Nuages

Herda added to Rosa, Somol, at Chicago Architectural Club Event TONIGHT

As if Art Institute Curator Joe Rosa and new UIC School of Architecture Director Robert Somol aren't enough, the Chicago Architectural Club has also added Sarah Herda, the new Director of the Graham Foundation to their program tonight. It's open to the public, and it begins tonight, Tuesday, October 23rd, at 6:30 P.M. at Jak's Tap, 901 West Jackson Boulevard.

Chicago Traffic scenes - Late Boat Run, Intersection Roulette

Bob and Denise Update Themselves

When Robert Venturi came to Crown Hall at IIT a couple of years ago to talk of Mies and the importance of signs and symbols, I noticed that the Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates website, while drawing on that emphasis with a day-glo colored, icon rich design, offered up a timeline of the firm's work, complete with stacking sound effects. that seemed to have halted after the year 2000.
Last week I received an email announcing a new update, and a revised timeline that includes such current projects as Lehigh Valley Hospital - Cedar Crest, and Temple Beth El in Sunbury, Pennsylvania. The bright, puppy-dog friendly design, as idiosyncratic as Venturi and Scott Brown themselves, meshes futurist and retro - there's even scrolling text in the status bar. It has a distinctive, easy-to-navigate look-and-feel that conveys a great deal of information in an engaging, almost home-spun package, and appears to accomplish it without a stitch of Flash. Check it out for yourself here.

LED Streetlights?

Via engadget, we came across this recent press release, on how the city of Ann Arbor, Michigan plans to convert all of its more than 1,000 streetlights to LED (light-emitting-diode) lamps, at a cost of over $600,000. The city expects to save at least $100,000 a year in costs, and reduce greenhouse emissions by over 2,400 tons annually.

"The LED lights typically burn five times longer than the bulbs they replace and require less than half the energy. Each fixture draws 56 watts and is projected to last 10 years, replacing fixtures with bulbs that use more than 120 watts and last only two years."

Traditionally, LED's, while more efficient than incandescents - most everything is - have been much less efficient than alternatives such as fluorescent. The manufacturer behind the Ann Arbor process, Cree Lighting, is claiming they've created a lamp that has produced laboratory results fromm 99 lumens output per watt (warm white) to 129 lumens (cool-white), and is claiming commercial products using the technology will be available in one to two years.

The City of Chicago's Environmental Action Agenda for 2005 included a pilot project on the use of LED's for street lighting.

Because they last four or more times longer than other forms of street lighting, LED's also create labor savings by having to be changed so much less often. There are other controversies regarding the actual measurement of their efficiency, and the tonal quality of the light produced.

The Age of Bilbao, Ten Years Out

photo: Worldy.info

ArchitectureChicagoPlus correspondent, architect Iker Gil, reminds us that today is the ten year anniversary of one of the most pivotal dates in architectural history: the October 19th, 1997 opening of Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. It was the day "The Bilbao Effect" drove the final spike through the heart of Post-Modernism, and the age of the Techno-Baroque was born. Read all about it - and see the photo-essay - here.

Renzo Piano's 615 foot long extractor - er, "Bridgeway" - begins construction in Millennium Park

Little more than four years after its opening, a 500 foot long strip of Millennium Park is again under construction, for a period projected to be almost two years. On September 20th, a groundbreaking took place for the Nichols Bridgeway (is that anything like a Westfield Shoppingtown?), named after John Nichols, former chairman of Marmon Group, and his wife Alexandra, who've contributed a total $19,000,000 to both the Bridgeway and to the Art Institute of Chicago's Modern Wing, for which the fund-raising is at $300 million and counting.

Both the 264,000 square-foot Modern Wing and the Bridgeway, hereafter known as "the bridge", were designed by architect Renzo Piano, and are scheduled to be completed in tandem in mid-2009. "The bridge," designed to suck Millennium Park visitors into the museum like a giant anteater, is Miesian minimalist, a 15-foot-wide platform rising in a straight line across its 615-foot length to the height of the Modern Wing's third floor, on the south side of Monroe Street.

The Nichols is the yang to the ying of the Millennium Park's BP Bridge, designed by Frank Gehry. The BP snakes and meanders; the Nichols is straight as an arrow. The BP is stout like a robust peasant, the Nichols is a bare-bones supermodel and the runway she walks down, all in one. The BP is earth, hugging the ground atop a continuous berm, the Nichols is sky, an aerie perched upon toothpick pilotti's. The impact on the park of those pilotti supports remains to be seen; renderings have a habit of placing them behind trees and shrubbery functioning as fig leaves.

