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
Category: Articles
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
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
Edward Lyons Pryce, the Black Landscape Architect that Preserved the Tuskegee Institute
February 2, 2022 Ι Metropolis Magazine Not long before he died in 2007, Edward Lyons Pryce asked his daughter Marilyn Pryce Hoytt for an important favor. “Patty,” he said, using her nickname, “don’t let the world forget about me.” It’s a common sentiment for the end of anyone’s life, but an it’s especially daunting task… Continue reading Edward Lyons Pryce, the Black Landscape Architect that Preserved the Tuskegee Institute
Chicago’s Bungalows Are Where the City Comes Together
February 9, 2022 Ι Bloomberg CityLab In Chicago, there are plenty of reasons for South Side residents to keep Northsiders at arm’s length. This includes the North Side’s nonsensical lack of numbered streets, opposed baseball fandoms, and the outsized power of the city’s wealthier half — an imbalance that has created one of the most… Continue reading Chicago’s Bungalows Are Where the City Comes Together