Bobbing for Mies - Robert Venturi at IIT

Robert Venturi comes to modernist shrine Crown Hall on the IIT campus to out Mies van der Rohe as a closet symbolist and to attempt to define the architecture of our time. Read all about it here.

FEMA threatens to demolish Sullivan/Wright cottages damaged by Katrina

Courtesy of Joan Pomeranc of AIA Chicago, here's info from AIA/Architect online and the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy on the desperate efforts to save Ocean Springs, Mississippi beach houses, designed by Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright in 1890, that were gravely damaged by Hurricane Katrina. The Charnley cottage and guest cottage have been declared "not reasonably restorable," by FEMA, which is about to turn them over to the Army Corps of Engineers to be cleared away as rubble.

Photos of 630 North Franklin

630 North Franklin is the latest development from Brininstool & Lynch (in this case with Perkins + Will) for progressive developer Colin Kihnke's CMK Companies, which also produced Ralph Johnson's striking Contemporaine just a few blocks south. According to Emporis, the 11 story, 165 unit condo building is only the second Illinois high-rise to be built with a precast concrete structure. See the photos here.

Chicago, Are You Dense? Well, no, not really . . .

Demographia has issued a new report World Urban Areas, Population and Density, (Adobe Acrobat format) ranking the world's 1,117 cities with 500,000 or more people on the basis of population density. Demographia is one of the websites of Wendell Cox, whose work is often published by the Heartland Institute, a right-wing think tank that wraps itself in a mantle of libertarianism to advance the interests of large corporations. Similarly, Demographia is pro roads, anti mass transit, anti smart growth, and pro sprawl, which is apparently what its new survey is intended to support - its two graphs illustrate a positive relationship between low density and high incomes.

The premise is highly contestable - does the relationship represent a cause or a result? Read more about it here.

Museum of Broadcast Communications Curtain Wall Going Up

The transformation of a haggard former parking garage just north of architect Bertrand Goldberg's Marina City into a new home for Chicago's Museum of Broadcast Communications continues with the addition of a steel support structure for a new curtain wall that will open up views into the building from along State Street. In 2004, the MBC entered into an easement agreement with Marina City Hotel Enterprises LLC, which owns the portions of the complex below the top 40 floors controlled by condo residents, allowing the museum to build out over an access ramp fronted by a low concrete wall that had scarred State Street for decades.

The MBC's new 70,000 square foot, $21,000,000 facility, designed by Chicago firm Eckenhoff Saunders Architects, Inc, in partnership with sustainable design architect Helen Kessler, is scheduled to open late in 2006. A web cam allows you to follow the progress of the construction, with new shots posted every 15 minutues.

Essential Readings on the Issue of Torture

The issue of torture in the war on terror goes to the heart of what we are as a nation. Andrew Sullivan has just published what I would recommend as a right-on analysis, in response to Charles Krauthammer's Weekly Standard piece recommending that we codify the endorsement of torture in certain cases.

Sullivan is respectful of Krauthammer's closely reasoned arguments (although Krauthammer has always reminded me of Uncle Charlie in Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt, a man who thinks a world is a foul sty and is a perpetual apologist for almost any violence or injustice as long as it's done by his kind of guys), but comes to a very different conclusion. Sullivan understands that in an extreme situation (the favorite hypothetical is the "ticking bomb" scenario, where a terrorist suspect knows the location of a device set to kill thousands of people), torture might be deployed, but the transgression cannot - and should not - be indemnified.

"In order to retain fundamental American values," concludes Sullivan, "we have to banish from the United States the totalitarian impulse that is integral to every act of torture. We have to ensure that the virus of tyranny is never given an opening to infect the Constitution and replicate into something that corrupts as deeply as it wounds." I think Sullivan's analysis may be one of the most important documents of this decade. But judge for yourself, Krauthammer here, and Sullivan here.

A9 Blockview beta Offers Interesting - and Erratic - Look of Cityscape

Probably just about everyone is familiar by now with Google Maps, which allows you to find any location in the United States, zoom down to street level, and place underneath a continuous satellite photograph of the terrain. Now the search engine A9's A9 Maps has Blockview, a beta map program that includes street-level photos of the that same terrain. (Someone has actually figured out how to bring this info into Google maps, but that's another story.)

It's really designed as a tie-in to its local listings, to show "street views of millions of business and their surroundings. Using trucks equipped with digital cameras, global positioning system (GPS) receivers, and proprietary software and hardware, A9.com drove tens of thousands of miles capturing images and matching them with businesses and the way they look from the street." The process appears to be highly automated, and the results are highly variable - you get pictures of vacant lots, and passing shots where it's often hard to figure out what you're actually looking at.

