Monday, October 03, 2005

Reminders: Matthias Schuler at UIC tonight, Blair Kamin on the Chicago Seven in yesterday's Trib

Matthias Schuler of Transsolar, one of the foremost environmental architectural engineers of our time, will lecture tonight at 6:00 P.M. at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Details here. A regular collaborator of Helmut Jahn and, co-consultant, along with Atelier 10, on the environmental rehabbing of Mies van der Rohe's Crown Hall, Schuler's global projects are documented in the firm's book, TRANSSOLAR: Climate Engineering.

Also, if you missed it in yesterday's Chicago Tribune, catch Blair Kamin's account of the reunion of the Chicago Seven, the young architects who in the 1970's helped redefine Chicago architecture by bucking the city's Miesian autocracy, at the Museum of Contemporary Art last Tuesday. (You have probably about six days to read the article before it passes into paid archive hell. My own writings, on the other hand, may be long-winded, poorly argued and needlessly beligerent, but they're free.)

The sold-out event actually wound up being a reunion of the Chicago Six, with the ever iconoclastic Stanley Tigerman declining to appear, causing him to be compared by one panelist to Bobby Seale, one of original Chicago Seven, activists indicted for their actions during the 1968 Democratic convention, who was bound to his chair, gagged, and eventually separated from the trial by Judge Julius Hoffman. The comparison was engaging, if imprecise. If Judge Hoffman were alive today, he would soon discover that any effort to gag Stanley Tigerman would be an effort in futility, and that the only enforcable separations would be those myriad instances where Tigerman, himself, has chosen to sever himself from those whose efforts, attitudes or ethics he has found wanting. The event at MCA began with a concise and adroit overview of the history of the Chicago Seven by IIT architectural historical Kevin Harrington, Kamin provides a good overview of that history, but covers very little of the actual discussion, which was moderated by architect Doug Garafalo. It's hoped that the Chicago Architectural Club, which sponsored the event, will document the evening by putting a transcript or synopsis up on their website.

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