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

High in the Sky, Where the Money Stacks Up

Aerial view of First National Bank building in Chicago, Illinois, circa 1969.

August 31, 2023 Ι Architects’ Newspaper In the 1960s, the same Chicago city agency conjured some of the worst and the best in American residential high-rises, and in rapid succession. The Chicago Housing Authority’s (CHA) Robert Taylor Homes were the nation’s largest public housing project when they opened in 1963: the buildings locked in a… Continue reading High in the Sky, Where the Money Stacks Up

Chicago’s 1855 ‘Beer Riot’ Is a Bridge to the Unrest of 2020

Direct capture

Bloomberg’s CityLab Ι Aug. 14, 2020 It’s been one of the most striking images of this summer’s season of urban uprising: bridges over the Chicago River drawn up to block access to downtown Chicago’s Loop, the raised structures standing like iron sentinels guarding nearly deserted nighttime streets. Mayor Lori Lightfoot ordered the drawbridges raised early Monday morning… Continue reading Chicago’s 1855 ‘Beer Riot’ Is a Bridge to the Unrest of 2020

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

At the Venice Biennale, Jeanne Gang Uses Memphis’s Cobblestones to Reflect on Monuments and Messy Civic Histories

Metropolis Magazine Ι May 23, 2018 “How do you make the stones talk?” asks the architect Jeanne Gang. It’s not a philosophical posture, but an earnest question and one at the center of Studio Gang’s soon-to-open 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale installation at the U.S. Pavilion. The stones Gang refers to were plucked out of storage, but… Continue reading At the Venice Biennale, Jeanne Gang Uses Memphis’s Cobblestones to Reflect on Monuments and Messy Civic Histories

The Story of the Great Lakes in 8 Maps

December 11, 2017 Ι CityLab  Stretching across eight states and two Canadian provinces, the Great Lakes region contains the world’s largest freshwater system and is likely the greatest single surface aggregation of rare resources on the planet. If it was a standalone country, its economy would be the fourth largest in the world. Yet its natural… Continue reading The Story of the Great Lakes in 8 Maps

Here Comes Chicago’s Architecture Bonanza

CityLab Ι June 29, 2017 In 2015, Chicago launched the largest contemporary architecture event in North America—the Chicago Architecture Biennial. Staged at multiple sites around the city (including the lakefront) and drawing more than half a million visitors over three months, it was a wide shotgun blast in terms of content, with techno-psychedelic body-horror sketches, demonstrations… Continue reading Here Comes Chicago’s Architecture Bonanza

Perpetual Neglect: The Preservation Crisis of African-American Cemeteries

Places Journal Ι May 30, 2017 In late February, Raphael Morris pulled his car onto the gravel path just off St. Louis Avenue in northern St. Louis County, and saw something he’d hoped was a thing of the past: a large pile of garbage dumped in Greenwood Cemetery, near where he grew up and where several… Continue reading Perpetual Neglect: The Preservation Crisis of African-American Cemeteries