As he receives a Lifetime Achievement Award from AIA Chicago, A Stanley Tigerman Miscellany

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A Confession: I've been working on a piece on Stanley Tigerman's Illinois Holocaust Museum ever since it opened ever since it opened over three years ago.  I've been grappling with it ever since, so, for the moment, all I can give you this very informal photo essay on just some of the buildings from his very long career.

This evening, Friday, October 25, Stanley Tigerman will be honored by AIA Chicago with it's Lifetime Achievement Award.  You can read an interview with Tigerman by AIA Chicago's Peter Exley here, or watch last night's interview with WTTW's Geoffrey Baer below.
When I wrote my first article for the The Chicago Reader over ten years ago, it was about the dismal current state of architecture in the city.  My editor Kiki Yablon suggested I get in touch with Tigerman for some input, and although he didn't know me from Adam, he still was incredibly patient and gracious, as he's been in every one of our encounters ever since.  I asked him for some up-and-coming architects we should be watching.  One he mentioned, Darryl Crosby, is a very talented architect we haven't heard enough from.  The second was David Woodhouse,  The third was Jeanne Gang, then largely an unknown.

It just goes to show you how, across six decades, Stanley Tigerman has not just hand his finger on the pulse on Chicago architecture.  He's helped define it, not only through his iconoclastic, often witty buildings, but through his acerbic, pinpoint criticism, and his never flagging activism for architectural education and social justice through the built environment.  If Stanley Tigerman didn't exist, no one could ever have figured out how to create someone like him.  We're all the richer for his enduring presence.

Read more:

The Architect as Zelig:  Tigerman's Ceci n'est pas une reverie

 

 

 

 

 

 

Exley discusses architectureisfun at AIA Chicago tonight - still more for August

Remember when we told you we were adding the last new event to the August Calendar of Chicago

Architectural Events?  We lied.  Tonight Peter Exley discusses the work of his firm, architectureisfun, at AIA Chicago, and we'll be adding more events tomorrow.

Oh, uh, Just One More Thing: Arup's Mahadev Raman discusses The Design of Carbon Neutral Buildings at AIA Chicago August 21

No, it's not a Columbo gotcha, but what will (probably) be our last addition to the August Calendar

of Chicago Architectural Events (still nearly two dozen items to come).  It's a free lecture by Arup America Chairman Mahadev Ramen, at AIA/Chicago the morning of August 21.  Free light breakfast, check it out here.

Yes, Virginia, there will be a 2013 - the January Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events: Gang, Kearns, Guen, Vivian Maier and more!

Yes, we survived 2012 and now live to tell the tale of the January 2013 Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

The year starts out this Thursday, with Friends of Downtown asking What Do You Love or Hate About Downtown Chicago?, at the Cultural Center.  Then things really start getting in gear the following week, with Michael Williams and Richard Cahan, publishers of Vivian Maier: Out of the Shadows at the MCA on Tuesday the 8th, and a discussion of Historic Preservation lunchtime Wednesday the 9th at CAF.

As part of the one of largest preservation projects currently underway, Randolph (Steuben Club) Tower Terra Cotta Restoration will be discussed at a Landmarks Illinois lunchtime lecture at the Cultural Center, Thursday, the 17th.

The don't-miss exhibition Building: Inside Studio Gang Architects continues at the Art Institute, where curator Karen Kice will be offering a gallery talk lunchtime on Tuesday the 15th, and Jeanne Gang, herself, talking about her firm's recent projects in Fullerton Hall on Thursday, the 17th.

Several organizations demonstrate that the holiday party refuses to go gentle into the new year, with Architecture for Humanity/Chicago offering up its Holiday Hangover 2013 party at the DIRTT Showroom on Friday the 11th, while lunchtime Wednesday the 23rd at CAF, Co-Director Katherine Darnstadt talks about AFH/Chicago's local projects.

AIA Chicago offers Larry Kearns and Neil Sheehan talk about the Facebook Data Center and Inspiration Kitchen on Tuesday the 15th, and CAF offers Terry Guen lunchtime on Wednesday the 16th.  At it's January 24th breakfast panel, the Urban Land Institute Chicago considers Chicago: The Next Technology Hub?  As of this writing, there are still tickets available for CAF's Sunday, January 27th behind-the-scenes tour of Rafael Viñoly Architects new Center for Care and Discovery at the University of Chicago.

