After School Closings, a Renovation Challenge

Bloomberg CityLab Ι Oct. 9. 2023 Dwight Perkins isn’t among the most familiar names associated with Chicago architecture. But unlike Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe, his work left a particularly vivid impression on the childhoods of generations of Chicagoans from all corners of the city, because he designed their schools.

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?

The Opposite of Ticky-Tacky?

Aug. 13, 2021 Ι Architect’s Newspaper  Audrey Ellermann has lived in St. Louis’s Covenant Blu Grand Center neighborhood for two decades and seen the area’s fortunes wax and wane. With a history of abandonment and decay, Grand Center is now part of a growing arts district backed by the city’s wealthiest. As president of the… Continue reading The Opposite of Ticky-Tacky?

How a Plan to Save Buildings Fell Apart

April 7, 2021 Ι Bloomberg’s CityLab (with Elizabeth Blasius) In 2018, Chicago’s Department of Planning and Development felt that they had a progressive plan to preserve one of the city’s most rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods. Pilsen, on the city’s southwest side, was home to Eastern European immigrants in the 19th century; in the 20th century, it drew… Continue reading How a Plan to Save Buildings Fell Apart

In One of Chicago’s Most Affluent Neighborhoods, Hidden Stories of Resistance Unveiled By App

Next City Ι November 20, 2020 The Armitage-Halsted historic district in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood is renowned for its well-preserved collection of 19th-century architecture and commercial streetscapes, filled with Victoria-era ornamentation, pressed metal bays, and classic Chicago corner turrets. Today, Lincoln Park is a thoroughly gentrified site of winners-circle complacency; dog parks, stroller moms in… Continue reading In One of Chicago’s Most Affluent Neighborhoods, Hidden Stories of Resistance Unveiled By App

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

Can This Chicago Apartment Factory Make New Homes Affordable?

The Atlantic’s CityLab Ι July 8, 2019 Skender, an established, family-owned builder in Chicago, is making a serious play in a sector associated with young startups: modular construction. The company is building steel-structured three-flats, a quintessential Chicago housing type that consists of three apartments stacked on top of each other in the footprint of a large house.… Continue reading Can This Chicago Apartment Factory Make New Homes Affordable?

The Brilliant Artist That Chicago, and the World, Nearly Forgot

The Atlantic’s CityLab Ι June 18, 2018  Edgar Miller was a virtuoso in any medium he chose: painting, sculpture, stained glass, architecture, interior design, printmaking, metalwork, cutlery, graphic design. He put those prodigious skills toward building a creative community on Chicago’s near-north side in the 1920s and beyond. Miller’s handful of architecture projects (a series of… Continue reading The Brilliant Artist That Chicago, and the World, Nearly Forgot

San Francisco’s Ambitious India Basin Development Project Is Wild at the Edges

Redshift Ι March 20, 2018 India Basin, on the southeast edge of San Francisco, was historically a neighborhood tied to the shipbuilding industry. An unassuming nub poking out into the San Francisco Bay, the 17-acre parcel at 700 Innes Avenue is something of a unicorn: It’s a rare example of undeveloped land (along the waterfront, no… Continue reading San Francisco’s Ambitious India Basin Development Project Is Wild at the Edges

Architecture Beyond the A-List

Photo by Lee Bey.

October 12, 2017 Ι CityLab Away from the main exhibit of the Chicago Architecture Biennial—the country’s biggest architecture festival, on show through January—there are a half-dozen smaller “anchor” shows, hosted by neighborhood arts organizations far from downtown. These reveal a different side to Chicago’s architectural legacy, famed for the White City of 1893, Frank Lloyd Wright,… Continue reading Architecture Beyond the A-List