New Music for Teshigahara's Gaudi, plus Zardini, Arets, Lorado Taft, Edward Dart - more for March!

Yes, we're still adding to the March Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

If you missed 60 Minutes' segment last night on Antonio Gaudi and Barcelona's Sagrada Familia, you can check it out in the above video.  The cathedral has certainly come a long way from when I was there over ten years ago - the wonders of substituting concrete for stone, I guess.  And on the Gaudi front, here's something really cool. 

Showing Hiroshi's Teshigahara's mesmerizing documentary Antonio Gaudi has become an annual Christmas holiday staple at the Gene Siskel, but now Access Contemporary Music is giving the film a new spin, with a one-time-only showing at Architectural Artifacts on March 19th accompanied by a live performance of a new score by Chicago composers.  More details here.

The week starts off Monday the 11th with a face-off between Canadian Centre for Architecture ExecDir Mirko Zarini at UIC, and new IIT Dean of Architecture Wiel Arets at Unity Temple.

On Tuesday, the 12th, SEAOI's March dinner meeting at the Parthenon (again, the restaurant, not the bombed-out wreck in Athens) has structural engineer John R. Hillman talking about the striking new 35th Pedestrian Bridge.  That same evening, Lynn Allyn Young talks about her new book on Lorado Taft, Beautiful Dreamer, at the Glessner House Museum.

Wednesday the 13th, Richard Becker, Lisa Skolnick and Susan Benjamin discuss Edward Dart's Ancel House at CAF lunchtime, while in Crown Hall that evening, it's the 127th birthday party for Mies van der Rohe, which also will mark the investiture of Wiel Arets as the new Dean of the architecture school Mies founded.  No more kicking back in a Barcelona chair and smoking a chair, alas, but there will be cocktails and hors d'oeuvres.

Thursday the 14th,  again at IIT, but at the Auditorium at the Koolhaas Campus Center, Kenneth Frampton stops by to talk about The Past and Future Prospects for Architectural Education, while at the Richard Driehaus Museum, Rolf Achilles discusses Great Midwestern Panes from such Chicago artists as Healy and Millet and Max Guler.

That's just a few of the two events this week, and nearly thirty items still to come on the March Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

Pritzker-Prize Winner Wang Shu, plus Perrault, Arets, Frampton, Zardini, Ponte, birthday Mies, Pecha Kucha, Preservation Bingo, and lots more - yes, it's the March Calendar!

Yes, it's time to again start rolling the boulder up the mountain, with another month full of great programs on the March Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

It kicks off Friday morning, March 1st, with the SEAOI 2013 Trade Show at the University Club,  Rick Valicenti presenting a keynote for the two-day Chicago Creative Expo at the Cultural Center, and, in the evening, new IIT College of Architecture Dean Wiel Arets treading on Frank Lloyd Wright turf with A Wonderful World, a lecture at Unity Temple in Oak Park.

March also includes appearances of two world renowned architects, with Dominique Perrault, talking about The Disappearance of Architecture: Between Presence and Absence, at IIT's Wishnick Auditorium on the 27th, while 2012 Pritzker Prize winner Wang Shu appears at Rubloff Auditorium for the Architecture and Design Society of the Art Institute on Thursday, the 28th.

On the academics front, there's Mirko Zardini, Executive Director of the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Monday the 11th at UIC, which also hosts Alessandra Ponte of L'École d’architecture de l'Université de Montréal on the 18th, while over at IIT, Kenneth Frampton talks about The Past and Future Prospects for Architectural Education on the 14th

This month's theme for CAF's lunchtime lectures is Mod Squad Chicago, with Bauhaus and Beyond's Joan Gand talking about the Hidden Gems of Mid-Century, Keck and Keck on Wednesday the 6th,  Richard Becker and Lisa Skolnick discussing Edward Dart's Ancel House on the 13th, and Chicago at Midcentury: Images by Lee Bey  on the 20th.

March is Mies month (actually, in Chicago, every month is Mies month), with the celebration of the master's birthday 127th on the 13th at Crown Hall, where Christianne Lange lectures on Mies Van der Rohe in Krefeld on the 27th, Edward Windhorst talks about Mies van der Rohe and Historic Preservation: A Report and Prognosis at the Cultural Center on the 21st for Landmarks Illinois, and Windhorst joins up with his co-author Franz Schulze at CAF lunchtime on the 27th to talk about Rewriting the Life of Mies can der Rohe: New Perspectives after 25 years.

