Bloomingdale Trail, Cramer, Goldberger and Bey ponder Does Modernism Still Have Meaning?, Navy Pier, Kingscote, Williams and Tsien: May calendar blooms

We continue to add to the May 2012 Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

This week starts out today, Tuesday, May 8th, with a discussion of The Bloomingdale Trail at AIA Chicago at noon, and Archeworks Final Presentation + Review at Access Living at 6:00.  At 7:30 SUNY's Jack Quinan talks about Frank Lloyd Wright's Darwin D. Martin house at Unity Temple in Oak Park.

On Wednesday, the 9th, lunchtime at CAF, the Park District's Gia Biagi and Paul Seck and Matt Urbanski from Michael van Valkenburgh Associates talk about the plans for the renovation of North Grant Park.  At 6:00 p.m., at the Driehaus Museum, a/k/a Nickerson Mansion, Caitlin Emery talks about Stanford White's Kingscote Dining Room. (a repeat version of this lecture on Thursday is already full.)

And Thursday is logjam day, with Critic's Challenge: Does Modernism Still Have Meaning, a panel of Architect Magazine editor Ned Cramer, Lee Bey, and Vanity Fair architecture critic Paul Goldberger at Harry's Weese's Seventeenth Church of Christ Scientist going up against another great Chaddick Institute panel with  Larry Booth, Reuben Hedlund, Rick Fawell, John Schmidt and Jerry Butler offering up a Beyond Burnham Roundtable Discussion: Re-Envisioning Navy Pier, at CAF.

Over at the Merchandise Mart, there's this year's A-can-emy Awards Gala and Cocktail Party benefiting the Greater Chicago Food Depository.  Our indefatigable correspondent Bob Johnson has already scoped out the entries, and provides us the photograph of Mr. Peanut seen here.

Friday is Friends of the Parks 202 Parks Ball 23rd Annual Gala; Saturday the Second Annual Clarke House Museum History Symposium.  And that's just some of the events this coming week.

Coming up later in the month is Stanley Tigerman talking about Architecture and Education at AIA Chicago, Larry Shure on the Typography of Courtyard Apartments in Rogers Park for Landmarks Illinois at the Cultural Center, Tony Smith on TIFs at APA Chicago, and Michael Marshall of StructureCraft Buildings talking about bravura heavy timber construction of the new Arena Stage in DC and other structures making innovative use of wood.   

Ted Wolff talks about the Landscape Renovation at Graceland Cemetery for CAF on the 30th, and on the 24th Tod Williams and Billie Tsien will be part of a panel at the Art Institute to talk about their new Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts at the U of C.

It's a safe bet there'll be still more, but even now there are over three dozen great items still to come on the May Calendar  of Chicago Architectural Events.

SEAOI Awards presentations, Bachrach's Garden, Wolner's Henry Cobb, Gene Summers memorial - May begins!

It's the first of the month - time for me to start working on the May 2012 Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

We've got quite a bit for this week so far.  Among the highlights: Today, Tuesday, May 1, the Structural Engineers Association of Illinois is holding Final Presentations for its 2012 Excellence in Structural Engineering Awards at Pazzo's.  On Wednesday the 2nd, Julia Bachrach talks about the new edition of her book, The City in a Garden: A History of Chicago's Parks, at CAF lunchtime, while later in the day at AIA/Chicago, Andrew Sedgewick of Arup London discusses Current Trends in Museum Design. 

Thursday, the 3rd, John Quail discusses the Chicago River for Friends of Downtown lunchtime at the Cultural Center, while over at Charley-Persky House, Ted Wolner talks for SAH about his great book, Henry Cobb's Chicago.  At IIT,  Friday, the 4th is the Annual Student Work Exhibition, while on Saturday, there's a memorial celebrating "the life and legacy of architect, design, sculptor, painter, education and entrepreneur Gene Summers."

We still have a ways to go, but you can check out the two dozen great items already on the May 2012 Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.  100% proof-reading free!