SEAOI Announces the 2005 Excellence in Structural Engineering Awards

In a belated note, the Structural Engineers Association of Illinois announced its 2005 Excellence in Structural Engineering Awards during its June awards banquet aboard the cruise ship Odyssey. Best Large Structure went to OWP/P for the Ratner Athletics Center, designed by Cesar Pelli on the University of Chicago campus. Best Small Structure was won by Baldridge & Associates for the BASE Hanger System constructed in Oaha, Hawaii, while the Most Innovative Award went to Magnusson Klemencic Associates for Rem Koolhaas's new Seattle Public Library.

For a full list of awards see the text of the SEAOI press release, which is included in the first comment to this thread.

Monument Mori

Architect John Ronan proposes to transform Chicago's abandoned 2,500,000 square-foot post office into the largest municipal mausoleum on the face of the earth. Is it grand vision or high theater? And is the modern civic psyche too fragile to tolerate such a presence?

Read the article here:

Originally published in the Chicago Reader, June 10, 2005

Planning and its Disconnects

Chicago is experiencing its biggest building boom since the 1920's - some splendid, a lot not. Millennium Park - a big plus; the condo towers in River North - a festival of banality. Nothing gets built in Chicago without city oversight and support. What makes the difference between triumph and disgrace, and what's planning - and the leering bug picture to the right - got to do with it?

Read the article here:

(Originally published under the title "Can Planning be a means to better architecture?" in the Harvard Design Magazine, Spring/Summer, 2005 as part of a special issue on Urban Planning Now - What Works, What Doesn't?)

Note to attorneys

just kidding