Oct. 4, 2025 Ι Bloomberg CityLab As a child, artist and designer Jason Campbell felt the powerful presence of his mother’s linen collection. It was everywhere: in a dedicated closet, but also in the attic, a separate crawl space, the basement and an armoire. Later in life, Campbell, who is Black and a Chicago resident,… Continue reading In Chicago, a Soft Architecture Biennial for Hard Times
Tag: Bloomberg CityLab
Yesterday’s Schools of Tomorrow Face the Future
Sept. 11, 2025 Ι Bloomberg CityLab When a solar eclipse passed through Columbus, Indiana, in May 1994, fifth-grader Josh Mings watched the cosmic ballet from the atrium of Southside Elementary School, a hulking Brutalist structure designed by architect Eliot Noyes. Completed in 1969, it’s among the town’s most famous — and daring — examples of… Continue reading Yesterday’s Schools of Tomorrow Face the Future
Struggling Downtowns Are Looking to Lure New Crowds
June 30, 2025 Ι Bloomberg CityLab The 12-story building at 300 West Adams Street is typical of the terra-cotta-clad office towers that rose in downtown Chicago during the 1920s. Heavily ornamented with Gothic Revival details and brass decorative elements, it’s across the street from the city’s tallest skyscraper, the freshly renovated Willis (née Sears) Tower, and… Continue reading Struggling Downtowns Are Looking to Lure New Crowds
At the National Public Housing Museum, an Embattled Idea Finds a Home
April 25, 2025 Ι Bloomberg CityLab The items on display at the new National Public Housing Museum in Chicago are almost defiant in their ordinariness. There’s a hammer once used by a resident of the city’s Stateway Gardens development; an iron skillet from a family living in Houston’s Cuney Homes; a hose that once watered… Continue reading At the National Public Housing Museum, an Embattled Idea Finds a Home
In Chicago, a Former Steel Mill Looks to Make a Quantum Leap
April 8, 2025 Ι Bloomberg CityLab Life after steel on the South Side of Chicago can be surprisingly beautiful. On a peninsula in Lake Michigan carved out by shipping inlets sits Steelworkers Park, a serene space on the southeast edge of the city that once held the roaring furnaces of US Steel’s South Works. Shoreline… Continue reading In Chicago, a Former Steel Mill Looks to Make a Quantum Leap
When French Communists Went on a Brutalist Building Boom
Feb. 1, 2025 Ι Bloomberg CityLab Let’s say, hypothetically, that there’s a left political party in an affluent Western country. It dominates in urban areas but struggles elsewhere; its working-class voter base has splintered with deindustrialization and more progressive, college-educated factions have emerged. As the nation becomes more multicultural, the party gets increasingly attuned to… Continue reading When French Communists Went on a Brutalist Building Boom
Chicago Workers Cottages Gave Immigrants Access to Homeownership
July 28, 2024 Ι Bloomberg CityLab With their steep gables and simple details, Chicago’s workers cottages can seem today like quaint remnants from another time. Yet the cottages are in many ways the building blocks of the city’s modernity, precursors to the suburban building boom of the 20th and 21st centuries. Built in the wake… Continue reading Chicago Workers Cottages Gave Immigrants Access to Homeownership
The Tartarian Candidate
Oct. 25, 2024 Ι Bloomberg CityLab At a New Hampshire GOP meeting in January, Donald Trump took off on an odd tangent. Lamenting the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he talked about its architectural heritage. “I mean, the country, how does it ever rebuild those cities, those magnificent buildings that came down that are a thousand… Continue reading The Tartarian Candidate
Landmarking the Black Panther Party
Bloomberg CityLab Ι February 24, 2024 The walls of the Church of the Epiphany in Chicago are two feet thick, made of red-brown sandstone from the upper peninsula of Michigan. Designed by Francis Whitehouse and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, it’s a preeminent example of the Richardson Romanesque architectural style. The ornate… Continue reading Landmarking the Black Panther Party
The Chicago Architecture Biennial Is Stuck in a Loop
Dec. 9, 2023 Ι Bloomberg CityLab The Chicago Architecture Biennial, the largest architecture exposition in North America, is prone to repeating itself. The fifth and latest iteration of the festival, which opened in November at the ornate Chicago Cultural Center, charts its meta-turn as clearly as it can, starting with the event’s title: “This Is… Continue reading The Chicago Architecture Biennial Is Stuck in a Loop