But wait: there's more!  And I'm sure we'll be adding as hangovers subside and people start firing up the mimeographs again - we're still waiting for the Plan and Community Development Commissions to post their meeting schedule for the New Year.  Already, however, there are already nearly three dozen great items, so check it all out on the January 2013 Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

Doug Farr accepts AIA/Chicago's Firm of the Year Award

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Last night at the Revolution Brewery on North Kedzie, AIA/Chicago gave out its recognition awards, and I'd to again express my thanks for receiving a 2012 Distinguished Service award, as it was the first - and probably last - time the words "Distinguished" and "Lynn Becker" will ever appear contiguously.

Matt Dumich of Valerio Dewalt Train received the Dubin Family Young Architect Award, Paul Knight of Domus PLUS and Vincent Paglione of UIC received Distinguished Service Awards, and Farr Associates was named Firm of the Year.

You see watch below, in my patented jittery, out-of-focus video style, Doug Farr's exuberant acceptance speech . . .

Even it its Death Throes, Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital inspires Brilliance as Future Prentice Competition winners are announced

First Prize Winner, Future Prentice competition (click images for larger view

At a sold-out event at the Chicago Architecture Foundation last night, the announcement of the winners in the Chicago Architectural Club's 2012 Chicago Prize Future Prentice competition marked the opening of an exhibition, handsomely mounted by CAF's Kate Keleman, of the issues surrounding the battle to save Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital, Reconsidering an Icon: Creative Conversations About Prentice Women's Hospital.  Competition winners are on display, and you can also view all of the entries, both at CAF, and on-line, here.

Demolished Additions, Second Prize winner by Noel Turgeon and Natalya Egon

From the time I've been able to spend with the submissions so far, I can say that the entries are of an extraordinarily high quality, balancing both the deeply researched and the extremely creative, often in the same concept.

Chicago Architectural Club Co-Presidents
Brian Strawn and Karla Sierralta

In addition to ten invited participants, the competition received 71 entries from 13 countries.  In addition to the CAC and CAF, the exhibition was co-sponsored by Chicago Bauhaus and Beyond. and AIA Chicago, whose Executive Vice President (and competition juror) Zurich Esposito announced the winners, which included an Honorary Mention, First, Second and Third prizes.

Juror Martin Felsen talked about what motivated the eight-member jury in selecting the competition's winners . . .

We met after Mayor Emanuel gave the big thumbs down for the survival of Prentice.  So that really affected our thinking, our mood, and how we judged the winners.

Martin Felsen

Innovation really had to be at the core of the ideas.  Practical solutions, while greatly appreciated - and awarded prizes in certain cases - were in a sense secondary to the idea that there's a kind of disciplinary innovation that had to be pushed ahead, and that was a direct result of the decision that was rendered by the Mayor.   We went away from saving Prentice, in a sense, to around it - ideas in general. The jury also discussed how these proposals could add real value to the health care sector in terms of innovation.

A big conversation - maybe the biggest conversation - was around the idea of a master plan and how a master plan maybe could have solved this whole problem in the first place.  Several of the proposals we see up here tried to repurpose Prentice as the heart of the Northwestern campus, highly connected between all of the different buildings and spaces in the neighborhood.  And on a more practical level, we just thought that a master plan that thought about the building itself, not as something to tear down or replace, but as something at the center of the campus, could have given a whole new meaning and function to the building as a place that the community could be centered on.

The First Prize winner, whose name draws on the work of word artist Robert Montgomery, was The Buildings are Sleeping, You Should Go and Wake Them Up, She Says, by designers Cyril Marsollier and Wallo Villacota.  Their proposal saves the foremost half of Goldberg's concrete cloverleaf, and builds Northwestern's new Research Lab behind it, in a way that the surviving half of old Prentice becomes whole when reflected in the glass curtain wall of the new structure behind.

badly shot video alert

Marsollier talked about the entry . . .