And, really, how many chances do you have to combine supporting Chicago's architectural history with Bingo? Well, Preservation Chicago will be offering up just such a combination with their Chicago Seven Bingo fundraiser, on, appropriately enough, the 7th, anticipating the release of this year's list of the seven most endangered buildings the following week. 

Tuesday the 5th, Pecha Kucha returns to Martyr's for its Volume #25.   For its monthly dinner meeting, SEOAI has John R. Hillman talking about the engineering of the 35th Street Pedestrian Bridge over Lake Shore Drive on the 12th at the Parthenon, the same evening  Lynn Allyn Young is over at the Glessner House Museum to talk about her book, Beautiful Dreamer - The Completed Works and Unfilled plans of Sculptor Lorado Taft . 

Mel Buchanan recounts the story of Grete Marks: When Modernism was Degenerate, Thursday the 7th at Second Presbyterian Meanwhile, over at the Driehaus Museum on the 14th, Rolf Achilles discusses the lesser-known stained glass artisans who created Great Midwestern Panes.

I'm sure we'll be adding even more, but even now there are nearly fifty great items to check out on the March Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

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.

Last Two Weeks for Young Architects of Spain exhibition at Instituto Cervantes

Update: the exhibition has now been extended through April 25th, and it includes two lecture/panel events that we will be discussing tomorrow.

click images for larger view

You have only two more weeks, through April 25th, to see an ambitious exhibition, Young Architects of Spain (YAS): A Window to the Unknown, at the Instituto Cervantes, which has set up shop at 31 West Ohio, providing a small slice of culture in the banality of the Grand Plaza residential towers. The exhibition, part of the ongoing Architecture and Urban lecture series organized by the Instituto Cervantes of Chicago and MAS Studio and directed by Iker Gil.  "Its goal is to establish a platform in Chicago for an open exchange of design ideas and interesting experiences within the world of architecture and urbanism."

The exhibition grew out of a competition staged by Spanish Ministry of Housing, "an open call to all young Spanish architects [under 40], both within and outside of Spain’s borders." The more than 700 submissions were culled down to 62 by an international jury that included such luminaries as Juhani Pallasmaa. Alberto Campo Baeza, and the omnipresent Kenneth Frampton. The selected works were exhibited first in Madrid in 2007, and then made the rounds to the Columbia School of Architecture in New York, last winter in Brussels, and now here to Chicago.

102 viviendas en Carabanchel, Madrid, Dosmasuno Arquitectos

The handsome, bilingual catalog includes often fascinating essays from each member of the selection committee, with an especially personal one from Campo Baeza, who finds commonality in the designs of Spanish architects along three lines: Idealism (ideas over mere form), sincerity in construction, and functionality. "Their houses," he writes, rather than arbitrary formal exercises, are houses to be lived in happily."

SGAE, Santiago de Compostela,  Ensamble Studio

Jorge Otero-Pailos records some basic facts about the participating firms. First, they are small - two principals, on average, plus four additional architects. Almost a third work from a home office. Only 18% of employees are foreign nationals. Average firm billing is 171,000 (about $250,000 at today's exchange rates). Average salary is between about $20,000 and $31,000, or only about 2 to 3 times the mandated minimum annual wage.

Numancia Gymnasium, PO2 Arquitectos

Otero-Pailos takes note that what may have been the first architectural competition, in 448 BC Athens, for a war memorial on the Acropolis, was decided by popular vote, an unlikely prospect today. He also discusses how the stereotypical set of human figures used to inhabit architectural renderings has descended largely unchanged from the 1870's down to the present day's no-longer-young radicals such as Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren, but the younger generation has different ideas.

[Younger Architects such as] Royo and Morales do not presume to know visitors or wish to reduce architecture to a stage set within which people are understood as videogame avatars and expected to perform predictable behaviors. . . . The commanding function of the author-architect is interrupted by the recognition of an alien presence, the visitor, who creatively interjects and participates in the creation of architecture.

Although the architects are Spanish, the projects are placed throughout the world, including the Puente peatonal, in Shanghai, by Pedro Pablo Arroyo Alba (CA-Group), show below both under construction and completed.

 

Over half a decade after its inception, and in the wake of a grave worldwide recession, Young Architects of Spain now serves as a snapshot of a more optimistic moment.  It continues through April 25 at the Instituto Cervantes, 31 West Ohio.  Gallery hours are 10:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., Monday through Thursday, 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., on Friday, and 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. on Saturday.