The Nichols is a very expensive solution to what could have been accomplished at a tiny fraction of the cost with some graceful landscaping and a precisely coordinated stoplight, but we are promised that we will all be inextricably drawn to the Nichols and enthralled by the views it affords of the surrounding park, lake, and cityscape. The Art Institute is banking that as many as 300,000 of us will supplement the museum's current annual attendence, as well.

Right now, a rather unlovely chain link fence marks off the construction site along Monroe, and high walls separate it from the rest of the park. The museum is doing their part to make the intrusion slightly more palatable by decorating those walls with a series of reproductions comparing works destined to grace the walls of the Modern Wing, by artists from Gauguin, to Sullivan, to Lichtenstein and Twombly, to flowers you're likely to find in the Lurie Garden and the park.

On a related note, the museum has added a "check here first" page on its website giving a month-by-month breakdown on which collections and galleries will be closed or partially available as they are renovated and/or reinstalled as part of the run-up to the 2009 opening of the new addition.

AIC's Rosa, UIC's Somol on tap at Jak's for CAC 10/23

The Chicago Architectural Club's October event will feature an evening with Joe Rosa, the John H. Bryan Curator of Architecture at the Art Institute of Chicago, and Robert Somol, the newly named Director of the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Rosa was named to his post in the fall of 2005, and since then has mounted shows of the architecture of Douglas Garofalo, the photography of Todd Eberle, as well as Young Chicago, a cross-discipline group show of area designers. His current exhibition, Xefirotarch, featuring the work of architect Hernán Díaz Alonso’s, closes on October 28th.

Somol was named to his post this summer, and is a former professor of architecture at Ohio State University, and has taught at the UIC, UCLA, Rice, Princeton, Columbia and Harvard - you know, that whole crowd. He is also co-principal, along with Linda Pollari, of PSX Architecture in Los Angeles, where he designed the "off-use" House combining a home, an office, and, because it's L.A., a pool.

The Chicago Architectural Club program is next Tuesday, October 23rd, beginning at 6:30 P.M, at Jak's Tap, 901 West Jackson.

Chicago Streetscene - Veined Spiral

green design for all, Driehaus Preservation Awards - late listings to October calendar

We're late getting this into press (the official RSVP deadline was October 9th) but you may want to check out if you can get into this Tuesday morning's, October 16th panel at Access Living which explores the combination of Universal Design, which removes barriers to access for people with disabilities, and Green Design which is . . . well, if you live in Chicago, you should know already. Panelists will include Chicago's Chief Environmental Office Sadhu Johnston, Karen Tamley, the city's Commissioner for People with Disabilities, and Access Living CEO Marca Bristo, among others. Call 312/904-0713 .

Then, on October 27th at the Chicago Club, Landmarks Illinois will present the 2007
Richard H. Driehaus Preservation Awards. Among those to be recognized are the adaptive reuse of the 1911 Chicago and Northwest Railroad Powerhouse on Canal, the Frank Lloyd Wright's Avery Coonley House in Riverside, Louis Sullivan's last commission, the Krause Music Store on North Lincoln, as well as the Wright-designed Muirhead Farmhouse, in Hampshire. The President's Award to will go Friedman Properties' restorationg and repurposing of the Medinah Temple/Tree Studios Block. Tickets are $85.00 for members, $110.00 for non-members. Call 312/922-1742� by October 19th to RSVP.

Finally a reminder that this Wednesday, October 17th at McCloska Auditorium, 3201 South State at IIT, Billie Tsien will be presenting the annual Mies van der Rohe lecture. In June, Tod Williams Billie Tsien architects were named the winners of a competition to design the new $100 million Reva and David Logan Center for Creative and Performing Arts at the University of Chicago. You can listen to an Architectural Record interview with the architects concerning the project here.

The Houses That John Wellborn Root Built (and Died In)

An unlikely source, the Decatur Herald-Review, carries an excellent story this Sunday by Phil Jacobs on the Queen Anne detailed house at 1308 North Astor (leftmost in the bottom photograph) designed by John Wellborn Root in 1887 for James L. Houghteling (1855-1910), who in 1883 founded the Brotherhood of St. Andrew at St. James Cathedral, and whose family funded the Cathedral's 1913 St. Andrew's Chapel, designed by Bertram Goodhue, the architect of Rockefeller Chapel at the University of Chicago.

