Friday, March 23, 2007

Finally - AIA Illinois 150 gets the whole "best of" list thing right

After a silly season of "best of" lists that's ranged from the American Institute of Architect's lazy and inane America's Favorite Architecture to the Illinois Bureau of Tourism's beauty contest quest for the Seven Wonders of Illinois, AIA Illinois has finally gotten it right.

With 150 Great Places in Illinois, they've finally come up with a compilation that comes off neither as a joke nor as something a PR intern tossed off between assignments. It's a great combination of usual suspects and unexpected discoveries, and it's all available on an addictive, informative and superbly designed website. Read all about it and see some of the photos here.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, I know what I'm doing this summer... :)

Anonymous said...

What about Hancock?

Anonymous said...

Max Abramovitz' Assembly Hall is on the campus of UIUC (not UIC).

Robert I. Selby, FAIA

Anonymous said...

Louis Sullivan is represented by Carson's at the slide "State and Madison," and the Charnley House at the "Astor Street Historic District" location.

Robert I. Selby, FAIA

Lynn Becker said...

Our thanks to Professor Selby for catching the UIC for UIUC error. (par for the course for a guy who still sometimes catches himself referring to the Chicago campus as "Circle")

In terms of Louis Sullivan, while a group hug as part of a historic district is nice, it's still startling to find Sullivan, Root and Burnham missing from the list of architects on the AIA Illinois 150 website scroll bar.