I think we really approached this project from a very pragmatic way.  I think we felt tied to the situation of losing Prentice.  That idea was frustrating in some ways, and so we really wanted to approach this project in a way that was a very real solution in our heads of how we can deal with this problem, as well as preserving the iconic imagery of the building.  Even walking by it how, it's extremely powerful, so I think that was  key to the whole project.

The new building is intersecting the existing structure halfway through and there's this reflecting facade that reflects the entire building.  The new building functions all by it itself, self-sufficient.      At the same time, we were trying to make sure that the existing structure and the new structure would kind of give each other different but shared values.

. . . We wanted to make sure that Northwestern could find its own reasons to keep the building for itself. . . 

Good luck with that.  In an article in Architectural Record,  spokesman Al Cubbage told reporter Fred A. Bernstein that Northwestern refuses to even look at the proposals.  With Mayor Rahm Emanuel safely stuffed in their back pocket, and all but one of the members of the Landmarks Commission little more than puppets to Emanuel's machinations, the courts are the only remaining check on Northwestern's arrogance and power.  Yesterday, Circuit Court Judge Neil Cohen issued a temporary stay of the Landmark Commission's revocation of the preliminary landmark designation it had unanimously granted Prentice less than two hours before.  The next hearing is scheduled for December 7th.

You can see all the winning entries on the CAC's website here.  Reconsidering an Icon: Creative Conversations About Prentice Women's Hospital is currently running in the Lecture Hall of the Chicago Architecture Foundation, 224 South Michigan.  Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital - the actual building - is running at its original site, 325 West Huron, at least through December 7.  Extensions are uncertain; see it while you can.

Future Prentice: ideas for saving endangered Bertrand Goldberg building subject of Chicago Architectural Club's 2012 Chicago Prize competition

Northwestern wants to destroy Bertrand Goldberg's iconic Prentice Hospital Building.  They say there's no other way.

The Chicago Architectural Club begs to differ.  Partnering with the American Institute of Architects/Chicago, it's made the structure the focus of FUTURE PRENTICE, it's 2012 Chicago Prize Competition . . .

. . . an international, single-stage ideas competition open to anyone with a vision of what the former Prentice Women’s Hospital could become: students, architects, landscape architects, planners, designers, artists and concerned citizens alike.

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The FUTURE PRENTICE Competition seeks to explore alternative solutions for this historic piece of architecture. What would you propose to do with this structure? What other uses are possible? How would you re-envision this iconic building? How can a building that changed the course of modern hospital design and structural engineering be re-used for the future? What new business models for healthcare, eduction and research would you propose to bring continued economic prosperity to an urban neighborhood defined by an interconnected hospital and university campus.

The hospital is considered ground-breaking for its cutting-edge architecture and advanced engineering, as well as for what was a progressive design approach to organizing medical wards and services. Prentice Women’s Hospital received international press coverage and an award from Engineering News Record for its innovative tower and open floor-plate layout that eliminated the need for structural support columns. Partially occupied until fall of 2011, the structure has been determined to be in sound condition, but in need of repair.

Today the building is in imminent danger of being torn down by its owner, Northwestern University, but it’s fate ultimately lies in the hands of the city’s administration. A study was commissioned by Landmarks Illinois in 2011 to propose alternative uses for the structure, which is now vacant, as Prentice Women’s Hospital had moved into a new structure less than a block away. The three schemes produced were rejected by Northwestern University as either not needed or too limiting for the university’s research agenda.

Entrants may consider just the actual site of Prentice Hospital, or also use the two-block square site across the street which has remained vacant and chain-linked since Northwestern demolished Schmidt, Garden and Erikson's Lakeside Veterans Hospital four years ago.

First prize is $3,000; second $1,500 and third $750, with up to three honorable mentions.  A QandA sessions closes September 15th, with online submissions due by October 15th.  Winners, "decided by a jury of notable professionals and academics",  are scheduled to be announced in November.

More information on the Architectural Club website here.   You can download the competition brief here.

To Commission on Chicago Landmarks, Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital Still Dead

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The above post has two events for today, Thursday, August 2nd.   The most important thing happening today, however, is what's not happening.
 
 At 12:45 p.m. at City Hall, the agenda of this month's meeting on the Commission on Chicago Landmarks is once again uncontaminated by any acknowledgement of the grave threat to Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital.

