Why Lynn Becker is about to disappear

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This week marks the 12th anniversary of my first article being published in Chicago Reader.  What better time to call a time out?

"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money," Dr. Johnson famously observed.  I have become that blockhead.

So I'm taking a hiatus to vegetate and experiment - fiction, poetry, screenplays, prescription drug disclaimers - so many choices, so little time between naps.

At least until March 1st, I'm also engaging in the radical experiment of swearing off social media.

No Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or Instagram.

No posts.

No reading of posts. 

Is this even possible, in a time when seemingly every last one of us has been sucked like Alice through the Looking Glass down into our smartphone screens?

Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen.

When I look at my life, all my misfortunes are pretty much self-made; the wonderful things the gift of others.  I'm going to do a Trumbo and not name names, but you know who you are.  Except for you, I would have been a irredeemably dull boy, making his home in a box on Lower Wacker.

And thanks to you, my readers and followers, for your patience, generous if misguided attention, and eloquent engagement.

If you should need to reach me, I'll still be checking e-mail.  I'm not a total idiot.

Chicago Through the Eye of the Commute - A New Instagram Stream

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I started a new job at the end of September, at a great place with fine people.  The only downside - I thought - was that for the first time in many, many years, I no longer walk to work but have a daily (laughably short) commute from Marina City to the State and Lake Loop L station to Paulina on the Brown Line and back each day.

Yet even that commute has a proven a blessing (I'm writing before the subzero cold hits).   It's become a bit of a palette cleanser from the accustomed hyper-density of the Loop, to the humanly-scaled ecosystem of a neighborhood.  So now on Instagram (follow me at my user name:  cmgiulini) I've taken to posting two photographs each workday, one from the morning commute, one from the evening.

Instead of timeless shots of the usual-suspect array of Chicago's architectural icons, it's much more impressionistic - the things we may not deliberately "see" as we pass them each day, but that still register as the visual signposts along our personal journey through the natural and constructed world.  The things in these random snapshots are a sampling of the cocoon-continuous stream of millions of visual impressions that gently bleed into our brain to color our consciousness every second of our every waking hour.

Or in other words, a bunch of iPhone quickies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Doug Farr accepts AIA/Chicago's Firm of the Year Award

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Last night at the Revolution Brewery on North Kedzie, AIA/Chicago gave out its recognition awards, and I'd to again express my thanks for receiving a 2012 Distinguished Service award, as it was the first - and probably last - time the words "Distinguished" and "Lynn Becker" will ever appear contiguously.

Matt Dumich of Valerio Dewalt Train received the Dubin Family Young Architect Award, Paul Knight of Domus PLUS and Vincent Paglione of UIC received Distinguished Service Awards, and Farr Associates was named Firm of the Year.

You see watch below, in my patented jittery, out-of-focus video style, Doug Farr's exuberant acceptance speech . . .

Mr. Becker Inquires . . .

Last Wednesday, I concluded a 20-year engagement with one of Chicago's leading advertising/marketing firms.  I am looking for, as they say, new opportunities and challenges, including at least some, to risk indelicacy, that involve money changing hands.

I hope you'll indulge me if I use this blog today for a bit of shameless self-promotion.  Back to normal (?) tomorrow.

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Lynn Becker

Author and Critic

•  Writer on architecture for the Chicago Reader, with nearly 50 articles and four cover stories.  Also articles in Metropolis Magazine and the Harvard Design Magazine.
• Contributor to the books Reveal: Studio Gang Architects, State Street Village IIT,  Insight Guide Chicago, and Urban Planning Today (University of Minnesota Press)
•  Guest curator of Chicago Architecture Foundation exhibition: Boom Towns: Chicago Architects Design New Worlds, September 23 - November 21st, 2008, and February 12 - May 1, 2009.
• Author of Repeat website on Chicago architecture and culture, with 1.8 million visitors and 3.2 million page views since its inception, and the blog ArchitectureChicago Plus, with nearly half a million page views in the last two and one-half years.

Tech Guru

• IT Technician/Help Desk Specialist, supporting nearly 200 Mac users - problem solving, preparing and upgrading computers, purchasing, managing assets, backups, storage maintenance, training, documentation, and more
• VOIP Support Specialist for 400+ phone system - problem solving, preparing phones for users, asset management.
•  Manager, including analysis, strategy, budgeting and project management, working with and motivating associates in everything from a department of three and one-half people, to a national division with six offices and 200 employees 
• Named Agency's "Employee of the Year" after first year of service.

More detailed information and amusing anecdotes available upon request.

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. . .  and now for something completely different: Elvis sighting at Lurie garden . . .

A Birthday Offering for Mies - the debut of The Architects Page

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His birthday was actually on Sunday, but the Mies van der Rohe Society is celebrating the 125th anniversary of the great architect's birth with their annual bash at Crown Hall, Monday, March 28th.  It might not be the blowout of the 1950's student dance where Mies himself sat in his new Crown Hall happily puffing on his cigar as Duke Ellington and his orchestra set the huge panes of glass shaking, but you're still promised you'll be able to . . .

Celebrate the birth of a pioneer in Modern design and learn a little something about the unique characteristics of Mies van der Rohe’s work. Come for the company, stay for the cocktails! Just what are the marks of a Mies design? Wright auction’s Michael Jefferson will talk briefly about collecting the master’s work and will highlight market trends.

The party runs from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m., which leaves plenty of time for bar-crawling through your own more Miesian martini-run afterwards, and perhaps even participate in an all-out bar brawl over the size of the new window stops.  Tickets are $50.00, or $125.00 including a one-year membership in the Society, and will be available at the door.  A larger contribution, and maybe they'll let you operate the Crown Hall air vents that Ludwig Hilberseimer made it his job to open and close each day.  For more information, call 312/567.5030.

For our own celebration, we've launched The Architects Page: Mies van der Rohe, the first of what we expect will be a series of landing pages for important designers.  It's a collection of links to major articles I've done on Mies at IIT, the restoration of Crown Hall, the story of Farnsworth House and the battle to save it, and more, including links to books, websites, and even a brief video of Mies himself explaining the origin of a very famous phrase.   Plus a gallery of photographs.  Check it all out here.