BIG's Bjarke, Spontaneous Sorkin, Cruz, Feldman, Gil, Manaugh, Pleasure Seeker's, ChiScape, Bucky, FLW, Burnham, Soleri and much more - its the June Calendar!

Get your running shoes on:

a.  There are already over 60 great items on the June Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

b.  Almost half of them take place in the first week of the month. I guess everyone is rushing towards that summer break

This weekend, there's an extraordinary series of events scheduled in conjunction with Spontaneous Interventions: Design Actions for the Common Good, the great new show at the Cultural Center that was originally mounted at the 2012 Venice Biennale.  There are workshops, panel discussions, curator talks, show-and-tell's. and barn raisings, with the large roster of participants including Teddy Cruz, Stephen Zacks, John Preus, Nathan John, Cathy Lang Ho, Iker Gil, Douglas Burnham, Robyn Paprocki, James Rojas, Robert Feldman, Michael Sorkin, and more.

And then MAS Content has BLDGBLOG's Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley talking about Mines, Fruit, and Military Bases: A Year on the Road with Venue, Monday at Public Works on Damen. On Tuesday, AIA Chicago gives a look at the collaborative installation Grounds for Detroit, and Steve Pantazis, Nick Adams, Anna-Marie Panlilio and Ryan McRae are among the presenters at Pecha Kucha Chicago Volume #26 at Martyr's.

And if you're into sin, on Saturday the 1st at the Newberry Library, Paul Durica and Bill Savage talk about their new book, a reprint of the alternative guidebook to 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago by Day and Night: The Pleasure's Seeker's Guide to the Paris of America.  Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

Wednesday, lunchtime at CAF, Don Macica of the Chicago Sinfonietta gives a preview of ChiScape, a newly commissioned four-movement work by four different composers with each movement inspired by a different Chicago landmark: Crown Hall, the Pritzker Pavilion, Aqua, and the Modern Wing.  AIA Chicago has a presentation on Saving Buckminster Fuller's Dome Home in Carbondale, and Urban Land Institute Chicago presents this year's Urban Vision Awards at the Bridgeport Arts Center.

Thursday, the Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust has Diane Dillon talking about Nature in the Work of Daniel H. Burnham and Frank Lloyd Wright at Fourth Presbyterian's Gratz Center, while over at the Cultural Center, Friends of Downtown has Greg Borzo discussing Chicago Cable Cars, and back at CAF, the Chicago Architectural Club unveils the winners of its 2013 Burnham Prize Competition, Next Stop: Designing Chicago BRT Stations.

And that's just the some of the events scheduled for June's first week.  (Did I mention CGT's presentation on Backyard Chickens?)

Move forward a week, and it's NeoCon, with keynotes from Bjarke Ingels, Michael Vanberbyl, Holly Hunt, and Lauren Rottet.  There's a reception for SET OFF, SAIC's Graduate Exhbition on Monday the 10th, and the announcement of SEAOI's 2013 Excellence in Structural Engineering Award winners at its annual banquet on Saturday the 8th.

More?  the Graham screening of Paolo Soleri: Beyond Form; Peter Copeland on Tobey Furniture at Second Presbyterian, Martin Adolfsson on Suburbia Gone Wild, the Wells Street Bridge Rehabilitation, Pamela Robertson on Common Cause: Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Frank Lloyd Wright; Kristen Dean of the Foundation for Homan Square at CAF to talk about The ‘Original’ Sears Tower, this year's Illinois Statewide Preservation Conference, and much, much more.

I know we'll be adding still more stuff that we've missed, but for now, check out the over 60 great items already on the June Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

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.

Wong and Gates Monday, Ron Klemencic Tuesday - fragments of the April Calendar

Rumors of the appearance of the April Calendar of Chicago Cultural Events persist, even as we wish to apologize to those of you who may have wanted to hear architect Thomas Leeser, whose firm just completed a warmly received expansion of the Museum of the Moving Image in New York, when he spoke at UIC last Friday, but missed it because we didn't report it.

Here are two events for today, Monday, April 4th:

click images for larger view

At the intriguing start time of 5:50 p.m., in the lower core of Crown Hall at IIT, Ernest Wong of the Site Design Group, Ltd., whose work includes the striking and new Mary Bartelme park at Adams and Sangamon, pictured above, will lecture. Information here.

At 6:00 p.m. at Archeworks, 625 North Kingsbury, there will be a lecture by Loeb Fellow Theaster Gates "will talk about the relationship between his art practice, myth making and urban stewardship and how slippery these relationships are. He will engage the audience and discuss the challenges of the design industry with implications toward pedagogy and emerging practices. By the end of the night, he will create a new design firm with members of the audience." Followed by in-fighting over job titles. RSVP requested.  Information here.

Then on Tuesday, April 5th, [NOTE:  this event is now SOLD OUT] at the Chicago Architecture Foundation, 224 South Michigan, the Structural Engineers Association of Illinois will offer up How’d They Do That?!, a talk by Ron Klemencic, President of Magnusson Klemencic Associates, whose work includes such modern marvels as the Rem Koolhaas/Joshua Prince-Ramus Seattle Public Library, shown above, and Studio/Gang's Aqua.  Klemencic will "present a fast-paced, visual tour through the structural design of some of the more interesting and challenging structures in the world today. The advances in design and construction technologies, materials, and communication capabilities that make these projects possible will be highlighted." The evening begins with a cocktail reception beginning at 5:30 p.m., followed by the lecture at 6:30 and a QandA at 7:30. It's free, but registration is required. Information here.