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

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

Chicago Biennial Returns to Michigan Avenue Cultural Center with New Exhibition Space

April 26, 2022 Ι Architectural Record  From its permaculture food gardens to neighborhood brick-making workshops, to robot-traced empty lot block party takeovers, the 2021 Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB)— under the direction of artistic director David Brown—was very much at home far from the downtown space that hosted previous biennials. But this spring, the Biennial is… Continue reading Chicago Biennial Returns to Michigan Avenue Cultural Center with New Exhibition Space

In the Tank

April 2022 Ι Landscape Architecture Magazine  Smoke stacks of deserted steel plants keep the skyline of Big Marsh Park in Chicago spare. an Wetlands  dominate the soggy ground between Lake Michigan and Lake Calumet, Chicago’s other Great Lake, so  endlessly dredged and filled that it’s become a hammer-headed series of slips and canals. This part of… Continue reading In the Tank

A Radical Way of Teaching Architecture

April 5, 2022 Ι Bloomberg CityLab At the new architecture program at Bard College, now in its fourth semester, there’s lots of “troubling” and “unsettling” (used as verbs) to be done. Here, architecture is a method of critique, not a profession dedicated to making shelter. And instead of world-striding creative visionaries, its practitioners are presented… Continue reading A Radical Way of Teaching Architecture

The North Lawndale Employment Network Sees Through Employment Barriers for the Formerly Incarcerated

February 17, 2022 Ι Metropolis Magazine  Even from outside the new North Lawndale Employment Network (NLEN) building on Chicago’s West Side, where approximately half of residents live in poverty and the neighborhood’s many architectural treasures suffer from brutal disinvestment, passersby can see through two layers of glass into the heart of the building, where formerly… Continue reading The North Lawndale Employment Network Sees Through Employment Barriers for the Formerly Incarcerated