It was also the home where Houghteling's uncle-in-law, the U.S. Senator from Michigan, Francis Stockbridge, died during a 1894 visit. Just three years before, in the house next door (photograph center), Root himself had died, after throwing a reception for the eastern architects who had been chosen to help design the 1893 Columbian Exposition. On a brutal January night, he had insisted on seeing each one to their carriage, and contracted the pneumonia that would kill him several days later.

Originally, there were four houses in the set; the fourth and southernmost demolished long ago. (Since 1962, it's been part of the site of Bertrand Goldberg's Astor Tower) The Houghteling house's current owner, artist, sculptor and musician Andrew Lidgus, is selling the house and buying an art gallery. According to one report the property was last sold in October of 2006 for $1,950,000, but it can now be yours for $4.5 million. For those of you with that kind of spare pocket change, you can take a virtual tour here.

The architecture of colonialism and revolution, in crumbling solidarity

Computerworld has an interesting Reuters article on the lengths residents of Cuba must go to post independent blogs.

Only government employees, academics and researchers are allowed their own Internet accounts, which are provided by the government.

Regular Cubans are allowed only to open e-mail accounts that they can access through terminals at post offices, where they can also see Cuban Web sites, but access to the rest of the World Wide Web is blocked.

Only 2% of the island's residents have access to the web. Because of this, bloggers have to resort to subterfuges such as dressing up like foreign tourists to frequent internet connections at local hotels. (The $6.00 an hour rates are the equivalent of two weeks pay for the average Cuban). The topic of the independent blogs range from criticism of the bureaucracy, Soviet era cartoons, and a photo blog on life in Havana with numerous photographs - including the one at the top of this post - of the once grand buildings of the city now crumbling under the long, toxic convergence of a Soviet pull-out of support, continuing United States embargoes, and a repressive and ossified authoritarian state.

Nor is the decay limited to structures of the colonial period. Outside of Havana, the grand Escuelas Nacionales de Arte began construction in the 1960's as a vanguard expression of revolution, but by 1965 revisionism rebranded the fantastical structures with their Catalan-inspired vaults as "bourgeois", and they've been allowed to decay pretty much ever since.

And while we're talking about revolutionary-era architecture in a market economy world, here's a report by New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff on how 34-year-old Russian billionaire Sergey Gordeev appears to be emerging as the champion of Moscow's early Communist era architecture, including the iconic, endangered 1927 Melnikov House. Irony abounds.

Intersections and Chicago: City on the Move, time capsule photos in a new book and on exhibit at CAF starting tonight

Thursday evening, October 11th, from 5:30 - 7:30 P.M., marks the opening of Intersections: Views Across Chicago, a new exhibition, at the Chicago Architecture Foundation, 224 South Michigan, of images taken by Chicago Surface Lines staff photographers of the streets and cityscapes through which the company's streetcar routes traveled.

CAF CEO and President Lynn Osmond is scheduled to speak, as are the authors of Chicago: City on the Move - Michael Williams, Richard Cahan and Bruce Moffat, from which the photos were taken. The book is a follow-up companion volume to Cahan and Williams' critically acclaimed Richard Nickel's Chicago: Photographs of a Lost City, released last year.

Chicago: City on the Move is another remarkable collection of previously unpublished photographs that's both a portrait of the Chicago's public transit lines and a time capsule of the city's past. There's a view down Randolph Street in 1931, the inky blackness of the night defeated by the glow from proud signs eulogizing a vanished world - The Oriental, the United Artists, the Garrick, Henrici's, the Apollo (Fannie Brice appearing live). Only the Oriental survives. There's a shot of the site of the IBM Building and Marina City when it was nothing more than open rail tracks, and a stunning picture of Chicago's first electrically powered railway running through a doll house array of buildings at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. Snippets of text on the city from works of writers from Theodore Dreiser to Sandra Cisneros accent the book, and the foreword is by writer Stuart Dybek, recently recognized with one of the MacArthur Foundation's "genius" grants.

Chicago: City on the Move is another invaluable collection and an entertaining read. If the CAF's Intersections is anywhere near as good, it'll be well worth a visit.