More to the point, the coverage is highly selective. (You can click the checkbox "Mark Streets Containing BlockView™ Images " and all the covered streets are marked in blue.) As might be expected, pretty much all the streets in the Loop and its environs are covered, but Millennium Park is not. Once you get outside of the Loop, it's pretty hard to figure out the logic behind the selection. There are multiple shots of Rafael Vinoly's new Graduate School of Business on the University of Chicago campus, but there's not a shot to be found of Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House, just across the street. If you luck out, you may actually find a good photograph of what you're looking for, but for now A9 Blockview is more a curiosity and a crapshoot than a reliable resource. Since it's currently a beta, however, it's easy to imagine how Blockview - or something like it - could evolve into something quite useful.

Tanks for the Memory

Mayor Richard M. Daley jumpstarts a Chicago Architectural Club competition that attempts to place the soul of Chicago in the city's historic water tanks. Read all about it - and see all the pictures here.

Benites & Lyster edit current 306090: Regarding Public Space

Chicago architect Clare Lyster and former Chicago architect Cecilia Benites are co-editors for the current edition of the New York architectural publication, 306090, Regarding Public Space, in which "Contributors . . . challenge traditional typologies (plaza, street, park and commons)," and suggest alternatives to the traditional methodologies ("top-down master planning, singularity of design, control and reform measures, cultural and formal expressions") that were used to create them.

The 150+ page publication includes the work of 16 contributors covering projects and proposals from across the globe. Lyster and Benites' Assembled Ecologies: Infrastructure à la carte, created along with Julie Flohr, was one of six winning submissions in the Graham Foundation's 21st Century Lakefront competition last year that dealt with the issue of creating a two mile long addition to Chicago's lakefront. 306090: Regarding Public Space, priced at $11.95, is distributed through the Princeton Architectural Press, and it is also available at the Prairie Avenue Bookshop.

Chicago Streetscene - October 17: Hubbard Street Courthouse

Archi-Tourist goes beyond Gehry to guide travelers to new Chicago architecture

John Hill, the Chicago architect behind the popular Archidose blog, has launched a noble experiment, The Archi-Tourist, that aims to provide travelers with a guide to architecture that goes beyond the usual iconic stararchitect buildings. Initially, the guide offers information on 50 projects in twelve cities across three continents.

The Chicago section currently includes nine buildings, including John Ronan's Akiba-Schechter Jewish Day School, Tadao Ando's little known Eychaner/Lee House, Jeanne Gang's Kam Liu Building in Chinatown, and Jean-Paul Viguier's Sofitel Hotel. Each entry follows a standardized format, with architect name, completion date, image, map and location, as well as instructions on how to get to the building via public transpotation. If the building is open to the public, access hours are also listed.

The site is built on Wiki technology, which means that it allows others to add content. If there's a building you want to add, go to the contributor page to learn how its done.

Hill obviously can't do it alone, but if others help fill in the content, and the site is sufficiently optimized and publicized so that other sites link to it and it starts getting a decent placement in the search engines, Archi-Tourist could become an invaluable tool for tourists and architecture buffs alike - an on-line, traveler-friendly complement to local print resources such as the AIA Guide to Chicago and Chicago's Famous Buildings, as well as a self-enriching on-line community.

Eminent Domain as Class Warfare

Via PLANetizen and Archnewsnow, here's an excellent LA Times article on Riviera Beach, Florida, where city officials want to use eminent domain to demolish the homes of 6,000 of the town's 32,500 residents to free up lakefront property for a billion dollar yachting/residential development to lure the type of rich old white people (average age: 66.6 years) that now populate Palm Beach, just a few miles to south, where the median home price is over $2,000,000, compared to $290,000 in Riviera Beach.

The irony, of course, is that it was the more liberal members of the U.S. Supreme Court who carried the court's recent controversial ruling that the constitution's "nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation" clause gives governments carte blanche to define "public use" pretty much any way they want, even if it means seizing property of the poor and middle class to turn it over to the rich, just to increase the tax base.

60-year-old housepainter Martha Babson sums up the situation succinctly, "What they mean is that the view I have is too good for me, and should go to some millionaire."

Is TIF forever? Chicago's TIF coffers swell

Like all good ideas, Chicago's TIF (tax increment financing) program may fall victim to its own success, moving from solution to problem. The program siphons off increases in property tax revenue to stimulate development in stagnant communities, but, according to a great article in this week Crain's Chicago Business by Greg Hinz over $300,000,000 has accumulated unspent from the city's 131 TIF (tax increment financing) districts, at a time when Chicago's revenues are running short and the city is still seeking to find a way to fund basic upkeep on its new crown jewel, Millennium Park. According to Hinz, nearly a third of the city's property tax revenues are now being diverted into TIF's. (If you want to learn more about Chicago's TIF's, the Neighborhood Capital Budget Group has a invaluable website with a lot of information and analysis, including how much money has flowed into each TIF, and the projects on which it's been dispersed.)