Last week the Save Prentice Coalition released a open letter to Mayor Rahm Emanuel signed by an international roster of 60 of the world's most accomplished architects and academics, from Frank Gehry to Jeanne Gang, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, to Dan Wheeler to Dirk Lohan, Ron Krueck and Mark Sexton, to John Ronan, to Donna Robertson and Bob Somol, and more, with signatories from Chicago, to Berlin, to Shanghai.  The letter bears a simple message:  Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital is a building of international importance and it deserves landmark protection to keep Northwestern from its intention of smashing the structure into rubble for still another vacant lot on its sprawling Streeterville campus.

Over a year ago, the Landmarks Commission listed the landmarking of Prentice as a item on its June, 2011 agenda.  On the morning of the meeting, after a who's-who of forces rallied in support of the action, Prentice was removed from the agenda at the request of Northwestern, for what a university spokesman referred to as "further discussion with the city."

The rest is silence.

In fact, the only non-silent party in the Prentice controversy is Northwestern.  Although it has, for four years, left a full block to the south of Prentice a gravel filled empty lot since Lakeside Veterans Hospital was demolished, it has been consistent in its public statements that it intends to destroy Prentice Hospital, no matter what.  As a hospital and as a university, Northwestern is one of Chicago's greatest institutions.  As custodian of one of the largest tracts of land in Streeterville, it is a chronic enabler of architectural mediocrity.  The architecture of the Northwestern Hospital campus veers towards the bland, faceless and dispiriting.  It is not surprising they would want to destroy Goldberg's Prentice.  It will lower the curve.

No, it's only those who we would expect to represent the rest of us who are silent.

The Commission on Chicago Landmarks is silent.

42nd ward alderman Brendan Reilly, who engineered a 60-day demolition moratorium for Prentice in April of 2011, is silent.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel is silent.

The City of Chicago, its departments, and its commissions are not private clubs.  The public has the right to know:  What exactly is being talked about in those "further discussion"(s)? Over these intervening 14 months, how many discussions have taken place?  Have there actually been any?

Or is the strategy to simply ignore Prentice, hoping those pushing to save it will simply tire and disappear, so the bulldozers can be brought in the Meigs Field way, and Prentice Hospital maimed beyond saving when no one is looking?  Or will it be done the Michael Reese Hospital way?  An empty promise to save the original 1907 Schmidt, Garden building while failing to do anything to secure the building from weather or vandals, followed by the city's nearly drowning in its own crocodile tears as it announced the structure had deteriorated so gravely that there was now no alternative to demolition.

If, indeed, Northwestern's strategy was just to wait out the exhaustion of its opponents, it seems a losing bet.  Last week's letter from 60 architects was accompanied by a strong editorial in the Sun-Times in support of preserving Prentice, and an op-ed piece, Save Prentice from the wrecking ball, by AIA Chicago's Zurich Esposito and Landmarks Illinois' Bonnie McDonald, eloquently refuting the Trib's previous endorsement of destroying the building.  Landmarks Illinois has issued a compelling re-use study for the building.

The Save Prentice Coalition isn't tiring out; it's getting smarter and more savvy.  Support for saving Prentice is gaining momentum, and spreading globally.  Mr. Reilly, it's time to tell us where you stand.  Mr. Mayor, it's time to end the official omerta over Prentice.  The public has a right to know what has been going in those closed-door discussions.  And we need to know your vision for the city's future:  Still another vacant lot? Or saving one of Chicago's most significant and distinctive buildings for future generations?

Dancing with Filamentosa: Tristan d'Estree Sterk AIA Chicago's Dubin Young Architect for 2011

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When, at the turn of the 20th century, Louis Sullivan talked about an "organic" architecture, it was largely a poetic conceit.

 Despite their rich ornament, their greenest feature was probably the  windows that opened and closed, which, like the central atriums of the large "donut" office buildings of the same time, allowed for natural lighting and ventilation.

As modern architecture involved at mid-century, even that feature was thrown in the trash bin, replaced by sealed glass boxes with huge floorplates and glazed facades that leaked heat in the winter and sucked up solar gain in the summer, all compensated for by pumping in btu-guzzling air conditioning and forced air in that lost era of "cheap" energy.

