Sept. 2023 Ι Dwell An architect/preservationist and a city planner/1980s-vibe channeler, Jonathan Solomon and Meg Gustafson are fluid aesthetic experts. But when it came time to design a house together after getting married, they weren’t interested in a ground-up project. They wanted “something that already had authenticity,” says Meg. But also “something that we wouldn’t… Continue reading Preservationists Don’t Put Too Fine a Point On It in Their Maximalist Postmodern Reno
Tag: Chicago
Step Down, Splash Down
June 15, 2023 Ι Landscape Architecture Magazine A few years ago, if you wanted to visit the site of Cascade Park in Chicago, designed by Claude Cormier + Associés (now CCxA), you’d find yourself near the shores of Lake Michigan at a 50-foot cliff overlooking a vacant pit bordered by a foreboding service road that… Continue reading Step Down, Splash Down
High in the Sky, Where the Money Stacks Up
August 31, 2023 Ι Architects’ Newspaper In the 1960s, the same Chicago city agency conjured some of the worst and the best in American residential high-rises, and in rapid succession. The Chicago Housing Authority’s (CHA) Robert Taylor Homes were the nation’s largest public housing project when they opened in 1963: the buildings locked in a… Continue reading High in the Sky, Where the Money Stacks Up
The Lord’s Estate
August 1, 2023 Ι The New York Review of Architecture There aren’t many industries that have been stripped of their architecture as consistently as legacy media. A brief roundup covering just the last few years would include 30 Hudson Yards by KPF, which AT&T/Warner Media sold to developer Related Companies just a month after the… Continue reading The Lord’s Estate
In downtown Chicago, office conversions are being used to create affordable housing
Architect’s Newspaper Ι June 21, 2023 Last fall, Chicago’s Department of Planning and Development (DPD) introduced the LaSalle Reimagined plan to revive the sleepy and pervasively vacant downtown LaSalle Street corridor. Its focus will be the conversion of office towers with an emphasis on affordability. A minimum of 30 percent of the units will be… Continue reading In downtown Chicago, office conversions are being used to create affordable housing
SOM’s Baxter International suburban office park is part of a vital but unheralded design legacy
Architect’s Newspaper Ι June 15, 2023 As a young architect with SOM in 1972, Richard Tomlinson saw something special in the Baxter International suburban office campus, which was already underway when he joined the firm. “It was conceived as a dynamic campus that made flexibility a fundamental principle,” he told AN. “What fascinated me about… Continue reading SOM’s Baxter International suburban office park is part of a vital but unheralded design legacy
Public access to Edgar Miller’s Kogen-Miller Studios is on pause as dueling lawsuits play out
April 7, 2023 Ι Architect’s Newspaper Edgar Miller’s Kogen-Miller Studios is one of Chicago’s most idiosyncratic and astonishing architectural sites. Lately, though, it has been ensnared in a disagreement that has shut down public access and programming, as one set of owners of the condo complex in the Near North Side Old Town neighborhood are… Continue reading Public access to Edgar Miller’s Kogen-Miller Studios is on pause as dueling lawsuits play out
Preservation Chicago names The Warehouse, the birthplace of house music, as one of the most endangered buildings in Chicago
Architects’ Newspaper Ι March 21, 2023 Drawn in by the propulsive four-on-the-floor bass that could be heard blocks away through the then-derelict streets of Chicago’s West Loop, in the late 1970s and early ’80s young club-goers gathered at a modest but stylish three-story former industrial warehouse where the party raged from midnight until 8:00 a.m.… Continue reading Preservation Chicago names The Warehouse, the birthplace of house music, as one of the most endangered buildings in Chicago
Mary Dill Henry’s Life-long Search for the “Vital Forces” of Art and Technology
Jan. 25, 2023 Ι Metropolis Magazine As an art student from California studying at László Moholy-Nagy’s Institute of Design in the mid-1940s, Mary Dill Henry described the world as such in her MFA thesis: “The world we live in is a vast and beautiful place, full of vital forces that work upon us and within… Continue reading Mary Dill Henry’s Life-long Search for the “Vital Forces” of Art and Technology
Chicago critic Blair Kamin’s Who is the City For? takes aim at aesthetic bungles while thornier issues go largely unaddressed
Architect’s Newspaper Ι Nov. 4, 2022 In a 2011 column, “Signs Uglify Our Beautiful Bridges,” anthologized in Blair Kamin’s book Who Is the City For? Architecture, Equity, and the Public Realm in Chicago, the recently retired Chicago Tribune architecture critic takes aim at garish vinyl Bank of America (BoA) ads affixed to the Wabash Avenue… Continue reading Chicago critic Blair Kamin’s Who is the City For? takes aim at aesthetic bungles while thornier issues go largely unaddressed