Harry Weese, How Chicago Are You?, An Evening with Louis Sullivan, Planning and the Two Mayor Daley's: The May Architectural Calendar Rampages on!

Okay, so you're collapsed in your easy chair, exhausted from running the gauntlet of thirty-plus screenings and panels in this past weekend's Architecture and Design, plus a couple dozen other events so far in May.

Well, we're . . . . just  . . . . beginning!

Even with the Memorial Day holiday, there are still over 30 great events still to come in the
May Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events, beginning with the final two festival screenings at the Siskel on Monday, covering Norman Foster and Aaron Betsky.

The big event of the month is Saturday's day-long symposium, Harry Weese Reconsidered, at CAF, who which, as today, there are still tickets. (Sunday's bus tour of Weese's Chicago's buildings with Bob Bruegmann is sold out.).  On Friday the 13th, Ward Miller will sign copies of the great new book, The Complete Architecture of Adler & Sullivan at a benefit for Preservation Chicago at Sullivan's last commission, the Krause Music Store, now Studio V. Design.

This Tuesday the 10th, the Graham will sponsor a panel discussion, How Chicago Are You?, pondering "the role of place in the production of creative works", with such luminaries as Jeanne Gang, Dan Wheeler, Geoff Goldberg and Robert Somol, among others, on the panel, Paul Preissner moderating.  This Wednesday at CAF lunchtime, Laurence Okrent discusses his new book, Chicago from the Sky: A Region Transformed, 1985-2010,  while on Thursday the 12th at the Art Institute, John Camp will lecture on The Agora Excavations and the Archaeology of Democracy, while Friends of Downtown will present their Best of Downtown Awards at the Haymarket Pub & Brewery.

Want more?  There's this year's edition of CANstruction, Jonathan Muecke at the Graham, Tim Witman on Henry Hobbs Richardson in the Landscape, at the Glessner House, Elisabeth Logman on the K-Town Historic District in North Lawndale for Landmarks Illinois at the Cultural Center.

Next Thursday, the 19th, the Harry Chaddick Institute will sponsor another blue-ribbon panel including Miles Berger, Ruben Hedlund and others on Plans, Projects and Priorities: The Planning Legacy of the Two Mayor Daleys, on Monday the 23rd, the Häfele America Chicago Showroom co-sponsors with AISC a sessions on Innovations in Steel, while on Wednesday 25th, lunchtime at CAF, Serhii Chrucky discusses Popular Modernism: Chicago's Four-Plus-One.

On Thursday the 26th, Mathew Coolidge of the Center for Land Use Interpretation lectures at the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College, in conjunction with its great current exhibition, Public Works.  There's also a new exhibition at ArchiTech Gallery featuring some the early, marketing related work of Edgar Miller,  The Changing Room continues at the Extension Gallery, as does Lee Bey's Chicago Then and Now, at the Water Tower Gallery.

Those are just some of the highlights, and we haven't even gotten to the Festival of the Architecture Book yet.  Check out great shows and over thirty events still to come on the May 2011 Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

Harry Weese Reconsidered and Architecture and Design Film Festival: Two Blockbuster Events for May

We're still finishing up the May 2011 Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events, but we're already up to over sixty events.

The first blockbuster is Harry Weese Reconsidered, an all-day symposium at the Chicago Architecture Foundation, Saturday, May 14th, which will include Ben Weese, Laurence Booth, Robert Bruegmann, Alison Fisher, Jack Hatray and Annie Pedret, among other luminaries. "Former employees and clients, family members, historians, and critics will gather to share personal anecdotes and put Weese's legacy in historical context."

In conjunction with the symposium, on Sunday, May 15th, there will also be a one-time-only five-hour bus tour with  Robert Bruegmann, author of The Architecture of Harry Weese, which will highlight Weese’s buildings and examples of his preservation efforts in Chicago. The tour will focus on projects in Hyde Park, downtown Chicago, and the Old Town neighborhood, and will include special access to privately-owned, Weese-designed buildings in Chicago. $55.00 for the general public, $45.00 CAF members.

Information and registration for both of these remarkable events here.

The first weekend in May will see the Architecture and Design Film Festival.  Recent documentaries on Daniel Burnham and Louis Sulivan didn't make the cut, but there's a cornucopia of 39 films, from 2 minutes to 93 minutes in length, organized into 15 programs, most at the Gene Siskel, but with a number also repeated at the Screening room at the Wit Hotel.  Film subjects include Norman Foster, Milton Glaser, Phyllis Bronfman Lambert, Samuel Mockbee, Vincent Scully, Julius Shulman, Aaron Betsky, and Jan Kaplicky, among many others.  You can check out the full roster and schedule of films here.

In conjunction with the festival, there will also be a series of free panel discussions at the Siskel, beginning Friday, May 6th's Documenting Architecture, with Iker Gil, Bjarke Ingels, Rick Valicenti and Zoe Ryan, with four more panels following through May 8th, including among the many participants Edward Lifson, Ultan Guifolyle, Geoffrey Baer,  Zurich Esposito, Obi Nwazota, Red Mike, Lee Bey and Jonathan Rosenbaum.

On Saturday, May 7th, there'll be a reading June Finer's play The Glass House, on the creation of Farnsworth House and the conflicts between its architect, Mies van der Rohe, and  Edith Farnsworth, directed by Evan Bergman, and featuring Harris Yulin, Janet Zarish, Chris Burns, Gina Nagy, to be followed by a Q&A session with architect Dirk Lohan, Mies's grandson.