Now, energy is anything but cheap, and architects strive towards "zero energy" structures that produce as much as energy as they use.  Are we on the verge of a truly "organic" architecture, where buildings respond to their dynamic environments the same way trees and plants do?

On December 9th, the Chicago chapter of the American Institute of Architects awarded its 2011 Dubin Family Young Architect Award to Tristan d’Estree Sterk, founder of ORAMBRA, The Office for Robotic Architectural Media and The Bureau for Responsive Architecture.


Sterk's investigations address how such a "Responsive Architecture" could reduce energy consumption in all regions of the U.S. by more than 30%.  At a forum sponsored by The Economist, posted to YouTube, Sterk said such an architecture . . .

. . . requires systems that change color, change the color of skins, change the degree of insulation and also change shape.  . . . Color can provide smaller savings, in the order of 2%, permeability or openings and closings can provide around 8%, and shape change of buildings can provide in the order of 25 to 30% . . . shape change builds upon [Buckminster] Fuller's understanding of tensegrity to produce a new structure called an actuated tensegrity structure . . .soft shells that can change color, that can gently change shape, that have an optimized thermal mass, but they're very lightweight.  And all of this is achievable if we take a different view of what architecture might be . . . We're no longer thinking of buildings as static creations that are built of "dumb" material.  These are systems that rely on control, and sensor input, and actuators

Sterk's projects includes a Prairie House: House for A Fashion Pattern Maker and Fiber Artist that was the winner of a 2011 AIA Chicago Design Excellence Award.   And while sculptor Kenneth Snelson, whose pioneering work on tensegrity structures inspired Buckminster Fuller, denied that such structures could scale up to massive size, Sterk created the concept of Filamentosa - ultralight, tensegrity skyscrapers, which ORAMBRA has imaged rising amidst the classic Chicago skyline.

At the end of the YouTube presentation, Sterk shows a video demonstrating the structure's flexibility.  Assuring his audience that the towers wouldn't actually move as radically as in the video, Sterk still added, "If you wanted to dance with a building, this might be one of those buildings."

Wind Bracing and Chicago skyscrapers, Rebuilding Together Metro Chicago today, Children's Memorial and Robert Krawczyk tomorrow - more for April

As the April calendar continues to gestate, we bring you the following:

Today, Tuesday, April 5th, the Ron Klemencic lecture we told you about yesterday is sold out, but there's also a lecture by Thomas Leslie on Built Like Bridges: Wind Bracing and the Chicago Skyscraper at AIA/Chicago, while the same organization's First Tuesdays Happy Hour, at Matilda on Sheffield, takes on ReBuilding Together, Metro/Chicago, "a national program to improve the homes of low income, seniors and disable residents."  Information here.

Tomorrow, April 6th, sees Bruce Komiskie of CMH and Martin Wolf of Solomon Cordwell Buenz discussing the new Children's Memorial Hospital at the lunchtime lecture at the Chicago Architecture Foundation, while Robert Krawcyzk lectures on Spirals, Fractals and Music: The Same Only Different at the McCloskey auditorium of the Campus Center at IIT.

Avant Les Deluge: Mansueto Library (NOW RESCHEDULED) and AIA Happy Hour - two one NO great events today

Follow-up3: Tomorrow's CAF lunchtime lecture with Ward Miller and John Vinci is also being rescheduled. Right now, I would say the safest bet is to just presume everything's been cancelled until the spring thaw.

Follow-up2: Tonight's AIA Chicago Happy Hour has been rescheduled to February 8th, tomorrow's Integrated Home Communication Systems program at AIA Chicago has been postponed.

Follow-up central. Tonight's Mansueto event as been rescheduled.  Don't go to the Cliff Dwellers tonight unless you're a cave man looking to get out of the snow:

Due to weather conditions, we are rescheduling tonight’s dinner meeting to Tuesday, February 15.  It will still be at the Cliff Dwellers Club.  We hope you can still make it and will assume that you will be there unless we hear otherwise from you.

OK, we're behind on the February calendar: what else is new?

