The Atlantic’s CityLab Ι May 1, 2019 Looking at the pressing shortages of low-income housing in each and every state in the country, it’s hard not to come to the conclusion that NIMBY homeowners are winning the fight against new housing, and especially against affordable housing. But there’s one potential foe that reactionary homeowners are ill-equipped… Continue reading A One-Stop Shop for Affordable Backyard Homes Advances in L.A.
Month: May 2019
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
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