Author: zachmortice

Curbed Ι Sept. 28, 2016 Seven years ago, Chicago housing developer Peter Holsten invited a drama troupe to perform at a meeting for market-rate buyers and former public housing residents living in one of his mixed-income developments, which had been built to replace the infamous Cabrini-Green public housing project on the city’s Near North Side. Holsten’s… Continue reading When Public Housing Goes Private

OZY Ι Sept. 29, 2016  Past the suburban fringe of Chicago, 60 miles west of Lake Michigan, the seemingly endless rhythm of curving cul-de-sac neighborhoods and strip malls gives way to vast expanses of green — cropland and wild prairie, divided by knots of rail yards where semitrailers wait to pick up cargo. Angular buildings are… Continue reading How Bison will Take Over Suburban Wasteland

Architectural Record Ι Sept. 13, 2016  To make way for the University of Chicago Campus North Residential Commons, the school demolished Harry Weese’s 1960 Pierce Tower, who’s stacked bays and neo-mansard crown showcased some of the University of Chicago’s least confident mid-century architecture on the famously Collegiate Gothic campus. Something of an inscrutable fortress, it thought little… Continue reading Sparkling New Dorm by Jeanne Gang Opens at the University of Chicago

Sept. 2, 2016 Ι Doggerel On a hot, sunny August morning on Chicago’s West Side, Matt Snoap, an architect with the firm bKL, is putting more than a dozen high school and early college students in place for a groundbreaking photo op on one of the city’s many abandoned freight rail lines. But unlike a traditional groundbreaking… Continue reading Design-build for high schoolers

Line/Shape/Space Ι Aug. 31, 2016  According to urban sociologist Ray Oldenburg, people need three types of places to live fulfilled, connected lives: Their “first place” (home) for private respite; their “second place” (work) for economic engagement; and their “third place,” a more amorphous arena used for reaffirming social bonds and community identities. This third place can be a… Continue reading Live, Work, Play: WeLive’s Live-Work Spaces Reveal a “Third Place”

Aug. 17, 2016 Ι Line/Shape/Space  AllTransit may be the most comprehensive transit database in the nation, but it won’t help you find the fastest route when you’re late for a dinner date. No, it’s much bigger than that. Instead, it peels back the layers of how transit intersects key quality-of-life statistics, using information from 543,000 stops across 800… Continue reading AllTransit Reads Between the (Bus) Lines to Advocate for Urban Life

Aug. 2, 2016 Ι Line/Shape/Space  In response to a conservative and sometimes fragmented building industry, some architects believe that improving and automating the construction process calls for a two-front war: first, using experimental materials and components; and second, assembling them in experimental ways. Extra-innovative examples include self-directed insect-like robots that huddle together to form the shape of a… Continue reading Wolf Prix on Robotic Construction and the Safe Side of Adventurous Architecture