So we want to alert you to two events for Tuesday evening, February 1st:

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Mansueto Library - James Swanson and Jonathan Sladek of Halvorsen and Partners will talk about engineering the University of Chicago's new Mansueto Library (which we've written about here, complete with video tour) for this month's dinner meeting of the Structural Engineers Association of Illinois at the Cliff Dwellers. Reservations required.  Info here.

First Tuesday Happy Hour - this month's get-together by the Young Architects Forum of AIA Chicago is at Theory on west Hubbard.  Info here:

sometime during the course of these events, there will be a pounding at the door . . .

So I'm kind of thinking all bets are off for Wednesday, February 2nd, but right now, Ward Miller and John Vinci are scheduled to talk about their amazing new book, The Complete Architecture of Adler and Sullivan at the 12:15 lunchtime lecture at the Chicago Architecture Foundation.  Break out your huskies and stop by. Info here.

Also on Wednesday, the 2nd, there's a second scheduled showing for the documentaries koolhaus houselife and Interview at the Siskel at 6:00 p.m.  info here.

Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen.  Place your bets.

Jens Jensen vs Michael van Valkenburgh: Park Designer Deathmatch! September 29th.

On one level, it's not really a fair fight, since Jens Jensen, though he lived to 91, has actually been been dead since 1951, but Jensen's legacy and idea's remain very much alive, so why not put them up against those of one of the today's most prominent park designers?

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This Thursday, September 23rd,  there will be a 7:00 p.m. screening of a new documentary, Jens Jensen: Harmonious World, at the Garfield Park Conservatory, 300 North Central Park.

Jensen was actually born September 13th in dat ole Dybbøl, Denmark, coming to the United States in 1884, but at 6:00 p.m., on Wednesday, September 29th, there'll be a 150th birthday blowout at the Jensen-designed Humboldt Park Boathouse, 1359 N. Sacramento.  Park District Historian Julia S. Bachrach will lecture on Humboldt Park: Jens Jensen's Living Laboratory, and BauerLatoza prinicipal and Commission on Chicago Landmarks member Edward Torrez will talk on The Boathouse Then and Now, and his firm's Driehaus-award-winning 2002 restoration.

Meanwhile, across town the same evening, also at 6:00 p.m., Michael Van Valkenburgh, who has been chosen to design the renovation of North Grant Park, will kick off the IIT College of Architecture's fall lecture series by discussing Recent Parks and Projects in the Public Realm.

It would have been great to hear these two men square off against each other - where's Dr. Brown's DeLorean when you need it?  - but unless you're able to teleport yourself, you're going to have to chose just one.  Both events are free and open to the public

And a reminder that this Saturday, September 25th is  Preservation Chicago's fall benefit at the spectacularly restored Sears Power House, now Charles H. Shaw Technology Center, including a silent auction for such goodies as 5 days/4 nights at a luxury Californian Tower Home, Power House Photos by Darris Lee Harris, Laura Lombardi Jewelry, and an original negative of a Richard Nickel photo of ornament from Louis Sullivan's Carson Pirie Scott building.

These events are among two dozen still to come in the last nine days of this month.  Check out all the details in the September Calendar of Chicago architectural events.

Dan Pitera at Archeworks on the 21st, Peter Bohlin tonight, new Songs about Buildings and Moods Saturday

A new addition to the September calendar, architect Dan Pitera of the Detroit Collaborative Design Center will lecture on More People, More Programs, More Geographies to kick off Archeworks fall lecture series, September 21 at 6:00.  That same evening, architect Jacques Ferrier will lecture at the Alliance Alliance Française of Chicago.

Also some reminders: Peter Bohlin lectures tonight, September 16th, on The Nature of Circumstance at the Renaissance Chicago for AIA/Chicago, while authors Stuart Cohen and Susan Benjamin talk about their book, The Great Houses of Chicago, at the Driehaus Museum.  And this Saturday, September 18th, from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m,  Accessible Contemporary Music presents Songs about Buildings and Moods, where new works by six Chicago composers will be played in the works that inspired them, including the Burnham and Root's Monadnock, Holabird and Roche's Marquette, the Bertoia Sculpture, the Tiffany Dome at the Cultural Center, and Studio/Gang's Aqua.  Fair warning:I'm scheduled to be one of the tour guides for this event.

There are still dozen of great events to go on the September calendar.  Check them all out here.