Creative Placemaking, 5 Big Ideas, North Grant Park Revised, plus Lifson on Prentice, Uhlir on Netsch, Aquilino, Doug Reed - lots more for February

Yeah, I know - I thought we'd be done by now, too, but I was wrong.  We've just added several great new items to the February Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

This Thursday, the 23rd, in the Millennium Room on the 5th floor of the Chicago Cultural Center, the Great Cities Institute is sponsoring Creative Placemaking: How, Why, Outcomes, presenting the results of a national scan of successful creative placemaking efforts. On Tuesday the 28th at the Chicago Hilton and Towers, the Local Initiatives Support Corporation Chicago will present Building the 21st Century City: 18th annual Chicago Neighborhood Development Awards, with Rahm Emanuel scheduled as keynote speaker, and an afternoon forum 5 Big Ideas for the 21st Century City.  And on Wednesday the 29th, at the Daley Bicentennial Fieldhouse, the Grant Park Advisory Council will both be electing officers (who knew?) and presenting the latest revisions from Michael van Valkenburgh for the North Grant Park Renovation Project.

From Edward Lifson discussing Those Mysterious Curves of Bertrand Goldberg's endangered Prentice Hospital at Häfele on the 23rd, to moderating a session of CAF's Chicago Debates - Beating the Odds: Designing a Casino for Chicago on the 28th, to Roman Catholic Art and Architecture and VOA's Roosevelt Tower, Marie Aquilino at the Graham, and Doug Reed at Crown Hall, all this Wednesday the 22nd,  

Rebecca Graff on Urban Archeology at Charnley-Persky, and a lecture and booksigning for Barbara Lanctot's A Walk Through Graceland Cemetery at Glessner House, all on Thursday the 23rd, Merritt Bucholz at IIT on the 27th, and the Structural Engineers Association of Illinois all-day seminar on Wind Loading and Wind Engineering on Tuesday, the 28th, and a Wednesday, the 29th crammed with Connecting Digital and Physical Space at DePaul, Randolph Tower at CAF, Ed Uhlir on The Legacy of Walter Netsch at the Cliff Dwellers, and a Pocket Guide to Hell at Gallery 400 . .  .

There are still over two dozen great items to check out on the February Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

new for February: Oganwu, How Much Does it Cost?, Navy Pier, Cultural Plan and more

Never too late to add to the February Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.  IIT has added two lunchtime events for the lower core of Crown Hall for this week.  Monday, the 13th, Ifeanyi Oganwu of Expand Design will be discussing New Work, and on Tuesday, the 14th, Nancy Clark Brown of Autodesk education will be discussing how students and faculty are contributing  to the development of her company's product.

Elsewhere this week, the big event, Stanley Tigerman's lecture Displacement at the Graham on Wednesday the 15th is wait listed, but there's also a program of short films, All Tomorrow's Cities at Gallery 400 Monday the 13th, AIA/Chicago has The Role of Designers in Post-Disaster Scenarios, specifically Talca, Chile, lunchtime on Tuesday the 14th, Tom Lassin of Holabird and Root discusses their renovation of the Monroe Building at CAF lunchtime on Wednesday the 15th, and on Thursday 15th, Richard Sklenar of the Theatre Historical Society lectures at the Chicago Cultural Center, for Landmarks Illinois.  And this coming Sunday, February 19th, Chicagoland Engineers Week kicks off with Explore Engineering, an all-day events for kids 5 to 13 and students 14 to 18, at CAF.

Check out all the, conservatively estimated, billions of event still to come on the February 2012 Chicago Architectural Calendar.

On the exhibition front . . .

Architectural Drawing: From Europe at America, continues at the ArchiTech Gallery, 

. . . and we've added two new shows at the Chicago Architecture Foundation.  

Friday the 17th is the official opening day for Loop Value: The HOW MUCH DOES IT COST? Shop.

In a nation obsessed with acquiring the most stuff at the lowest price, how well do we understand the value of the buildings and products we buy? How do our purchases impact the future of our neighborhoods? Visit Loop Value: The How Much Does It Cost? Shop at the Chicago Architecture Foundation and find a new design for your city and your life. It's a shopping trip unlike any you've experienced before.

Also at CAF through mid-May are the proposals of the five finalists to the Navy Pier Competition, on display through mid-May.

There are satellite exhibitions of the finalist proposals at public libraries throughout Chicago, as listed on the Navy Pier Centennial Vision website.  On this on-line resource, you can look at the the various designs within the site, and download the complete presentations of each of the five finalists, as well as view the videos they created, and videos of the presentations made by the teams at the Museum of Contemporary Art earlier this year.  This is an absolutely top-notch website, setting a great example of how such a project should be presented on the web.  Check it out here.

There's also a great new website for the 2012 Chicago Cultural Plan . .  .

The Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) is asking residents, cultural organizations and community groups for their input in developing the 2012 Chicago Cultural Plan.  The plan will deliver a set of recommendations to support the arts and artists throughout the city, as well as enhance economic growth and Chicago’s reputation as a global cultural destination.  The last cultural plan was developed in 1986 under Mayor Harold Washington.  Since that time, advancements have been made in many areas leading to greater involvement from vested interests.  Ideas that sprang from that plan include the renovation of Navy Pier, the redeveloped Theater Row in Chicago’s “Loop” and the creation of incentives for film projects.

The website is tied into an aggressive social media presence on Twitter, Facebook and elsewhere.  Four town hall meetings are being held to get public input on the plan:

• Wednesday, February 15:  Columbia College from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
•  Thursday, February 16:  Nicholas Senn High School from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
•  Saturday, February 18:  DuSable Museum from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
•  Tuesday, February 21:  National Museum of Mexican Art from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.

Check out DCASE's Cultural Plan Initiative website here.

Tigerman's rêverie, CAF's Casino, Uhlir's Netsch, Yolande Daniels,Ragdale, the Monroe, Roosevelt's Vertical Dorm, and more - it's the February calendar!

 OK, I'm sure I'm going to find more stuff to add, but even now, we've got nearly 40 great items on the February 2012 of Chicago Architectural Events.

Today, Thursday the 2nd, there's a discussion of the new Target at Louis Sullivan's former Carson Pirie Scott store for Friends of Downtown at the Cultural Center, and the opening reception for the new Stanley Tigerman exhibition, Ceci n’est pas une rêverie, at the Graham, where Tigerman, himself delivers a lecture, Displacement, on Wednesday the 15th.

Monday, the 6th, Studio SUMO's Yolande Daniels is at the Art Institute, on the 7th Emmanuel Pratt is at the Cultural Center for Archeworks.  There's a program of short films, All Tomorrow's Cities, at Gallery 400 on Monday the 13th, while the 15th, Tom Lassin of Holabird and Root talks about his firm's recent renovation of the historic Monroe Building, lunchtime at CAF,  where the next Wednesday the 22nd, Christopher of Groesbec of VOA discusses the new Roosevelt Vertical Dorm.  On Tuesday the 28th, CAF is offering up the latest edition of its Chicago Debates - Beating the Odds: Designing a Casino for Chicago - Lakeside Resort or Bling Bingo in a Box - at the Chicago Theater, with an all-star panel including the Reader's Toni Preckwinkle, Mick Dumke, plus Jerry Roper, Dennis Judd, John Norquist, Kimbal Goluska and moderator Edward Lifson.

February closes on Wednesday the 29th, with the inaugural event in a new Walter Netsch Lecture Series 2012 sponsored by Friends of the Parks with Millennium Park Executive Director Ed Uhlir discussing The Legacy of Walter Netsch.

And this week is the last chance to catch the don't-miss exhibition Bertrand Goldberg:Reflections at the Arts Club of Chicago.  February 8th is the final day.

We've only scratched the surface.  Check out all the great items on the February 2012 Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.