Think Grids Are Straightforward? This New Textile Collection Will Make You Think Again

Architectural Digest Ι June 13, 2019  Aliki van der Kruijs developed her new line of furniture textiles for Wolf-Gordon, which just launched at NeoCon, through a series of totemic objects, each loaded with metaphoric meanings, textures, and patterns that recall her impressions of a faraway place. During a porcelain residency in Arita, Japan, the Dutch designer… Continue reading Think Grids Are Straightforward? This New Textile Collection Will Make You Think Again

Closing the architecture leadership gender gap

AIArchitect Ι June 18, 2019 One-and-a-half years into a new job at a medium-sized architecture firm in New England, Yanel de Angel, AIA,  told her boss she was pregnant. She got a swift congratulations, but then something much worse. She was told that for the sake of continuity and service to clients, she’d be removed from… Continue reading Closing the architecture leadership gender gap

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

Sunlight and Landscape Views Shape Studio Gang’s Latest Chicago Tower

Metropolis Magazine Ι April 16, 2019 Solstice on the Park, the new Studio Gang–designed rental apartment tower in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, doesn’t want for inspiration. The building is within spitting distance of Lake Michigan and Frederick Law Olmsted’s Jackson Park, where the Obama Presidential Center may soon rise (pending the outcome of a lawsuit). The… Continue reading Sunlight and Landscape Views Shape Studio Gang’s Latest Chicago Tower

Obama Presidential Center Lawsuit Will Proceed, Slowing Progress of Construction

Architectural Record Ι February 20, 2019  A federal judge’s decision yesterday to allow a lawsuit against the City of Chicago and the Chicago Parks District to proceed will delay the progress of the Obama Presidential Center (OPC), which has been designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects and landscape architects Michael Van Valkenburg Associates.  Controversially sited… Continue reading Obama Presidential Center Lawsuit Will Proceed, Slowing Progress of Construction

Can Artist Theaster Gates Help Bridge a Town-Gown Divide?

The Atlantic’s CityLab Ι April 5, 2019  The newly renovated Keller Center, home to the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy on Chicago’s South Side, is crafted from a 1963 building designed by the architect of New York’s Radio City Music Hall and D.C.’s Kennedy Center, Edward Durell Stone. On the outside is a… Continue reading Can Artist Theaster Gates Help Bridge a Town-Gown Divide?

‘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

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