Holiday Shopping for the Archiphile: Computer Part cities; photography books up to 50% off, 3D Chicago, and something for someone who has everything

Still shopping for the holidays?  (I usually wait to start until the 26th)

click images for larger view

Via Rib Bone Production's Andy Spyrison, we bring you the work of Italian artist Franco Recchia, which scavenges the innards of computers to create abstracted cityscape sculptures, named after New York's Manhattan, Fifth Avenue and Central Park, Tokyo's Pechino District, Boston and Pitsburgh.  No Chicago yet.  It looks like you can actually buy them on-line.  Prices range from  $2400 to $8100.  Maybe there's some Chicago computer geek with a lot of old boxes to tear apart who might want to test the market with their own more popularly priced creations.  If you're out there, let me know.

If your heart is set on Chicago, and you're comfortable with "some assembly required" taken to the max, there's the 4D Cityscape Chicago 831-piece jigsaw puzzle, complete with 127 plastic buildings, now on sale at the shop at the Chicago Architecture Foundation.  To me, the great temptation would be to redesign the city, jamming selected buildings into alternative locations, or just be able to contemplate a Chicago skyline cleansed of its worst structures.  (Maybe you could resell them on eBay as the "Chicago bad buildings collection".)

And if Chicago's not your cup of tea, there are also 4D Cityscape puzzles for London, Toronto, Las Vegas, New York and Washington DC.  No Pittsburgh.  I've already written that for the month of December, the CAF shop is offering free shipping on orders of $50.00 or over, but it gets better.  CAF members get 25% all purchases during Members Month in December.   If you're buying a lot of gifts, getting a membership could pay for itself.  (Which reminds me, I still have to redeem that coupon for membership that I got on Groupon a few weeks back.)

Elsewhere, we've also written on giving the gift of art from the ArchiTech gallery. I'm pretty sure every Chicago area museum has its own array of great gifts, but the book store at the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College is upping the ante with a Holiday Book Sale offering "up to 50% off nearly all books! Some books are just $5! (Exclamation points from the original!) It runs through Friday the 10th, 10 a.m., to 5:00 p.m., at 600 South Michigan. "cash or checks only please."

And one, last Neiman Marcus-sized idea*

You can actually get a little plastic version of Santiago Calatrava's Chicago Spire in CAF's 4D puzzle, but for that special someone for whom only the best will do, how about . . . a hole . . .

photograph:  Bob Johnson

No, we're not talking about sex reassignment surgery for your significant other, but the only surviving trace of Great Gatsby Garrett Kelleher's insanely ambitious dream for an 2,000-foot-high, Santiago Calatrava designed Chicago Spire. As the Trib's Mary Ellen Podmolik reported yesterday, the Irish developer  has now officially lost control of the property, as a Circuit Court judge has allowed the project's lender, Ango Irish Bank, also in deep doo-doo, to appoint CB Richard Ellis to oversee the property as it goes through foreclosure.

What says "I Love You" better than a 76-foot-deep hole at the side of a rushing expressway?  You might even considering licensing one of the winning ideas in the Chicago Architectural Club's Mine the Gap competition from earlier this year to gussy it up.

Alexander Lehnerer and team - The Second Sun

But I'm warning you now: it's going to be a royal pain to wrap.

*taken from an ad placed by Warner Brothers to begin selling tickets to the Palace Theater's 1964 run of the film version of My Fair Lady, nearly a year before the opening.  Image-starved and text heavy, it concluded with the "Neiman Marcus-sized" suggestion of simply buying out the theatre for a personal showing for yourself and your closest friends.

Black Friday edition: 4D Chicago with 127 individual plastic landmarks, free shipping at CAF, Richard Neutra dollhouse, Kamin, Weese, Adler & Sullivan

Let the gift buying frenzy begin.

Through November and December, the Chicago Architecture Foundation is offering free shipping on orders of $50.00 or more to locations in the continental U.S.

The on-line bookshop still offers only a small fraction of the titles available in CAF's great Michigan Avenue store, but it does include such items as the new Blair Kamin compilation, Terror & Wonder, and two of the season's "must-have" titles for any architecture buff: Robert Bruegmann and Kathleen Murphy Skolnick's The Architecture of Harry Weese, and the landmark The Complete Architecture of Alder and Sullivan. You can also get your copy of the just released DVD of Mark Richard Smith's documentary Louis Sullivan: the Struggle for American Architecture.

Among the many special items is the Emerson House, a "modern dollhouse" which "draws inspiration from Richard Neutra's Desert House and A. Quincy Jones' house for Gary Cooper"

The Emerson House modern dollhouse is the perfect home for the modern family. The modern home has six rooms including a living room, kitchen, library/office, master bedroom, bathroom and child's bedroom. With its large, open floor plan and floor-to-ceiling windows, the Emerson House enjoys year-round sunlight. The modern dollhouse features many extras including mitered-glass corners, two fireplaces, sliding glass doors, solar panels, and recessed LED lights. Finally, the dollhouse is easy on the environment with only non-toxic and lead-free wood stains and paints.

It's $329.00 ($296.10 for CAF members - Coop doll not included), but think how much those solar panels will save you on batteries.

And if that price is a bit too rich for your blood . . . I'm not sure the actual product will be able to live up to the hype, and we won't know until it's released December 3rd, but you could have your own version of CAF's terrific Chicago Model City exhibition with the 831-piece jigsaw puzzle 4D Cityscape Chicago.

The kicker on this one is that once you've figured out the puzzle, you'll find pre-cut holes for 127 plastic models (included) of buildings "that depict the city as it appeared as far back as 1873 through to 2015 Including icons such as the Willis Tower, John Hancock, and Navy Pier." You could borrow your favorite building to use as your personal Monopoly piece. Among the pieces are a couple of key unbuilt projects, and at $44.95 ($40.46 for CAF members) it may turn out to be the only version of the Santiago Calatrava designed Chicago Spire that developer Garrett Kelleher will ever be able to afford.  Did I mention the streets are claimed to glow in the dark? Unless this thing is a complete dud, this could be the Chicago architectural toy to have this year.

No word yet whether The Frank Lloyd Wright Illustrated Guide to Matrimony will be in stock in time for Christmas. Check out all the great stuff at the CAF store here.