. Other projects on view include a micro dwelling by the Bangkok studio All(zone), a floating utopian city by WORKac and Ant Farm, and a prototype for sustainable housing in Mexico by Tatiana Bilbao.