North Grant Park at Block 37, Archeworks Mid-Year Design, McCurry's Distillations, Urculo and Bruder - still more for January

Still more for January Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events:

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The latest revisions for North Grant Park, a/k/a/ Daley Bicentennial Plaza, will be on display for the next week in the lower level pedway of Block 37.  Today, Wednesday, January 25th, buy a soft pretzel and hear the Park District and landscape architect Michael van Valkenburgh present where the still evolving plans are now.

For tomorrow, Thursday the 26th, we wrote yesterday about the lecture by Thomas Heatherwick at IIT.  Also Thursday, 6:00 p.m. at Access Living, Archeworks presents it's Mid-Year Design Review, including the projects Sustainable Food Through Design Innovation, and the Cermak Creative Industries District.

And a reminder that today, Wednesday, 5:30 - 7:00 p.m., there's a reception at Poliform showroom for Margaret McCurry and her new book Distillations: The Architecture of Margaret McCurry, and at 6:00 p.m. at the Graham, there's a lecture by Madrid-based architect Luis Urculo.  The month closes out Friday the 27th with Will Bruder at Crown Hall.

Check it out:  There's still over a dozen great events to come on the January 2012 Chicago Architecture Calendar.

Last week for AIC Goldberg shows, plus Japanese 1960's projects, Kenneth Frampton, Re-Envisioning Navy Pier, Landscape Design with Lurie Garden staff and Roy Diblik - a dozen new items for the January calendar

See, we'd told you there would be a lot more.  We've just added over a dozen new great items to the January Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events, including two new exhibitions.

On Monday at Crown Hall, IIT opens a new show, Struggling Cities: From Japanese Urban Projects in the 1960's, which runs through the 31st.  The Metabolists are back with a vengeance, and Struggling Cities includes work by Kiyonori Kikutake, Kisho Kurokawa, Masato Ohtaka, Fumihiko Maki,  Noboru Kawazoe and Arata Isozaki, whose  “Cities in the Air” is pictured here.  In conjunction with the exhibition, there will be a lecture at Crown Hall this Thursday, the 12th,  at 6:00 by critic and historian Kenneth Frampton, Ware Professor of Architecture at Columbia.  (There will also be a February 25th appearance by Peter Frampton at the Chicago Theatre, but we're hearing this may be an unrelated event, more about music than an actual lecture.)

Over at the ArchiTech Gallery, there's a new show, Architectural Drawing: From Europe to America, that runs through April 28, 2012 and features work by Louis Villeminot, George Mann Niedecken and Alfonso Iannelli, among others.  Hours are Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday from noon to five, "or by chance or appointment on Monday or Tuesday."

Elsewhere, we've added this month's events from the Chicago Center for Green Technology, which is branching out with a morning session on Landscape Design Series: Part 1 featuring the staff of the Lurie Garden and Roy Diblik at the Chicago Cultural Center on Saturday the 14th, and a Wednesday January 25th session on Green Roofing for the Homeowner and DIY-er at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, as well as its usual programs at the Center, itself.

Crain's Chicago Real Estate Daily has a morning panel, Residential Forecast, on Wednesday the 18th moderated by Alby Gallun and featured Stephen Baird, Andy Konovodoff, Buzz Ruttenberg and Steven Fifield.  If there's a Q&A, maybe someone can ask Steve Fifield if his projects, like the ironically named Left Bank, really have to suck so much.

On Friday, the 20th, DePaul's Chaddick Institute has a panel on Re-Envisioning Navy Pier with Larry Booth, Gerry Butler, Michael Emerson, Reuben Hedlund, Cherri Heramb and Larry Lund.

And lastly, this is the last week to see two essential shows on Bertrand Goldberg at the Art Institute, Bertrand Goldberg: Architecture of Invention, and the uniquely expressive Inside Marina City: A Project by Iker Gil and E.G. Larsson.  Both are must-see exhibitions, and you have only through next Sunday to catch up with them.

Check it out:  There are still over three dozen events on the January Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

Classicist/Modernist Smackdown, Luis Urculo, Margaret McCurry: Distillations, Future City 2012, The L, Henry Ives Cobb's Chicago, Tugendhat, Bloomingdale, Hedrich-Blessing - it's the January 2012 Calendar!

It's Classicist vs. Modernist smackdown night January 19th,  as Iveta Cerná, Head of Villa Tugendhat at CAF faces off at 6:00 p.m. against Tom Beeby, of the Harold L Washington Library, at the Richard H. Driehaus Museum, a/k/a Nickerson Mansion.

But that's just two of the highlights of the January 2012 Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

On Wednesday, January 25th, Madrid architect Luis Urculo lectures at the Graham, while at the Poliform showroom, Margaret McCurry signs copies of Distillations, the new monograph on her work. On Friday, the 27th, architect Will Bruder lectures at Crown Hall, IIT


There seems to be a new tradition of holiday parties after the holidays, which includes Architecture for Humanity Chicago Chapter's Holiday Hangover which couples the Black Cloud Gallery with Friday the 13th, while APT and others host a Chicago Preservation Holiday Party 2012 on the 11th.

Saturday the 21st is the 2012 Future City Chicago Regional Finals at UIC, where 6th, 7th and 8th trades from area schools  compete with their own visions.

More authors: Greg Borzo discusses the The Chicago L for Friends of Downtown at the Cultural Center this Thursday, the 5th,  Barbara Geiger talks about Low-Key Genius: The life and Work of Landscape-Gardener O.C. Simonds, and Edward W. Wolner discusses Henry Ives Cobb's Chicago for Landmarks Illinois at the Cultural Center on the 19th.

More?  This Thursday marks still another month when the Commission on Chicago Landmarks completely ignores the battle to save Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital, SEAOI has a dinner program on Geotechnical Lessons Learned on Tuesday the 10th, while Tuesday, the 17th, AIA  Chicago offers a tour of the ACE Technical Charter High School serving students with an interest in architecture, construction and engineering, and the Chicago Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians have a tour of the legendary photographers Hedrich Blessing.

Other CAF lunchtime lectures feature The Bloomingdale Trail on the 18th, and Zurich Esposito, Julie Liska, Pat Saldana Natke and others on the Small Firm/Small Project Awards on the 25th.

I'm sure we'll be adding more events, especially since the Chicago Plan and Community Development Commissions and the Center for Green Technology haven't released their 2012 schedules yet, but we've already got over 30 great items.  Check out the entire January 2012 Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.