October 12, 2017 Ι CityLab Away from the main exhibit of the Chicago Architecture Biennial—the country’s biggest architecture festival, on show through January—there are a half-dozen smaller “anchor” shows, hosted by neighborhood arts organizations far from downtown. These reveal a different side to Chicago’s architectural legacy, famed for the White City of 1893, Frank Lloyd Wright,… Continue reading Architecture Beyond the A-List
Tag: Chicago
From Filth to Fun: Big Designs for the Chicago River
CityLab Ι Sept. 29. 2017 Until its direction was reversed in 1900, the Chicago River was such a receptacle for effluent and filth that it poisoned Chicagoans’ beloved Lake Michigan (from which they drew their drinking water). Then it was channelized and entombed in concrete. The river has long been the city’s forgotten waterfront. But that’s… Continue reading From Filth to Fun: Big Designs for the Chicago River
Office Visit: Craighton Berman
Doggerel Ι June 29, 2017 For Microsoft, illustrator and industrial designer Craighton Berman created a primer on artificial intelligence. Over a few dozen pages, his breezy little booklet used talking dogs and clunky retro-robots to explain the basics of a technology that’s fueled sci-fi dystopias and utopian TED talks alike. It was a zine in the… Continue reading Office Visit: Craighton Berman
The Final Hill
Landscape Architecture Magazine Ι October 2017 The first thing you notice is all the cars. The are a strange landscape divided by Jersey barriers and concrete retaining walls that carve up the site’s topography. Endless rows of cars are parked along its curving streets and in front of 62 three- and four-story barracks-style buildings that plod… Continue reading The Final Hill
Is Beige the New Black in Architecture?
CityLab Ι Sept. 22, 2017 One of the most emotionally resonant exhibits in the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial is a quiet one: a set of tan-glazed tile arches in a hallway. The arches form a colonnade of sorts, which better defines a space that’s too wide for a hallway but too narrow for a gallery. For… Continue reading Is Beige the New Black in Architecture?
UIC’s Instagrammable Moment
Architect Magazine Ι Aug. 31, 2017 The piñatas that hang over a wide, terraced stairwell are distinctly biomorphic but don’t resemble any earthly species of fauna. There are bulbous limbs and neon colors, but these David Cronenbergian monstrosities are rendered in papier-maché. Antonio Torres, the architecture professor whose studio created them, says the project was… Continue reading UIC’s Instagrammable Moment
Chicago Works: Amanda Williams at the Museum of Contemporary Art
Architectural Record Ι July 21, 2017 Color(ed) Theory, a series of photographs of abandoned houses on Chicago’s South Side painted bright colors, was one of the Chicago Architecture Biennial’s most persistent viral images. Chicago Works: Amanda Williams—its sequel of sorts—constitutes a passing of the torch. The show, which opened this week at the Museum of Contemporary… Continue reading Chicago Works: Amanda Williams at the Museum of Contemporary Art
Here Comes Chicago’s Architecture Bonanza
CityLab Ι June 29, 2017 In 2015, Chicago launched the largest contemporary architecture event in North America—the Chicago Architecture Biennial. Staged at multiple sites around the city (including the lakefront) and drawing more than half a million visitors over three months, it was a wide shotgun blast in terms of content, with techno-psychedelic body-horror sketches, demonstrations… Continue reading Here Comes Chicago’s Architecture Bonanza
Morningstar
Contract Magazine Ι May 31, 2017 Morningstar’s new floor for its Chicago-based digital product developers places a premium on movement—the movement of its 190 team members as they get up from their desks for frequent standing meetings, the movement of mobile sit-stand desks that allow employees to take their workstations with them, and the movement of… Continue reading Morningstar
A Lot You Got to Holler EP 12: Who was Chicago’s Edgar Miller?
EP 12: Who was Chicago’s Edgar Miller? Edgar Miller is perhaps the most overlooked artist in the Chicago canon. Art was everywhere and everything to Miller, who used the city as his canvas through painting, woodworking, stained glass, sculpture, printmaking, iron working, industrial design and whatever materials fell his way. His expressionist, bespoke approach to design,… Continue reading A Lot You Got to Holler EP 12: Who was Chicago’s Edgar Miller?