Goose Island for Obscura Day, Kalmbach's Grand Mansions, Buckley's Utopie, Doug Garofalo memorial - still more in April

We don't usually include tours on our calendar because there are just so damn many of them, but we did one to mention two:

Next Saturday, April 28th, is Obscura Day "an international celebration of unusual places" and Forgotten Chicago is offering a walking tour of Goose Island and Pulaski Park from 12:00 p.m to 2:30.

Goose Island is one of the more obscure areas of Chicago. Primarily industrial, it once contained a working class Irish residential enclave as well. We’ll discuss the history of much of the island, and examine remnants from its manufacturing and residential past.

We’ll also venture off the island to tour the once working-class neighborhood surrounding Pulaski Park. The area is dense with mixed architectural uses and history. Additionally, it has been shaped by various political forces over the years, from Progressive Era reformers to less-than-progressive machine politicians. We’ll check out some of the tangible physical evidence that reflects the area’s political history, and architectural oddities and other curiosities in the built environment.

The cost is $12.00, and with a limit of 35 participants, I'd expect it will fill up.  Get information and buy tickets here.

Then in May, architectural historian Sally Kalmbach will be offering From Grand Mansions to Luxury Apartment Buildings, The Story of the changing skyline of Lake Shore Drive, covering both the buildings, residents, and the architects, with an emphasis on Benjamin Marshall.  The tour is being offered Saturday May 19th and Wednesday May 23rd, both times from 10 a.m. until noon.  Cost is $25.00 per person.  For more information and to reserve your place, contact Sally Kalmbach via email.

And just to prove it's never too late to add to the April 2012 Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events, on Tuesday April 24th, 6:00 p.m. at the Graham, there's a lecture by Craig Buckley of Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture on Utopie: Encounters and Missed Encounters, followed by an open discussion moderated by Sara Knox Hunter.

Elsewhere this week, there's Digital Design at SOM at the Arts Club on Monday the 23rd, Peter Skosey discussing Bus Rapid Transit: Chicago's New Route to Opportunity, CAF lunchtime on Wednesday the 25th, SEAOI's Midwest Bridge Symposium, ULI Chicago's Rebirth of the East Loop and State Street, and Gunny Harboe's tour of Unity Temple, all on Thursday, the 26th.  And on Saturday afternoon, April 28th at the Hyde Park Art Center, there will be a "public memorial celebrating the life and work of visionary architect Doug Garofalo."

Check out the dozen events still to come on the April Calendar.

Digital Design at SOM, Giancarlo Mazzanti on Colombia Transformed, Gordon Gill at Unity Temple and lots more to come on the April Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events

We're halfway through the month and we're still adding new items to the April 2012 Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

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On Monday, April 23rd, SOM Chicago is sponsoring a panel discussion, Digital Design at SOM: The Past, The Present and the Future Experiences and Lessons from a Platform for Practice, at the Arts Club.

Today, Monday the 16th, 6:00 p.m. architect Giancarlo Mazzanti will lecture at the Instituto Cervantes in an event affiliated with their current exhibition, Colombia Transformed: Architecture = Politics.  He will be introduced by the exhibition's curator, Vladimir Belogolovsky.  Also at 6:00 over at the Driehaus Museum, architectural historian Dennis Doordan will talk about Organic Design and Classical Architecture: A Chicago Story.  Monday also marks the final four showings of the Architecture and Design Film Festival at the Music Box, repeating films on Pruitt-Igoe, Robert Stern, Victor Gruen and Zaha Hadid.

Wednesday, the 18th, lunchtime at CAF,  Josh Ellis of the Metropolitan Planning Council talks about The Cost of Water, while Northwestern's McCormick School of Engineering offers a breakfast symposium on Building the New Children's Memorial Hospital.  Thursday, the 19th, lunchtime at the Cultural Center, architectural historian Jean Guarino discusses Myth Buster: New Perspectives on the Chicago School for Landmarks Illinois, while at 5:30 at the Häfele America Chicago Showroom, DoCoMoMo/US President Theo Prudon discusses his organization's role in Preserving Modern Architecture, while on Friday, the 20th, 7:30 p.m., Gordon Gill talks about Form Follows Performance at the Frank Lloyd Wright designed Unity Temple in Oak Park.

And there's much, much more.  Check out the nearly three dozen great offerings still to come on the April 2012 Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

Tschumi Tonight! plus architecture and Cats! Cats! Cats!, Architecture & Design Film Festival this week

Would you believe we're still working on the April 2012 Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events, but that we're already up to over 50 great events still to come this month?

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Tonight, April 9th, Kersten Geers/David van Severen of Kersten Geers David van Severen, Brussels, lecture at the School of Architecture at UIC at 6:00 p.m., while over  at the MTCC Auditorium at IIT, there's a 6:00 P.M. lecture by Bernard Tschumi on Concept and Material.

It's doubtful Tschumi's lecture will include the following slide . . .

. . . in which his structure for Paris's Parc de la Vilette is repurposed as a climbing tree - for cats.  It's part of a bit of madness let loose in the world by the website Archinect: Architectural LOLCATS

 . . . some of the thesis students here at Wurster Hall went stir crazy over Spring Break and have been developing a trove of Architectural LOLCATS. You are welcome to join us and submit your own Architectural LOLCAT at the following tumblr page, and suggest your own captions!

According to Wikipedia (and would they lie?) although LOLCATS was a meme just waiting for the invention of Photoshop and Facebook to unleash its viral presence, the concept had its origins in a series of 19th century postcards depicting cats taking over human tasks and costumes.

