mo Maas, van Berkel, Balmori, Petit, Vinci, Valerio, Water, Spotted Stone, Pecha Kucha 30 and more - it's the March Calendar!

Half-a-hundred great items mark the just posted March Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

Architects?  We've got Diana Balmori Tuesday at AIC, Ben van Berkel Thursday at Crown Hall, and later, in the month, Herman Hertzberger at IIT,  Emmanuel Petit at UIC . . .

John Vinci on Restoring the Auditorium Building . .  .

and then, again at Crown Hall, MVRDV's Winy Maas . . 

Elements?

There's water, both an Archeworks Chicago Expander session at AIA Chicago,  and a Great Lakes Symposium - Designing for Life along the Water's Edge at the Chicago Architecture Foundation.  SEAOI has an Anchorage to Concrete symposium, and Nate Lielasus takes on The Spotted Stone, Quarried in Chicago, at AIA Chicago.

Tim Samuelson leads a curator's talk of his don't-miss exhibition, Mecca Flat Blues, at the Cultural Center.  You may take in the Chicago Design Exchange's Critical Pitches at the Graham, where the Chicago Architectural Club will announce the winners of its 2014 Emerging Visions competition.  You can also learn about the 1893 World's Columbia Exposition's Garden in the Phoenix in Jackson Park from Robert Karr Jr. in a Friends of the Parks lecture, and help honor John A Terlato, Joe Antunovich and Theaster Gates as Legendary Landmarks at Landmarks Illinois annual gala at the Four Seasons.

Emily A. Remus discusses Consumer's Metropolis: The Loop in the Age of Daniel Burnham, at the Driehaus, while Wednesdays lunchtime at CAF, Joe Valerio will present his Earl Shapiro Hall, Don J. McKay of Nagle Hartray talks about their Fountaindale Public Library, and JGMA's Juan Gabriel Moreno's discusses their Northeastern Illinois University - El Centro Campus.

March 27th brings Mies Pieces, the Mies van der Rohe Society's celebration of what would have been the architects 128th birthday, at Crown Hall. 

Just this week, Tuesday to Saturday, there are no fewer than 18 events.  Tuesday is logjam day, with Balmori, Luftwerk's Petra Bachmaier and Sean Gallero, Pecha Kucha Chicago Volume #30 and SEAOI's rescheduled dinner meeting on Hurricane Sandy and Coastline Rebuilding Efforts.  Wednesday lunchtime at CAF, there's Jerry Johnson of Perkins+Will talking about Cedar Ridge High, and Susan Vreeland discussing the “girls” of Louis Tiffany's studio, and the Grant Park Advisory Council providing updates on such projects as Maggie Daley Park and the South Grant Park Skate Park.  Thursday, Yue Zhang discussed her book The Fragmented Politics of Urban Preservation: Beijing, Chicago and Paris at the Great Cities Institute, and Anthony Rubano talks about Postwar Suburban Housing at the Oak Park Public Library.

Even with all this, we've only scratched the surface.  Check out all 50 items on the March Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

No Maas Tuesday, but Stroik, Hillebrand, Mars (Roman) Holy Name, Mischa Leiner, Bill Latoza, John Norquist and more - New Additions to the April Calendar!

We've just added over half a dozen more great items to the April Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

First the bad news:  MVRDV's Winy Maas has cancelled his Tuesday lecture at UIC, to be rescheduled this Fall.  However, that afternoon, architect Duncan G. Stroik will be at Fourth Presbyterian Church for the Society of Architectural Historians/Chicago Chapter (registration was officially closed last Monday, but if you're motivated, engage your inner resourcefulness.) 

This Wednesday, April 10th, the Graham has a panel discussion on The Artist as Philanthropist: Artist-Endowed Foundations as a New Force in Cultural Philanthropy.  This Saturday, the American Planning Association kicks off its five-day 2013 National Planning Conference at the Hyatt Regency.

