With a Full Opening Still Ahead, the Chicago Architecture Biennial’s Fifth Edition Commences at Select Sites

Oct. 2, 2023 Ι Architectural Record  Themed “This is a Rehearsal” and organized by art and design collective Floating Museum, the fifth Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB 5) sees the biennial as a city-wide collaborative and spontaneous cultural happening; a reflection of the simultaneously banal and grand ambitions that create urbanism every day. “For us, the… Continue reading With a Full Opening Still Ahead, the Chicago Architecture Biennial’s Fifth Edition Commences at Select Sites

“American Framing” Returns to Wood Framing’s Geographic and Cultural Origin

May 17, 2022 Ι Architectural Record  The wood-framed pavilion at the center of Wrightwood 659’s “American Framing” exhibition, back stateside after its run at the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale, fills nearly every inch of the building’s concrete-and-brick triple-height atrium. Like a half-built house with an inverted gable roof, the installation gives visitors a visceral sense of… Continue reading “American Framing” Returns to Wood Framing’s Geographic and Cultural Origin

New Exhibition Shines a Light on George Fred Keck’s Solar Home of 1933

February 8, 2022 Ι Architectural Record  Chicago architect George Fred Keck (1895-1980) unlike many of his Modernist contemporaries, was a technocrat and tinkerer first and foremost. Long before the advent of solar panels, his solar homes sought to use new technology and materials to make architecture congruent with climate. His 12-sided House of Tomorrow, built in… Continue reading New Exhibition Shines a Light on George Fred Keck’s Solar Home of 1933

A Radical Idea in Chicago: A Biennial that Listens and Builds

Sept. 22, 2021 Ι Architectural Record  By the end of the opening weekend of the 2021 Chicago Architecture Biennial(CAB) on Sunday, September 19, I’d been prayed over by parishioners of the Rock of Ages Missionary Baptist Church at 13th Street and Pulaski Road, and thanked for sharing the Good News of the West Side of… Continue reading A Radical Idea in Chicago: A Biennial that Listens and Builds

Chicago’s Wrightwood 659 Hosts Compelling Exhibition of Indian Master Doshi

Architectural Record Ι Sept. 16, 2020 As the first Pritzker Prize laureate from the south Asian subcontinent, with a seven-decade career, Balkrishna Doshi is easily viewed as a Modernist standard bearer for Indian architecture. And Balkrishna Doshi: Architecture for the People now at Chicago’s Wrightwood 659 (its only stop in North America) plays up Doshi’s… Continue reading Chicago’s Wrightwood 659 Hosts Compelling Exhibition of Indian Master Doshi

Proposals for New Building at UIC Contend with Walter Netsch’s Brutalist Campus

Architectural Record Ι April 8, 2019  Last week, the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) unveiled three short-listed proposals for a performing arts center. Two of the finalist designs, by OMA and Johnston Marklee, take strong cues from Walter Netsch’s arch-Brutalist UIC campus—one of Chicago’s least understood bits of architectural history. The third, by Thom Mayne’s Morphosis,… Continue reading Proposals for New Building at UIC Contend with Walter Netsch’s Brutalist Campus

‘Dimensions of Citizenship’ Dreams of Belonging Best at the Smallest and Largest Scales

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

Art on the Mart by Valerio Dewalt Train Associates and Obscura Digital

Nov. 7, 2018 Ι Architectural Record The silvery, room-sized box peeking out from the Chicago Riverwalk’s limestone balustrade is perhaps the least obvious and scrutinized part of this new spine of green space, which is changing how the city considers its other great waterfront. As the projection room for a video-art installation beaming images onto the… Continue reading Art on the Mart by Valerio Dewalt Train Associates and Obscura Digital

New Views into an Unheralded Element of Mies

scan made from original HB 8x10 BW negative

Architectural Record Ι June 25, 2018  A new exhibit at the Elmhurst Art Museum in Illinois explores a little-studied corner of Mies van der Rohe’s career: his brief fascination with pre-fabrication.  The show, curated by Columbia University’s Barry Bergdoll, is physically and thematically anchored by Mies’ McCormick House, which was built in 1952 as a prototype… Continue reading New Views into an Unheralded Element of Mies

Interview with Yesomi Umolu

Yesomi Umolu, Logan Exhibitions Curator, March 5, 2018. (Photo by Jean Lachat)

Architectural Record Ι March 19, 2018 Yesomi Umolu is interested in applying her multi-disciplinary expertise (with stops in architecture school, practice, and the elite contemporary art curatorial class) and globe-trotting personal and professional background to a biennial that speaks to an equally wide range of public audiences. “The biennial is for and of the city of… Continue reading Interview with Yesomi Umolu