Chicagoisms, Dyja, Szot, Baker, Carson, Krueck iandSexton, Kwinter, Manferdini, Metter, Tham and Videgard, Kamin, Enquist, Johnson and much more - it's (finally) The April Calendar

It's the third of the month, so it must be time for the April Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

We have another jam-packed month.  Over the next week. there's a discussion on Jane's Walk for Friends of Downtown lunchtime today,  Bolle Tham and Martin Videgård at Crown Hall, IIT on Friday, and on Saturday afternoon at the Graham, editor Alexander Eisenschmidt will lead a panel including Penelope Dean, Ellen Grimes, Sam Jacob, Mark Linder and Jonathan Mekinda marking the publication of Chicagoisms: The City as Catalyst for Architectural Speculation, which is both a book (available for purchase), and a new exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Next Tuesday lunchtime at the Cultural Center, Thomas Dyja, author of The Third Coast: When

Chicago Built the American Dream, will discuss The Battle for the Mecca, inside the must-see exhibition Mecca Flat Blues.  Tuesday evening at the Chicago Architecture Foundation, Metropolis editor Susan S. Szenasy will be in conversation with  Bill Baker on the Well-Oiled Machine of SOM Chicago Structural Group, while architect John Szot talks and offers up the premiere of the third and last part of his video project, Architecture and the Unspeakable, for MAS Context at the Logan Share.

Architecture and the Unspeakable 3 - TEASER by brooklynfoundry

Next Wednesday, Lisa Napoles discusses The Unrepentant Revivalist: William Carbys Zimmerman

at CAF lunchtime, where in the evening the Trib's Blair Kamin will lead a panel including SOM's Phil Enquist and Silas Chiow, Ralph Johnson of Perkins+Will and Jonathan Solomon of Syracuse University on the topic of Kamin's recent Tribune series, Designed in Chicago, Made in China.

And that's just the next week, and not everything at that.  Coming up later this month.

Architects, designers and thinkers:
David Carson, Ron Krueck and Mark Sexton, Sanford Kwinter, Elena Manferdini, Andrew Metter, Ernest C. Wong, Wright and His Assistants, Louis Sullivan and John Edelmann

Topics: 
How Paris Became Paris: The Invention of a Modern City; the GSA rehab

on State Street; Tracking the Lost Treasures of the Auditorium; First American Skyscrapers: Chicago and New York; Chicago's Historic Hyde Park

Seminars: 
Designing the Classical Interior, 11th Annual Midwest Bridge Symposium

This are just some of the highlights.  To learn the who, what, when and where on nearly 50 great items, check out the April Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

Dimming the Sharpness of Vision: Fereshteh Toosi Tuesday evening at Access Living

Archeworks is sponsoring what looks to be a fascinating lecture by Montreal's Fereshteh Toosi, Dimming the Sharpness of Vision, 6:00 p.m. Tuesday, July 24th at Access Living, 115 West Chicago, 4th floor community room.  RSVP here.

What has inspired architects, artists, and designers to integrate odor, touch, sound, and flavor in their work? Grounding her inquiry in an understanding of ocularcentricity in Western thought, Fereshteh will present a basic overview of sensory studies -- an interdisciplinary field that begins with an anthropology of the senses as it intersects with aesthetics and phenomenology. The audience will learn about Fereshteh's projects and other productions that emphasize multisensory experience: surround sound, "smell-o-vision", immersive 3D, floating isolation tanks, the Tactile Dome at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, "flavor tripping" parties, Snoezelen sensory therapy for autism, and business workshops that take place in total darkness.

Puts me in mind of Ron Krueck's idea for a Sensescape museum for Northerly Island.

There's so much more to how architecture affects us than what we perceive through the single sense of sight.  End Ocular Oppression!  (I'm thinking of having T-shirts made.)