In actuality, Egyptologist Zahi Hawass contends that the LOLCAT is an Egyptian creation, as proven in recently discovered hieroglyphics at the ancient city of Pi-Ramses that depict a feline in Pharoah's Nemes Headdress with the caption - translated only this past February - reading, "I can haz Ethiopiaz?"

The tumblr page has any number of new additions, including a BIG Lego model overseen by a master cat, a kitten drinking milk out of the upturned sphere of the Chamber of Deputies at Oscar Niemeyer's Brasilia, a contented giant orange tabby taking a nap on the roof of Saarinen's TWA Terminal, and a NSFW photo of an in-the-buff Corbu complete with cat in matching spectacles.

Not to be outdone, the people at Studio/Gang have come up with their own set of Archi-cats, which they've posted on Facebook.  My favorite takes off from Gang's recent book Reverse Effect to speculate on how the Asian Carp problem could be solved through the previously unconsidered remedy of unleashing giant hungry cats on Chicago's waterways.

 But let's get serious (..................hehehehe - cats ........ )

This week, on Tuesday the 10th, there's The Role of Designers in Post-Disaster Scenarios: Talca, Chile, lunchtime at AIA Chicago, the all day SEAOI seminar, The Seismic Design of Bridges, Wednesday at the UBS Tower and Katherine Rinne, Plumbing Rome at IIT.  On Sunday, April 15th, the National Public Housing Museum is holding its fundraiser, An Afternoon of Good Times, A Place Called Home, at Salvage One.  One Monday, April 16th, Colombian architect Giancarlo Mazzanti lectures at the Institute Cervantes in conjunction with their new exhibition, Columbia:Transformed.

And then starting this Thursday, April 12, there's the 2012 edition of the Architecture and Design Film Festival 2012, at the Music Box, with 33 films, panel discussions, and a special edition of Pecha Kucha, through the following Monday.  We hope to be writing about it more tomorrow, but for now, check out the over half-a-hundred items - with still more to come - on the April 2012 Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

The Battle to Save the Portage Theater and the Chicago 7 Most Endangered Wednesday, Marina City Thursday - April begins

One of these days I'll actually get to the April 2012 Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.  Right now there are a couple dozen listings, with many more to come.  I'm not sure if I have the energy for the 33 flicks, plus panel discussions, making up this year's edition of the Architecture and Design Film Festival, beginning April 12 at the Music Box.

photograph: Darrin Harris
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This Wednesday, April 3rd, 12:15 p.m. at the Chicago Architecture Foundation, 224 South Michigan, Jonathan Fine of Preservation Chicago will reveal what's on this year's list of the Chicago 7 Most Endangered Historic Places of 2012.  Although they let a least one of the cats out of the bag with the photo, shown above, that accompanied their email about the event.  The Portage Theater, designed in 1920 by architect Lindley Phelps Rowe for Fridstein & Co with Mark D. Kalischer adding later alterations, and reopened in 2006 after a five year absence with a a major restoration and very active film program, is under threat of being acquired by the Chicago Tabernacle congregation to be converted into a church.

A Save the Portage campaign has caught fire with large turnouts of opponents at community meetings and a Save the Portage Facebook page that has quickly accumulated nearly 3,000 fans.  While he would welcome the church to his ward elsewhere, 45th ward alderman John Arena has opposed the conversion as an inappropriate usage for such a highly commercial street as Milwaukee Avenue, telling the Chicago Tribune's Nina Metz that it would, among other things, shut down the liquor license for a restaurant already being built out just across the street.

The issue has already gotten the attention of the Commission of Chicago Landmarks, which has placed the matter of landmarking the Portage on the agenda for it's monthly meeting, open to the public, this Thursday, April 5th, 12:45 in City Council Chambers, room 201-A, 121 North LaSalle.  The Portage is currently rated "orange" on the city's Historic Resources Survey, for "potentially significant in the context of the surrounding community."

This Wednesday, April 4th, at The Portage, the Northwest Chicago Film Society will be presenting a rare showing of a 35mm print of the legendary Max Ophüls' 1933 film Liebelei . . . 

Vienna, 1900. Love blossoms between young lieutenant Fritz (Wolfgang Liebeneiner) and violinist’s daughter Christine (Magda Schneider), but his past affairs threaten to destroy their union. Significantly anticipating the milieu and atmosphere of Ophüls’s American masterpiece, Letter from an Unknown Woman, Liebelei was the director’s greatest success in his native Germany. By the time it opened in March 1933, Hitler had ascended to power, the distributor had removed the names of both Ophüls and playwright Arthur Schnitzler (both Jews) from the credits, and Ophüls had fled the country, embarking on a fugitive career that never returned to normalcy.

Then just in time for Easter, Saturday, April 7th at 7:00, there'll be a showing of a 35mm print of Cecil B. DeMille's 1956 epic, The Ten Commandments, with a chance to see DeMille's spectacular architectural reimaging of the City of the Pharaohs and Avenue of the Sphinxes at a scale of image in which they can fully appreciated.  A great room like the Portage is the place where movies are meant to be seen.

Just us, the cameras, and those wonderful people out there in the dark!

Elsewhere, also on Thursday, the 5th lunchtime at the Cultural Center, Igor Marjanović will be discussing his book, Marina City: Bertrand Goldberg's Urban Vision for Friends of Downtown. Later in the month, we've got Bernard Tschumi at IIT, Kersten Geers / David van Severen and Wiel Arets at UIC, DocoMomo President Theo Prudon at Häfele, and Gordon Gill and Gunny Harboe at Unity Temple.  Stay tuned for a lot more - and check out the story so far here.