On Thursday, the 18th, Frank Lloyd Wright's Unity Temple in Oak Park hosts 99% Invisible's Roman Mars, while on Friday the 26th, the IIT Armour College of Engineering will be at Maggiano's Little Italy with a lecture by Richard Kristie of Wiss, Janney, Elstner on The Repair of Holy Name Cathedral, and on Saturday the 27th at Francis Parker, Argonne Lab's Don Hillebrand will talk about Chicago: A Leader in Energy and Technology Breakthroughs.

This week, Mischa Leiner of CoDe will be at UIC on Monday the 8th, Bill Latoza discusses Walter Netsch's Legacy in Chicago's Parks for Friends of the Parks at the Cliff Dwellers on Tuesday, the Congress for the New Urbanism's John Norquist will talk about The Market Embraces Urbanism at CAF lunchtime on Wednesday.

And there's much, much more, this week and beyond.  When we first put up the calendar, we said we had over 50 items.  Now, we're a week into the month and we still have over 50 great items.  Check out the April Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

Pallasmaa, Jeff Day on Monday, Leiner, Latoza, Stoller, Natke, Maas, much more - it's the April Calendar!

It's here:  The April 2013 Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.


It starts out Monday, April 1st with Juhani Pallasmaa at IIT (this is a change of the original playdate), and Jeff Day of Min | Day at the UIC School of Architecture.

Want More?

Architects and Designers:  Mischa Leiner, Bill Latoza on Walter Netsch, MVRDV's Winy Maas, Project Projects, Patricia Natke, Paul Stoller of Atelier Ten . . .

Academics, Curators and Activists:  Michael Webb, Hashim Sarkis, Mark Linder, Alison Fisher, David Van Zanten, John Norquist . . .

Places and Procedures: Kind Abdullah Financial District, Revitalizing the Chicago River, The Plant,  The Chicago Infrastructure Trust, Pilsen,  Chicago's New Eastside, Hairpin Lofts, The Architectural Rise of San Francisco, Unraveling Gridlock, SEAOI's 10th Annual Midwest Bridge Symposium, Working Together Day, Masonry Design and Construction for 2013 and Beyond, Working with a Green Architect, Community Tools for Affordable Housing . . .

New exhibitions: SynergiCity at CAF, Drawing the Future at the Block, Sharing Space and Test Fit at the Art Institute and Model Studies at the Graham . . .

Authors:  Timothy Mennel on Jane Jacobs, Edward Dimendberg on Diller Scofidio, D. Bradford Hunt and Jon B. DeVries on Planning Chicago . . . 

Preservation Chicago Spring 2013 Fundraiser . . .

And much, much more.  I'm sure we'll be adding dates, but even now we've got over 50 great events.  Want to know the who/what/when and where?  Check out the April 2013 Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

Chicken from Space lays Humongous Eggs - asks where she can find Jim Perdue

click images for larger view

"Don't the chickens participating in those commercials known what he has in store for them?", the fine-feathered alien inquired.

Go ahead.  Call MVRDV's latest design comical.  They won't mind at all.

It's their winning entry in a competition to design a new home for the China Comic and Animation Museum (CCAM) in Hangzhou, China.

And those aren't really eggs, but speech balloons, "a series of eight balloon shaped volumes create an internally complex museum experience of in total 30.000m2. Part of the project is also a series of parks on islands, a public plaza and a 13.000m2 expo centre. Construction start is envisioned for 2012, the total budget is 92 million Euro."

Services such as the lobby, education, three theatres/cinemas with in total 1111 seats and a comic book library occupy each their own balloon. If two balloons touch in the interior a large opening allows access and views in-between the volumes.  . . . One of the balloons is devoted to interactive experience in which visitors can actively experiment with all sorts of animation techniques like blue screen, stop motion, drawing, creating emotions etc. The core attraction of this space is a gigantic 3D zoetrope. The routing of the museum permits short or long visits, visits to the cinema, the temporary exhibition or the roof terrace restaurant. The façade of the museum is covered in a cartoon relief referring to a Chinese vase. The monochrome white concrete façade allows the speech balloons to function: texts can be projected onto the façade. The relief was designed in collaboration with Amsterdam based graphic designers JongeMeesters.

It was announced this morning that MVRDV's Winy Maas was been made a Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur.