150 North Riverside, Jeanne Gang on Radical Creativity, Achilles on the Auditorium, Vernon on Griffin and more: Just Posted! the January Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events

Once more into the breach, dear friends - we've just put up the January 2014 Calendar of Chicago

Architectural Events.

The year starts slowly but we still have dozens of great items in the first month of the New Year, beginning with representatives of Wiss, Janney, Elstner and Thorton Tomasetti discussing Hurricane Sandy and Coastline Rebuilding Efforts for the Structural Engineers Association of Illinois,

Lunchtime Wednesdays at the Chicago Architecture Foundation, it begins with building previews -on the 8th, with Steven M. Nilles and Joachim Schuessler of Goettsch Partners discussing 150 North Riverside, which has just landed its anchor tenant; and the 15th finds representatives from Solomon Cordwell Buenz and Loyola discussing the school's under-construction Institute of Environmental Sustainability.  Then on the 22nd, Julia Bachrach, Elizabeth Patterson and Frances O'Cherony Archer talk about the Chicago Historic Schools website, a fantastic new resource of images and information.  On the 29th, Chicago Chief Sustainability Officer Karen Weigert talks about Building a Livable, Competitive and Sustainable City.

Want more?  Christopher Vernon flies in from Australia to talk about Walter Burley Griffin, the

Oak Park Studio's Landscape Architect at Frank Lloyd Wright's Unity Temple on Thursday, the 9th, while Rolf Achilles takes on The Significance of The Auditorium Building for Landmarks Illinois in the structure's Murray-Green Library on Thursday the 16th.

On Wednesday morning, January 22nd, Jeanne Gang talks about Radical Creativity and Collaborative Design at The Executive's Club of Chicago's Women's Leadership Breakfast, while over at APA Chicago, Adam Rosa discusses A Tale of Two Neighborhoods: The HUD Choice Neighborhoods in Action on Tuesday the 28th.

New shows:  Chromatic Patterns for the Graham Foundation:

Judy Ledgerwood opens on the 23rd, while ArchiTech Gallery launches its new show, Alfonso Iannelli and the Studios, Saturday the 3rd.

There's lot more, so check out all the goodies on the January 2014 Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

Artist Rediscovered: Alfonso Iannelli: Modern by Design

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Sculptor and designer Alfonso Iannelli is "known" without being "well known", but that's all about to change.

Born in Italy in 1888, Iannelli's came to Chicago in 1914 to work with Frank Lloyd Wright on Midway Gardens, and he continued to be a major presence in the city for half a century, right through one of his final, and most seen, commissions - the relief of the Rock of Gibraltar on the side of the Prudential Building, completed in 1955.

Iannelli kept trying to make the relief stand out from the building, and in one of his drawings, surrounded The Rock with blue sky.

 That drawing is part of a fascinating small exhibition, Alfonso Iannelli: Modern by Design, which you can see at the Architech Gallery only through December 22nd.  (730 North Franklin, Suite 200 - Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, noon to 5:00 p.m.)

Next year, Iannelli may finally be getting his time in the spotlight.  Sometime in the spring of 2013, gallery owner and Iannelli scholar David Jameson, who acquired most of Iannelli's archive a few years back, is scheduled to publish a new book, also called Alfonso Iannelli: Modern by Design, an exhaustive, lavishly illustrated account of Iannelli's life and work.

Sitting across a desk and looking at a computer screen, I got a preview of the book, and its a stunner.  We've already written about the striking, abstracted posters Iannelli and his wife Margaret created for the vaudeville acts at the Orpheum Theater in Los Angeles.

Jameson has images of nearly all of them, and many more will make their way into the book.  Margaret Iannelli was a talented artist in her own right, and a major collaborator with his husband to the point where its sometimes unclear where one hand left off and the other began.  Committed to a sanatorium after a mental breakdown, she continued to create illustrations and art for her husband's clients.  That story will also be covered in Jameson's book, as will Iannelli's troubled relationship with Wright, which soured after  FLW claimed all the credit for Iannelli's Midway Garden sprites.

There's also a section on the spectacular sculptures Iannelli created for Purcell and Elmslie's Woodbury County Courthouse in Sioux City, Iowa.  There's the Pickwick in Park Ridge, and his work with Barry Byrne, including the Kenna Apartments in South Shore.

I think you get the picture.  Alfonso Iannelli: Modern by Design looks to be one of the must-have books of 2013.  When he hear of an official release date, we'll be sure to let you.  For now, check out the show at Architech, only through this weekend, closing December 22nd.

Last week for Looking After Louis Sullivan, plus a fish tricycle - exhibitions return to Repeat

We've put back the listing of current exhibitions and moved it to the Repeat Calendar.  Here's a quick overview.

This is the last week to catch the Art Institute's exhibition, Looking after Louis Sullivan: Photographs, Drawings and Fragments, centered on the photographs of Adler & Sullivan's

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architecture that range from striking to stunning.  Included is work from Aaron Siskind and the iconic Richard Nickel, but what blew me away was the work of John Szarkowski, which had a way of moving the architecture past the realm of abstraction to capture the intersection of the buildings and the passage of day-to-day life through and around them. Sunday, December 12th is the last day for this show, and it's definitely worth catching.

The good news is that its companion show, Tim Samuelson and Chris Ware's Louis Sullivan's Idea, at the Chicago Cultural Center, has actually been extended, through May

2nd of next year.  But don't wait.  As I've written before, it's a don't-miss-it show, beautifully designed and mounted, an epic journey of the life and work of one of America's greatest architects.  I've heard one visitor comment they found the layout confusing, but it really is pretty chronological: the earliest years as you enter, and at the far end, the final ones, ending on a very sad and diminished note - the last designs of a facade, a stove mat and a Christmas card, the final days in a tiny room at the Warner Hotel, even a pack of the bargain brand Home Run cigarettes that a friend would buy Sullivan when the architect didn't have the money to get them himself.  It's a downer, for sure, but then to exit you have to retrace your steps, past all the brilliant designs from the peak of his career, and you leave not disheartened by how it ended but exhilarated by Sullivan's stunning achievements and indomitable spirit.

Elsewhere, the MCA has Urban China: Informal Cities, an idea-packed retrospective of China's only publication devoted to the issues of urbanism, and the Chicago Tourism Center Gallery on Randolph across the Cultural Center has History Coming Home, revealing "public policies, oral histories, and artifacts from public housing from Chicago to Boston and New Orleans to Sacramento . . . including a 1950's-style public housing apartment that visitors can walk through."

The above drawing, a "Design for a child's tricycle" by R.G. Martelet, really hasn't anything to do with the ArchiTech Gallery's current show, The House:

Drawings for Residential Architecture, but it's so redolent of a holiday spirit where the gift giving transcends consumerism to the realm of actual delight that I wanted to pass it on.  (It can be yours for $250.00, and there are other drawings of Martelet's vehicle designs from that price up to $1,200).   Running through December 25, The House features drawings, blueprints and sketches from designers Barry Byrne and Alfonso Iannelli, D.H. Burnham & Co.,  Richard Neutra, Frank Gehry and many others. 

At the Chicago Architecture Foundation, the popular Chicago Model City, featuring a spectacular model of Chicago's center city, continues,  with a second exhibition, Neighborhoods Go Green! Scaling up Sustainability on display in the Lecture Hall.

Opening this week: Hyperlinks: Architecture and Design at the Art Institution, which "presents more than 30 projects that span from architecture and furniture to multimedia and conceptual design from an international group of architects and designers . . . Not always intended as ends in themselves, these multidisciplinary practices are often experiments that motivate reflection on the values, mores, and practices often overlooked in society."

Check out the full December calendar - now with Exhibitions! - here.