Architectural Record Ι March 19, 2019 The opening of “Dimensions of Citizenship,” shipped from the U.S. Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale to Chicago, was delayed by the government shutdown in January, caused by President Trump’s insistence on funding for a border wall. Which was an unanticipated irony: it’s a show whose politics are also our… Continue reading ‘Dimensions of Citizenship’ Dreams of Belonging Best at the Smallest and Largest Scales
Category: Articles
To Fix Its Aging Infrastructure, the US Could Learn a Thing or Two From Chicago
Autodesk’s Redshift Ι May 16, 2019 In its latest report card, released in 2017, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) gave US infrastructure a D+. Two years on, this rating still stands—and in the seven times the association has assessed the nation’s infrastructure since the 1980s, scores have steadily declined. By infrastructure type, the best… Continue reading To Fix Its Aging Infrastructure, the US Could Learn a Thing or Two From Chicago
‘The Whole World a Bauhaus’ Reveals a Movement’s Fault Lines
The Atlantic’s CityLab Ι March 13, 2019 The centenary exhibition “The Whole World a Bauhaus” is touring the globe, and is now making its only U.S. stop, through April 20, at the Elmhurst Art Museum in the western suburbs of Chicago. (The Elmhurst has earned its stripes, boasting a house on its campus designed by… Continue reading ‘The Whole World a Bauhaus’ Reveals a Movement’s Fault Lines
The Bauhaus in the Age of Frictionless Design
The Atlantic’s CityLab Ι March 14, 2019 The Institute of Design at Chicago’s Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) may be the most direct offspring of the Bauhaus, which was the most influential design school in the world. Founded by former Bauhaus faculty member László Moholy-Nagy in 1937, and later absorbed into IIT (whose architecture school was… Continue reading The Bauhaus in the Age of Frictionless Design
For the Atlanta-Based Firm BLDGS, No Building Is Beyond Rescuing
Metropolis Magazine Ι March 2019 Atlanta’s west side is strewn with recycling centers, warehouses, shipping companies, abandoned rail lines, and other markers of light industry. It’s a grimy setting but one that architects Brian Bell and David Yocum felt ineluctably drawn to; there, inside a former auto-parts shop in 2006, they founded BLDGS. A comically… Continue reading For the Atlanta-Based Firm BLDGS, No Building Is Beyond Rescuing
With Haus Gables, Architect Jennifer Bonner Celebrates and Critiques the American Single-Family House
Metropolis Magazine Ι March 2019 There’s an irresistible meta-critique at the heart of architect Jennifer Bonner’s Haus Gables in Atlanta, asking: What if you blurred the lines between real architecture and the media and methods used to simulate it, namely drawings and models? A professor at Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) with a practice of… Continue reading With Haus Gables, Architect Jennifer Bonner Celebrates and Critiques the American Single-Family House
Do Legacy Construction Companies Have the Inside Track on Modular Building?
Redshift Ι January 8, 2019 Fresh-faced, tech-oriented startups get most of the attention in the modular-building world, but despite their “it” factor, they’re still startups. Is there a market share in modular just waiting for companies with the approach and know-how that come with legacy experience? Chicago-based legacy construction company Skender has been researching modular construction… Continue reading Do Legacy Construction Companies Have the Inside Track on Modular Building?
What Makes Us Us
Landscape Architecture Magazine Ι May 2019 Since its inception, it’s been hard to find much agreement in landscape architecture over the profession’s purpose and how it should work. For some contemporary designers, landscape architecture, in theory if a bit less in practice, is most visible when ecological systems are designed and deployed to remediate the earth,… Continue reading What Makes Us Us
Why Architecture is Important
ACSA Ι Jan. 14, 2019 If you ever wondered why architecture is important—look up and around. You are likely surrounded by it right now. Architecture’s grasp—that is, buildings and the designed environment—ends only in extreme conditions (the bottom of the ocean, the atmosphere, and a few dwindling spots on terrestrial earth.) Unique among creative and… Continue reading Why Architecture is Important
Circle of Light
Landscape Architecture Magazine Ι January 2019 From the University of Chicago’s Crerar Science Quad, one can see the entire scope of the 128-year-old university’s built history. Bordered by science buildings and one medical school facility, the dominant Collegiate Gothic flavor of the university’s campus is present in the quad’s southern and southeastern edge, anchored by the… Continue reading Circle of Light