Author: zachmortice

CityLab Ι Dec. 9, 2015  In the alternately dour and idealistic world of water infrastructure, there are some pretty clearly delineated Good Guys and Bad Guys. The Bad Guys are everywhere: gray concrete culverts, drainage pipes, and seawalls that use brute force to shove water out of sight and away from settlements and homes, often exacerbating… Continue reading A Seawall That Proves Strong Infrastructure Can Be Pretty, Too

Landscape Architecture Magazine Ι Nov. 2015  Palmisano Park in Chicago’s Bridgeport neighborhood is as a theme park ride of ancestral Chicago landforms, landscapes, and industrial histories. In one corner, wetlands that once surrounded its lakeshore. In another corner, prairie that extended for hundreds of miles in all directions. Then there’s a rock wall 25 feet high… Continue reading Deep Cut

AIA Architect Ι Nov. 13, 2015 Theaster Gates’ Stony Island Arts Bank is getting top billing at this year’s Chicago Architecture Biennial, highlighted as one of the event’s main venues. Amid this wild omnidirectional survey of contemporary architecture, the community arts center designed by Gates and managed by his nonprofit Rebuild Foundation might seem like an odd fit. Elsewhere at the… Continue reading After Decades of Withdrawals, Stony Island Arts Bank Makes a Deposit

Line/Shape/Space Ι Nov. 9, 2015 Since it launched in 2000, the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) LEED green building rating system has created the market for green buildings, with more than 13.8 billion square feet of building space now LEED certified. With LEED as guidance, architects and their clients reduce their buildings’ impact on the environment by implementing such… Continue reading LEED for the Electricity Industry? New PEER Rating System Measures Sustainability for Power Grids

AIA Architect Ι Oct. 30, 2015  Good art, and architecture, can look into the future. There’s French Surrealist Yves Tanguy’s paintings, which would be dead ringers for early computer animation had they not been painted in 1945. There’s the seminal 1922 Chicago Tribune Tower competition, which produced designs that could settle into any contemporary skyline. And there’s pioneering photography artist Barbara… Continue reading Building with Light and Shadow: An Interview with Barbara Kasten

Architectural Record Ι Oct. 27, 2015  For its first home, the National Public Housing Museum in Chicago fittingly chose a local public housing architect—not a globetrotting museum designer. After funding is secured, Landon Bone Baker Architects (LBBA) will adaptively reuse the last standing Jane Addams Home—one of the first public housing projects built in the city, named after a Progressive-era… Continue reading A New National Public Housing Museum Begins in the Gap Between “House” and “Housing”

Architect Magazine Ι Oct. 2015  In 1977, deep into architecture’s sectarian manifesto wars in the run-up to Postmodernism, the Graham Foundation invited architects from the avant-garde establishment to Chicago to participate in “The State of the Art of Architecture,” a conference organized by Stanley Tigerman, FAIA, and his Chicago Seven (not to be confused with Abbie… Continue reading Besting Venice

  AIA Architect Ι Oct. 16, 2015 In Chicago, size matters. It’s been host to the tallest skyscraper in the world (more than once), the biggest building in the world, and grand visions that reverse the flow of rivers. So the 2015 Chicago Architecture Biennial was bound to be a behemoth, featuring more than 100 firms from over 30 nations. “It’s the largest exposition… Continue reading From the Epicenter of Modern Architecture, the Chicago Architecture Biennial Expands Outward

Line/Shape/Space Ι Oct. 13, 2015 Ever since the Industrial Revolution gave architects a smorgasbord of new factory-made materials to create buildings with, certain designers have based their identity and designs around signature elements. For Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, it was brawny steel beams and glass. Frank Gehry chose billowing waves of titanium. Mario Botta indulges his postmodern… Continue reading Curling Iron: How Thermobimetal Could Change Architecture

CityLab Ι Oct. 9, 2015 Crow Island School, in the Chicago suburb of Winnetka, Illinois, is a beloved icon of progressive school design. With bright and airy L-shaped classrooms, exquisite material details, and kiddie-scaled everything, Crow Island is something like the Seagram Building of elementary schools. Celebrating its 75th anniversary this year, the school’s influence has reached… Continue reading Crow Island School: Why Don’t All Schools Look Like this One?