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
Tag: Architecture
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
The National Public Housing Museum Eyes a 2021 Opening
The Atlantic’s CityLab Ι Dec. 3, 2019 When you’re working to establish a museum with such contested subject matter as the National Public Housing Museum (NPHM), it pays to have a few shorthand expressions within easy reach, lest anyone get confused about creating a curatorial platform for an institution many associate with failure. Crystal Palmer,… Continue reading The National Public Housing Museum Eyes a 2021 Opening
At Washington University, A Cluster of New Buildings Enlivens a Neglected Part of Campus
Metropolis Magazine Ι Oct. 18, 2019 A middle-American Oxbridge, the campus of Washington University in St. Louis is staunchly Collegiate Gothic, all nested quads and pink granite buildings. It’s often hard to tell where one building ends and another begins. But traverse the campus to its far eastern edge and this monotony starts to let up:… Continue reading At Washington University, A Cluster of New Buildings Enlivens a Neglected Part of Campus
Design for all requires a culture change in architecture
The American Institute of Architects Ι Oct. 14, 2019 In 1978, John Catlin, who’d been a wheelchair user for four years after a spinal injury, began graduate school in architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). In 1973, federal legislation was passed that prohibited discrimination against people with disabilities, including facilities designed, built, altered,… Continue reading Design for all requires a culture change in architecture
An Activist Architecture Stirs in Chicago
The Atlantic’s CityLab Ι Oct. 9. 2019 Perhaps the most compelling installation in this year’s Chicago Architecture Biennial doesn’t feature a single architectural model, rendering, or image of buildings (or of anything else). It’s a series of short blocks of text, probing the Chicago police’s killing of Harith Augustus on the city’s South Side in July of last… Continue reading An Activist Architecture Stirs in Chicago
How a Gehry building came back ready for the spotlight
The American Institute of Architects Ι Aug. 21, 2019 In the pantheon of Frank Gehry buildings, his American Center in Paris, completed in 1994, was a decidedly transitional artifact. Gehry was rebuffed from using steel on the building by planners with context-attuned designs for its newly redeveloped district on the banks of the Seine, so instead… Continue reading How a Gehry building came back ready for the spotlight
Virgil Abloh’s MCA Exhibition Reveals the Power—and Limits—of Design Disruption
Metropolis Magazine Ι July 15, 2019 Architecture is an attractive medium for the trendsetter-turned-multidisciplinary designer and artist Virgil Abloh. Because buildings are often the face of the establishment, they are ripe targets for subversion—Abloh’s calling card. So it’s no surprise that bits of buildings are strewn throughout Figures of Speech, Abloh’s first solo museum exhibition now… Continue reading Virgil Abloh’s MCA Exhibition Reveals the Power—and Limits—of Design Disruption
Proposals for New Building at UIC Contend with Walter Netsch’s Brutalist Campus
Architectural Record Ι April 8, 2019 Last week, the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) unveiled three short-listed proposals for a performing arts center. Two of the finalist designs, by OMA and Johnston Marklee, take strong cues from Walter Netsch’s arch-Brutalist UIC campus—one of Chicago’s least understood bits of architectural history. The third, by Thom Mayne’s Morphosis,… Continue reading Proposals for New Building at UIC Contend with Walter Netsch’s Brutalist Campus