A Tree Grows in MoMo

They may look a bit forlorn - it's too late to get much of a bloom this year - but if you look up while standing outside the ABC7 studios, you can see the all but bare branches of a series of trees that have been planted atop the base of Booth/Hansen's MoMo development at the northeast corner of State and Randolph, part of an eventual roof terrace that's the vertical prelude, complete with a central, three-story high hole, to the building's 409-foot-high residential tower.

On-Line Petition opposes Children's Museum Land Grab in Grant Park

A website called Save Grant Park has started an on-line petition drive to oppose the construction of a 100,000-square-foot home for the Chicago Children's Museum in Grant Park. The website includes links to mainstream media articles on the battle, a blog, and links to finding ways to contact your local alderman on the issue. You can view and add your name to the petition here. Its text is simple and direct:

We, the undersigned, oppose the construction of the Chicago Children's Museum on Grant Park.

Grant Park has remained uniquely protected open space for 171 years, and should remain "forever open, free and clear" for future generations of Chicagoans - from all corners of the city -- to enjoy.

In the first five days since the petition has been posted, over 200 signatures have been gathered, mostly from Chicago, but also representing a large number of suburbs, as well as Spain, Mexico and Canada. View and sign here.

Dunham Building Appears to be Toast

The offbeat, eight story building at 450 east Ohio with its large attic window and graceful ornament appears about to be ground into the dust. The Dunham building stands behind the new 600 North Lake Shore Drive megatowers, in a district where new residential high-rises are threatening to crowd out everything else. According to postings on the Skyscraper Page, Robinette Demolition is swathing the building in scaffolding and bringing in the dumpsters as a prelude to demolition.

I've had a hard time finding more information on the structure. Apparently, it doesn't even have the protection of being rated "orange" on the Commission on Chicago Landmark's Survey of Historic Buildings potentially worth saving, although the survey's database includes a cryptic listing for "400-450 East Ohio" with no information other than the address itself.

For a long period beginning in 1944, the Dunham was home to the famed architectural photography firm Hedrich-Blessing. Their second floor offices were designed by Larry Perkins and Phillip Will, the founding architects of the still very much alive firm of Perkins+Will.
No one would claim The Dunham to be an architectural masterpiece, but in an increasingly homogenized district of look-alike condo towers, its quirky charm will be missed.

On Leong Crushing Wright, Sullivan, Bunshaft

I don't know exactly who the supporters of the On Leong Merchant Association Building in Chicago's Chinatown are , but I do know they're the ones I want working precincts for me come the next election. The Partners in Preservation competition to select the winners who will divide up a honey pot of $1,000,000 in grants is nearing its end. Voting closes October 10th, and the identity of current leaders and also-rans may surprise you. Read all about it and see the pictures, including a handy-dandy chart (it was done in Excel, so it has to be important) here.

Chicago Streetscenes - 2007 Chicago Marathon

One street. 35,000 runners.






Faced with record 85 degree temperatures, high humidity, one fatality, and hundreds of runners set to the hospital, this was the first Chicago Marathon to be called off before everyone could cross the finish line.

Teddy Cruz lectures November 1, Grant Park South Wall tonight, Rolf Achilles on Chicago-Budapest Connection October 18

Remarkable Guatemalan-born architect Teddy Cruz will be in Chicago on November 1 to deliver the The American Planning Association and the National Building Museum's 2oo7 L'Enfant Lecture, From the Global Border to the Border Neighborhood, at 7:00 P.M. at Preston Bradley Hall in the Chicago Cultural Center. Here's what I wrote about Cruz's compelling work, at the end of an article on a Field Museum exhibition on pre-fab housing. Here's the official event description:

As the world becomes more interconnected, it is critical for professionals in the built environment to think beyond borders and geographic lines. Inspired by his San Diego office that sits near the busiest border crossing the world, architect and urban theorist Teddy Cruz attempts to integrate two cultures geographically close yet culturally distant from one another. Cruz will discuss his firm's work in creating affordable housing, community centers, and developments on both sides of the border.

The lecture will be $10.00 for members of either of the two sponsoring organizations; $15.00 for the general public. Register on-line (deadline October 23rd). More information on the event here. More information on Teddy Cruz here.

also . . .
Two Late Listings to October Calendar

Tonight, October 4th. Completing Grant Park's South Wall and its Frame
This Grant Park Advisory Council session will feature The Central Station Development team presenting two new high-rises to be built along Roosevelt Road. 6:00 P.M., Roosevelt University, Congress Lounge, 430 South Michigan Avenue, 2nd Floor

Thursday, October 18th, Art Nouveau: The Chicago-Budapest Connection
Art historian Rolf Achilles will be delivering this month's Landmarks Illinois Preservation Snapshots lecture at the Claudia Cassidy Theatre of the Chicago Cultural Center at 12:15 P.M., offering a "visual exploration of the influences of Chicago and Louis Sullivan on form and function in Budapest, circa 1910."

