Lambert and Arets, Plensa and Kreloff, Enquist, Bannos, Achilles, Sarah Morris and More - it's the November Calendar! (endangered species?)

You may have noticed, the November Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events was a bit late this month.  Like eight days late.   Can you imagine how many people were writing me asking where it was?

Would you believe . . . one?

I'm coming to the conclusion that the monthly calendar is an idea whose time has gone.  Readership is not large.  Throughout all the days of  a given month, there are fewer cumulative pageviews for the calendar than for a single average post.  It often seems the only people reading the calendar are the those who are on it.  Since I'm now back to a regular 9 to 5 job, my side hours are limited, and I'm thinking they might be better spent on other projects.  So, as with the printed version of The Onion but a whole less funnier, December may see the final version of the monthly architectural calendar.   If you have any thoughts on the matter, pass 'em on

On a cheerier note, as always, there's no small number of great events still to come in November.  This Thursday, Phyllis Lambert will be in conversation with Wiel Arets at Crown Hall and signing copies of her book, Building Seagram.  Also this week, Carlo Caldini is at the Graham on Tuesday, and Jon B. DeVries and D. Bradford Hunt will discuss their new book, Planning Chicago: How Did We Get Here? and why planners always seem to incorporate an initial somewhere in their name, noontime at AIA Chicago on Wednesday, the same afternoon the Chicago Architecture Foundation has their annual Patron of the Year luncheon at the Palmer House, and SOM's Phil Enquist  discusses the Great Cities, Great Lakes, Great Basin initiative lunchtime at CAF, where it's the subject of a just-opened exhibition of the same name..  DeVries and Hunt will also be putting in a appearance at Open Books on Institute Place Monday the 18th.

More? How about Pamela Bannos talking about 1836 through the Chicago Fire at the MCA on Saturday the 16th, where filmmaker Sarah Morris has a preview screening and talk on Tuesday, the 19th, the same day David Wilts of Arup discusses The Smarter Building:  What It is - and Why Bother noontime at AIA/Chicago, and Rolf Achilles talks about his book, The Chicago School of Architecture- Building the Modern City, 1880-1910, at the Glessner House Museum..  The Chicago Midwest Chapter of the Institute of Classical Architecture and Art gives out its First Annual Acanthus Awards at the Elks National Memorial, also on Saturday the 16th.

On Wednesday the 20th Jaume Plensa is in conversation with Reed

Kroloff at MCA, and on Thursday the 21st, Jean Guarino discusses Construction, Demolition and the Remaking of LaSalle Street for Friends of Downtown at the Cultural Center, and designer Lloyd Natof is at Unity Temple in Oak Park.

Catch it while you can.  Check out all the great items on the November Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

Enquist at IIT, Rojo at UIC, Chattel at SAIC - still more for February!

Seriously, is it ever too late to be adding items to the February Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events?

The architecture schools at both IIT and UIC have announced their Spring lecture series.  IIT begins at Crown Hall this Wednesday, February 20th, with SOM planning guru Phil Enquist talking about The Century of Cities, while over at UIC on Monday the 25th, there's a lecture by Luis Rojo of Rojo/Fernandez-Shaw arquitectos of Madrid.  And over at SAIC, preservation consultant Robert Chattel talks about The Atomic Wild Wild West on Thursday, the 28th.  On Saturday, the 23rd, the Hyde Park Historical Society will award this year's Marian and Leon Depres Preservation Awards at their annual dinner, with Chicago Cultural Historian Tim Samuelson as featured speaker.

This coming week is loaded with great stuff, from Martino Gamper at the Art Institute's Fullerton Auditorium for SAIC on Monday, the 18th, and a special panel discussion: Food! - Design for Social Change at CAF the evening of Tuesday of February 19th, including but not limited to John Cary, John Edel, Robin Elmslie Osler and Fritz Haeg, who also lectures at the Graham on the 28th.

On Wednesday, the 20th, Tom Jacobs of Krueck and Sexton talks about Glass Engineering in Architecture at CAF lunchtime, while on Thursday the 21st, Gensler's Elva Rubio discusses the Ghost Facade at 618 S. Michigan for Landmarks Illinois at the Cultural Center.  Thursday evening is also the last curator's gallery talk by Karen Kice for the Art Institute's exhibition Building: Inside Studio Architects, which closes on the 24th.  Then on Saturday, the 23rd, CAF has Family Studio Saturday; Building and Testing, a National Engineers Week event for teens.

And there's a lot more.  Check out the nearly three dozen great items still to come on the February Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

Adler & Sullivan at Charnley House, The Fountainhead and John Lautner at the Block, Grant Park plans unveiled, Jarzombek, Woltz and more: new additions to the November calendar,

We've just added some big items to the November calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

Tonight, Friday, Evanston's Block Museum screens King Vidor's The Fountainhead with Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal, part of their series, The American Architect in Focus, which will also include Infinite Space: The Architecture of John Lautner next Thursday, the 18th.

Tomorrow, Saturday, November 13th, at Sullivan and Wright's Charnley-Persky House on north Astor, John Vinci and Ward Miller will be signing copies of their spectacular, must-have book, The Complete Architecture of Adler & Sullivan.  Reserve ahead to make sure there's a copy for you to buy.

The other big event is this coming Wednesday, November 17th's unveiling of Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates' concept plans for the Grant Park Renovation Project, which will include the presentation of a large-scale model and images.  I'm taking my mom to see The Lion King that night, so I wont be able to attend, but if any of you do, please let me know where the model's winding up and give me a report of your impressions.

Monday, the 15th, MIT's Mark Jarzombek lectures at the School of Architecture at UIC, and back on Wednesday the 17th, it's another logjam night, with not only Grant Park Renovation, but  ULI Chicago offering up a panel on Real Estate Forecast 2011 at the Hyatt Regency.  That same evening, AIA Chicago and the Consulate General of Sweden Chicago will be presenting two panels on From Brownfield to Urban Oasis, talking about post-industrial plans for Chicago's South Works site.  The panels will include SOM's Phil Enquist, the Chicago Department of Environment's Dave Graham, Gunnar Söderholm, Head of the Environment in the City of Stockholm, and a host of others from both the U.S. and Sweden.

Then on Friday, the 19th, the Harry Chaddick Institute of DePaul will be presenting a panel, Reinventing Community: Branding, Rebranding and Economic Development, moderated by Urbanophile's Aaron Renn, with a keynote by Claudia Sieb giving a national perspective on branding, and Carl Wohlt offering up "cutting edge techniques being used to brand local communities."

I don't think it's really what Renn, Sieb and Wohlt have in mind, but lately in Chicago, branding seems most lately to have devolved into trying to sell off naming rights for everything from L stops to fire hydrants to anyone willing to kick a few bucks into our depleted civic coffers.  Can we get alderman to pay for their own salaries by having GoldenPalace.com tattooed on their own foreheads?  Can we train our pigeons to choreograph themselves in Busby Berkeley-like formations to promote Birdbgone?  And really, why have we let them call it the Viagra Triangle all these years without shaking down Pfizer for some really big bucks?  But I digress.

On Monday, November 22nd, landscape architect Thomas L. Woltz will be lecturing at Crown Hall, IIT. And Wednesday through Friday, the 17th through 19th, the Greenbuild 2010 International Conference and Expo will be taking over McCormick Place

There are over two dozen great events still to come in November.  Get the details on all of them here.