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
Author: zachmortice
An Ouster at the Institute
New York Review of Architecture Ι September-October 2022 In May of last year, president of AIA Middle East Ali Lari thought he had done a rather difficult thing: diffused a sensitive political situation without compromising the AIA’s stated commitments to equity and human rights. The topic at hand was the occupation of Palestine by Israel.… Continue reading An Ouster at the Institute
Floating Museum Collective Named Artistic Directors of 2023 Chicago Biennial
Architectural Record Ι Sept. 23, 2022 The fifth edition of the Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB) will be led by the Floating Museum, a Chicago collective of artists and designers that focuses on large-scale, site-specific installations created in concert with public institutions. The Floating Museum’s members—architect Andrew Schachman and artists avery r. young, Faheem Majeed, and… Continue reading Floating Museum Collective Named Artistic Directors of 2023 Chicago Biennial
IIT and CTBUH launch new tall-buildings degree programs
Architect’s Newspaper Ι Sept. 20, 2022 Antony Wood, president of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), begins just about every speech he delivers with “Ninety-five percent of tall buildings are crap; they should have never been built.” That is why he started a new degree program at the Illinois Institute of Technology’s… Continue reading IIT and CTBUH launch new tall-buildings degree programs
Dismantling The Design Syllabus
Landscape Architecture Magazine Ι Nov. 6, 2020 Newly appointed this summer, Sara Zewde is the first tenure-tracked Black woman landscape architecture professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) and one of only 19 Black landscape architecture professors at accredited programs in the United States. And now that her first semester teaching at her… Continue reading Dismantling The Design Syllabus
Could Be Architecture Says Friendly Design Makes Us Kinder Humans
Metropolis Magazine Ι May 2022 Joseph Altshuler and Zack Morrison, collectively known as Could Be Architecture (CBA), have one question they apply to everything they design: “Is it creaturely?”
The Office Tower Has a New Job to Do
Bloomberg CityLab Ι June 29, 2022 In 2015, private equity giant Blackstone Inc. purchased the Willis (née Sears) Tower and began a half-billion-dollar renovation that would radically change the role the former tallest building in the world would play in downtown Chicago. Today, anyone — not just workers in the 108-story office tower — can sample from… Continue reading The Office Tower Has a New Job to Do
The Focal Point Community Campus promises to expand healthcare in a Chicago neighborhood where it’s badly needed. So why isn’t everyone on board?
Architects’ Newspaper Ι May 16, 2022 On paper, the Focal Point Community Campus project in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood seems like a boon for the predominantly poor and multigenerational Latinx residents who live there. Spearheaded by Guy Medaglia, the project would build a new facility for Saint Anthony Hospital, which Medaglia heads as president and CEO.… Continue reading The Focal Point Community Campus promises to expand healthcare in a Chicago neighborhood where it’s badly needed. So why isn’t everyone on board?
“American Framing” Returns to Wood Framing’s Geographic and Cultural Origin
May 17, 2022 Ι Architectural Record The wood-framed pavilion at the center of Wrightwood 659’s “American Framing” exhibition, back stateside after its run at the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale, fills nearly every inch of the building’s concrete-and-brick triple-height atrium. Like a half-built house with an inverted gable roof, the installation gives visitors a visceral sense of… Continue reading “American Framing” Returns to Wood Framing’s Geographic and Cultural Origin
Labor Parti
May 9, 2022 Ι Architect’s Newspaper In March 2021, Chicago architect and AIA member Josh Mings started a new job at Moody Nolan, that year’s AIA Firm Award recipient and the largest Black-owned architecture firm in the nation. He said he was handed deadlines requiring 60 to 80 hours of work a week, which became… Continue reading Labor Parti