Bloomberg’s CityLab Ι Aug. 14, 2020 It’s been one of the most striking images of this summer’s season of urban uprising: bridges over the Chicago River drawn up to block access to downtown Chicago’s Loop, the raised structures standing like iron sentinels guarding nearly deserted nighttime streets. Mayor Lori Lightfoot ordered the drawbridges raised early Monday morning… Continue reading Chicago’s 1855 ‘Beer Riot’ Is a Bridge to the Unrest of 2020
Author: zachmortice
Three Walks in the Woods
The Chicago Reader Ι May 1, 2020 There’s an overpass hill that arches Lake Shore Drive over Foster Avenue where we could make camp and inflate the beach ball and spread out our snacks. It’s a space I’ve walked and driven by hundreds of times without a glance or a thought, but my four-year-old daughter… Continue reading Three Walks in the Woods
Will City Planning Become More Socially Equitable Post-Coronavirus?
Autodesk’s Redshift Ι July 9, 2020 A native of Chicago’s South Side, landscape architect and planner Ernie Wong of Site Design Group has designed parks in all quarters of the city, from affluent, gentrifying neighborhoods to the bulldozed sites of former public housing projects. Wong understands the roles parks play in radically different contexts and… Continue reading Will City Planning Become More Socially Equitable Post-Coronavirus?
5 Insights as Architects Lead Hospital Conversion for COVID-19 Response
Autodesk’s Redshift Ι April 21, 2020 In February 2020, Molly Scanlon—a licensed architect and environmental health scientist—started noticing curious videos of modular hospitals in Wuhan, China, for patients who had contracted a mysterious new virus. The hospitals were austere and institutional, bordering on factory-like, with wide, segmented bays. Prefabricated components were trucked on-site and slotted… Continue reading 5 Insights as Architects Lead Hospital Conversion for COVID-19 Response
Fazlur Khan Converged Engineering and Architecture at the Top of the World
Autodesk’s Redshift Ι April 7, 2020 Fazlur Khan’s achievements as a structural engineer will forever be tied to Chicago’s Sears Tower (now called the Willis Tower), the tallest building in the world for a quarter century. But that long reign wasn’t stunt-architecture: The building, completed in 1973, represented a synthesis among structural possibilities, aesthetic exploration,… Continue reading Fazlur Khan Converged Engineering and Architecture at the Top of the World
Chicago’s Bid to Reinvent the Corner Store
Bloomberg’s CityLab Ι July 31, 2020 When it’s completed, the corner grocery store at 63rd and Racine will look a lot different than the other carryouts and bodegas dotting this section of Englewood, on Chicago’s South Side. Designed by Wheeler Kearns Architects and developed by local nonprofit Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN), the Go Green Fresh Market will essentially be… Continue reading Chicago’s Bid to Reinvent the Corner Store
A Second Look at Edith Farnsworth and Her Mies van der Rohe–designed Retreat
Architectural Record Ι July 15, 2020 During a visit to the latest exhibition at Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House in Plano, Illinois, visitors are more likely to encounter a deer (as this writer did) than a single Mies-designed Brno Chair. That’s because the year-long, multi-part exhibition called Edith Farnsworth Reconsidered unfolds across nearly 60 acres of forest… Continue reading A Second Look at Edith Farnsworth and Her Mies van der Rohe–designed Retreat
A Seat at the Table
Architect Magazine Ι Feb. 3, 2020 Early in the development of the Ruth Ellis Clairmount Center in Detroit, an LGBTQ+ affordable housing and outreach center that focuses on young people of color, Jack Schroeder, AIA, of Landon Bone Baker (LBB) knew there would be an arts component to the mostly residential project, but he wasn’t… Continue reading A Seat at the Table
Mulligans
Landscape Architecture Magazine Ι February 11, 2020 Just a few years ago, Keri VanVlymen, a landscape designer with Ratio in Indianapolis, had never driven a golf cart, but now she’s an expert. Over five months in 2018, she surveyed each of Indianapolis’s 13 public golf courses, trekking “every mile of every trail of every course,”… Continue reading Mulligans
4 Ways Architects Can Extend Their Client Services Post-Construction
Autodesk’s Redshift Ι Dec. 12, 2019 Plamena Milusheva, a designer at Seattle architecture firm LMN, is working on a way to get architects back into their buildings long after construction ends and they’ve turned over the keys. The trick isn’t a lockpick kit or any sort of clandestine sneaking technology; it’s a networked device she’s… Continue reading 4 Ways Architects Can Extend Their Client Services Post-Construction