Influential critic Herbert Muschamp dies at 59

Word came today that former New York Times architecture critic Herbert Muschamp has died, from lung cancer, at age 59. He was a master at vibrant, incisive, and sometimes gloriously over-the-top prose that placed the beating heart of contemporary architecture within the broader streams of contemporary culture. Even if I didn't always agree with his conclusions, I loved his passion. I'll never forget how several years ago, out of the blue, this obscure, fledgling writer received an e-mail from him with kind and encouraging words about my work. Read the New York Times obituary here, and, via Archinect and the Gawker, the text of an internal memo marking his passing here.

Where Am 1? x5 - The Answers Revealed

Places your bets. Answers tomorrow.

A: Garfield Park fieldhouse


B: Midwest Athletic Club, 3800 W. Madison


C: Chicago Cultural Center cornice


D: Morgan Street Public Storage


E: Bankers Building, entrance, South Clark Street at Adams

A Forest Departs - Tree by Tree

At a deconstructing park, Big John scoops 'em up and sends them on their way. See the photo-essay and read all about it here.

Lagrange, Rubio, Tsien, Zago, Kipnis, Celebrating George Danforth, TIF's, Olympics,Remnants of the "L" - over 50 events on October Calendar

If you're bored this month, you've got a real problem. There are over 50 events on the October Architectural calendar.

Lucien Lagrange and Thomas Phifer at CAF, Elva Rubio at Archeworks, Billie Tsien at IIT, where there's also a panel remembering the great George Danforth. There's Andrew Zago and Jeffry Kipnis at UIC, the 3rd ward's Pat Dowell discussing the alderman's role in city planning for Women in Planning and Development, Designing an Olympic Bid at Chicago Women in Architecture, two major benefits/award programs - for the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, and AIA Chicago's Designight.

Mary Pattillo discussing her new book Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City, at CAF, where later in the day there's a panel on China and the Crisis Infrastructure. Engineers discuss the CTA superstation at SEAOI's monthly dinner meeting. Sadhu Johnston, John Ronan, Sarah Dunn and Helen Kessler at Chicago Humanities Festival events. Rachel Weber discusses TIF's at APA Chicago. DeStefano+Parters Scott Sarver and Avi Lothan discussing current work for Friends of Downtown at the Cultural Center. Graham Garfield on lost remnants of the historic Chicago "L". Plus a full roster of programs at the Chicago Center of Green Technology.

And, as they say, much, much more. Check it all out and start placing reminders in your calendar here.

Chicago Streetscene - Hanson Lives!

Being woefully ignorant about pop culture, when I hear the name Hanson, I remember a band of three teen brothers that became a phenomenon upon bursting onto the rock scene in 1997 and imagine that, their 15 minutes of fame presumably expended, they've long since disappeared into a Bonaduce-in-the-making obscurity.

The adoring masses of teen girls descending on Marina City's House of Blues today proclaimed otherwise.

Even as the brothers wrestle with the issues of geriatrics as they begin the steep descent into their mid-to-late twenties, they have apparently captured an entirely new generation of female followers, a thousand of so of whom followed the Hansons on a one-mile walk through River North, both touting their latest album, The Walk and, according to a Pollstar article to "help raise awareness of poverty and AIDS in Africa."

"The trio has partnered with TOMS Shoes with the goal of delivering 50,000 pairs of shoes to needy children in Africa. For every pair of shoes purchased at each stop on Hanson's tour, TOMS will donate an equal pair.

"We want to inspire others to look for simple, tangible and fun ways to make a difference," Taylor Hanson said. "It is easy to be halted by the great hurdles of poverty and AIDS, but making an impact can begin as simply as giving someone a pair of shoes or buying a song."

Yeah, that kind of celebrity do-gooding, combined with album promotion, leaves the Hansons easy fodder for jokes, but cut them some slack. On a beautiful fall day, with teens, just at the point of getting a handle on what life might be, marching with their idols in solidarity of fan worship and social awareness, that's not a bad trade-off.