Esra Akcan on Kreuzberg, plus Neil Brenner, Terry Guen, Jeanne Gang - more for January

Yes, we're still adding great new items to the January Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

This Wednesday, January 16th at the Graham, professor and author Esra Akcan will be talking about about News from the Living Room:  Storytelling and Participatory Architectural Writing, exploring the International Building Exhibition that commissioned designs for public housing from architects from Aldo Rossi to Rem Koolhaas to Zaha Hadid, to name just a few, to transform Kreuzberg, a Berlin neighborhood populated largely by Turkish immigrants.

Then on Monday, January 28th, also at the Graham, Archeworks is sponsoring a talk by Neil Brenner, the Urban Age in Question, that critiques contemporary ideologies and how "the geographies of urbanization . . . today encompassed diverse patterns and pathways across the planetary sociospatial landscape . . . "

There's a double dose of Studio/Gang Architects at the Art Institute this week, with curator Karen Kice leading an overview of AIC's exhibition Building: Inside Studio Gang Architects on Tuesday, and Jeanne Gang, herself, discussing her firm's recent projects at Fullerton Hall on Thursday.

On Wednesday, landscape architect Terry Guen lectures at CAF lunchtime, while on Thursday, Matt Seymour discusses Randolph Tower (a/k/a Steuben Club) Terra Cotta Restoration at the Cultural Center for Landmarks Illinois.  (Friday's Pecha Kucha Night at Olympia Centre is wait-listed.)

There are a dozen great items this week, and over two dozen between now and the end of the month, so check out the January Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

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.

Gill, Wimer, Johnson, Emanuel, Acconci, plus Gaudi for Christmas - it's the December Calendar!

The Holiday Season is upon us.  Some organizations are skipping December, others are having parties, but we still have a full slate for the December Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

Cyril Marsolier and Wallo Villacorta, First Prize, Future Prentice competition

Make sure you check out this coming week, because events are heavily front-loaded.  On Tuesday, December 4th, CAF has a panel discussion on Shelter - Design for Social Change, with Roberta Feldman, John Car, Bryan Bell, Sunny Fisher, Patrick Tighe, and Theresa Hwang, the same day Archeworks has its mid-year Design Review and SEAOI has Practicing Green: A Guide to the Structural Engineer as the topic of their monthly dinner meeting, and Glessner House has its 125th Anniversary Dedication Dinner.  Over at Martyr's, there's edition #24 of Pecha Kucha Chicago, with Jordan Mozer, Tess Landon, and Future Prentice design competition winners Cyril Marsollier and Wallo Villacorta among  the presenters.

Wednesday the 4th, lunchtime at CAF, Brian Lee and Ross Wimer of SOM, discuss their Infinity Tower in Dubai and Nozul Lusail Marina in Doha.  Thursday the 6th, all day at the UIC Forum, there's a major symposium:  Metropolitan Resilience in a Time of Economic Turmoil, whose participants include Rahm Emanuel, Pat Quinn, Toni Preckwinkle, the mayors of Columbus, Las Vegas and Pittsburgh, and U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood. 

That evening, ULI Chicago presents its 2012 lifetime achievement award to Eugene Golub.  On Friday, Karen Kice offers another curator's tour of the Art Institute's Building: Inside Studio Gang, while AIA/Chicago's Holiday Party and Annual Meeting at Revolution Brewery honors Farr Associates, Matt Dumich, Paul Knight, Vincent Paglione and Lynn Becker.

Wednesday the 12th finds Gordon Gill at CAF lunchtime to talk about AS+GG's next world's tallest building, Kingdom Tower, while in the evening Vito Acconci lectures at the Art Institute, with dining packages available at Terzo Piano.

On Wednesday the 19th, CAF lunchtime closes out its month of heavyweights with Ralph Johnson of Perkins+Will talking about their Universidade Agustinho Neto in Luanda and Women and Children's Wellness Centre in Nairobi.

And starting Friday, the 21st, the year closes out with the Gene Siskel Film Center's holiday tradition of booking Hiroshi Teshigahara's hypnotic documentary Antonio Gaudi.  (and for something completely different, that same week at the Siskel you also get another to check out Leos Carax's audacious Holy Motors.)

There's also Julia Bachrach on The City in a Garden at Garfield Park Conservatory, and Larry Okrent on Chicago from the Sky at both AIA/Chicago and at the Cultural Center for Friends of the Parks. And much more.

Check out the nearly three dozen great items and exhibitions on the December 2012 Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

Jeanne Gang's Grounded Magic - Building: Inside Studio Gang Architects opens at Art Institute September 24th

click images for larger view

If last fall was the year of Bertrand Goldberg at the Art Institute, 2012 will be the year of Jeanne Gang.  On September 24th, the Art Institute will open a new exhibition, Building: Inside Studio Gang Architects, showcasing the work of . . .

. . . MacArthur Fellow Gang and her team of 40 architects, designers, and thinkers have produced some of the most inventive and award-winning architecture today. Featured not as a survey or retrospective, the projects of Studio Gang Architects (SGA) will be showcased in an engaging workshop-like environment that reveals the practice's creative processes as they seek to answer pressing contemporary issues through architecture.

The exhibition, designed by Studio/Gang, in collaboration with Art Institute curator's Zoë Ryan and Karen Kice of the Department of Architecture and Design . . .

consists of two interrelated parts. The first functions as a gallery with projects illustrated through a range of materials from sketchbooks and models to photographs, plans, and other drawings. This space will also feature a special series of installations, also designed by SGA, dedicated to the studio's material research and formal explorations.

The second section of the exhibition replicates a workshop, complete with a large worktable, pin-up boards, full-scale mock-ups, and material samples.

SOS Children's Village Lavezzorio Community Center

The second space will host two "Archi-Salons" intended to place Studio/Gang's work "within the larger field of architectural discourse."  The first will be October 6th, 2:00 to 4:00 p.m., to be led by architect and UIC assistant professor Clare Lyster; the second, November 17th, also 2:00 to 4:00, to be led by MAS Studio's Iker Gil.

We were introduced to Jeanne Gang when we first began writing about architecture almost a decade ago, when she was flagged by Stanley Tigerman as an emerging star.  Since then, Gang, Mark Schendel and the other talented people at the firm have been extremely generous with their time as they've gone on to such hallmark projects as the Kam Liu Center,  the SOS Lavezzorio Community Center, the Starlight Theatre in Rockford, the Columbia College Media Center, and, of course, Aqua, which became an instant Chicago landmark even when it was under construction.

We've accumulated a lot of material on Studio/Gang that we've never published and, assuming my mind again begins to function, I hope to be posting a lot more text and photo's as the exhibition opening nears.  Some lines to the story so far . . .

Jeanne Gang: Before Aqua - an early portrait.

 Jeanne Gang's Cinematic space at Columbia College

 Designing Women: Five Architects, at exhibition at the Chicago Architecture Foundation.