CAF's River tonight, Bruce Goff's Ford House tour, plus architects' waterCOLOR, Sun-Times photographers See What You Missed - more for July.

There are so many great architectural tours around, from the Chicago Architecture Foundation and others, that we usually don't include them, but one this Saturday has just made the July Calendar of Chicago Architecture Events.

This Saturday, July 13th, the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy is sponsored a tour of 's Ford House in Aurora, with owner Sidney Robinson on hand to talk about his home and answer questions.  Tickets are $20.00 for members; $35.00 non-members, and there's a special deal for $10.00 tickets to Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House just down the road in Plano.

Bruce Goff

Elsewhere, Spontaneous Interventions, the great show at the Chicago Cultural Center, has added a number of related events, including a Tuesday July 16th panel, Design for the Just City: Neighborhoods and Community Participation, with Marshall Brown, Andre Brumfield, Daniel D'Oca, Liz Ogbu and Terry Schwartz, with Toni Griffin moderating. Then on Friday the 19th, there'll be a debate at the Theaster Gate's new Washington Park Arts Incubator with Steve Rasmusen Cancian, Cauleen Smith and others TBA on the topic of Do artists and designers contribute to gentrification? What Can We Do About It?

Today, Thursday the 11th, is logjam day on this month's calendar, with John Eifler talking about Wright's Search for Innovation in Design at Fourth Presbyterian's Gratz Center at lunchtime, an an evening panel discussion at CAF, A River Runs Through It: Developing and Designing Chicago's Second Shoreline, with Doug Farr, Benet Haller and others, while at the Music Institute of Chicago, there's be another panel with Stuart Cohen, Jack Weiss, Heidi Hoppe, Kris Hartzell and Laura Saviano on Evanston Architecture, Urbanism and Landscape Design: 1880 to 2012, in conjunction with the new book, Evanston: 150 years, 150 Places.

On Thursday alone, there are half a dozen great items, and no fewer than 30 dates still to come this month.  Check them all out on the July Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

And a couple of off-calendar items . . .

waterCOLOR skyScape. This Sunday, July 14th, 1:00 to 3:00 p.m., will mark the opening of an exhibition of works by everyOther, “a bi-weekly watercolor group founded in the Spring of 2011 by Phil Enquist, Peter Landon and Cynthia Winter.”  The reception takes place at the historic Brushwood

home in Ryerson Woods forest preserve in north suburban Riverwoods.

En plein air painting is the focus of this group of Chicago architects, artists and designers . . . They have painted at Ryerson Woods, the Lily Pond, Lurie Garden, Kiley Garden, Ping Tom Park, Goose Island, Olive Park and inside the Lincoln Park Conservatory on a rainy day; they sketch river bridges, concrete edifices, steel and glass towers, old limestone, local brick, snowshadows, piers, prairie grass, lakebirds, and sky. 

The exhibition runs through August 30th. More information here. 

See What You Missed.

Keep In Flight-Rainbow, John H. White.

Also at the exact same date and time - Sunday, July 14th, 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. - there will an opening reception for See What You Missed, an exhibition of the work of Sun-Times photojournalists,  whose department was eliminated and all the staff fired by the paper at the end of May.    The show, curated by former Tribune photographers Charles Osgood and José Moré, features the work Pulitizer-Prize winner John H. White and his colleagues, and runs through July 28th at the Chicago Photography Center, 3301 North Lincoln.  Information here.