The Central Loop TIF district alone generates nearly $90,000,000 annually, although, with this month's groundbreaking at the long dormant Block 37 and two large condo towers going up just down the street, the Loop can no longer be considered a depressed area.

The city has become adept in expanding how TIF money can used. Large amounts of TIF money went into the development of Millennium Park, even though it falls just outside the Central Loop TIF's boundaries. According to Hinz, about $30,000,000 a year of TIF money has been used to fund new school construction.

TIF money may have already become an addiction. Even developers in booming areas like the South Loop expect - and get - dollops of TIF cash to aid their projects. The time to be subsidizing development is when there isn't any, not when we're in the midst of the hottest real estate market in memory.

All government programs have a tendency to become self-perpetuating, and TIF's are no exception. The Central Loop TIF is scheduled to expire in 2007, and whether or not it's allowed to die offers up a clear test: will the city have the discipline to turn off the spigot, or will TIF's just become an enormous, perpetual goody-bag for dispensing favor? In the case of successful TIF's like the Central Loop, the best thing to do is declare victory and move on.

Private vs Public selves on Chicago's Red Line

Via Archidose and Gaper's Block, here's a link to a great website, The Beautiful People Take the Red Line, by Howard Blume, self-described Paparazzi to the people. It consists of three selections of shots of people riding Chicago's Red Line "L". A subway car is a kind of psychic museum of the way we live within our own private selves, pockets of being hermetically segregated from an often densely packed community of others that we share the space with. The last gallery breaks the wall - the subjects are now aware they're being photographed: consciously public, directly engaged but increasingly guarded, their reactions devolving into a vastly smaller repertoire of expected behavior . . . To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet . . .

A Bureaucrat Triumphs and a Little Bit of Chicago Dies

And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory - this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me it was me. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, contingent, mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I sensed that it was connected with the taste of the tea and the cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours, could, no, indeed, be of the same nature. Whence did it come? What did it mean? How could I seize and apprehend it? - Marcel Proust, in Á La Recherche du Temps Perdu on his encounter with a madeleine.

For as long as anyone remembers, one of the great unexpected pleasures of living or working on the periphery of Chicago's Loop was the strong aroma of chocolate suddenly wafting mysteriously through the air. Now, this singular delight is about to meet a brutish end. The countless many who loved it have been outnumbered by a disdainful one, slithering furtively to the EPA with a formal complaint against the scentgiver, the Blommer Chocolate Company, which has been processing cocoa beans in its Kinzie Street factory for sixty-six years. With singular and relentless obtuseness, the EPA has now put the strong-arm on Blommer to protect the "children, the elderly and people with heart and lung diseases" from the pernicious effects of inhaling cocoa dust, by installing equipment that will banish it from the air forever. What's next? Putting the screws to bakeries to eliminate whatever particulate produces the aroma of fresh-baked bread?

In reply, I can only paraphrase the response to the mania of another bureaucracy, the FDA, as it "protects" us from the supposed peril of prescription drugs imported from Canada, "Show me the dead chocolate sniffers." Show me the helpless urchins, weezing invalids and lovable grandmothers brought low by Blommer's romantic emissions. I suggest to you, sir, that you cannot, because they do not exist. Old, young or infirm, place any of them within the power of that sweetly dense scent, and I submit you will witness neither consternation nor concern, but only an unforced smile.

Six decades of pleasure, gone in an instant via a desk jockey's decree, the long, cold winter hard upon us, and aromatic respite snatched away, never to return. It's almost enough to turn one into a libertarian.

I Got Your Rafael Moneo Coffee Mug Right Here - let the Holiday Shopping gauntlet begin

Australian architect Ed Chew has tipped me off to his offbeat website, ArchQuotes.info, which, appropriately, offers up a regular dose of quotes from prominent architects from around the world. This week, it includes quotes from such diverse practioners as Ken Yeang, Frank Gehry and Alvar Aalto.

Another section of the site offers up Chew's trademarked ArchiMuqz, small or large coffee mags with a caricature of and quote from a famous architect. (Dishwasher and microwave safe!) Although the collection includes the usual international suspects like Gehry, Wright and Libeskind, it also has a specific Asian emphasis, with mugs for Kisho Kurokawa (Kuala Lumpur International Airport,) and with Norman Foster having separate mugs for the HKIA airport and the HSBC Tower in Hong Kong.

I haven't ordered anything from this site yet, and I'm not freakin Consumer Reports, so if you wind up having complaints, don't come crying back to me. But if there's a certain someone on your list who's pining for an Adolf Loos Ornament is Crime coffee mug for Christmas, Ed Chew may be your go-to guy.

Almost 50 Dates on December's Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events

The holidays aren't slowing down architecture-related events in Chicago this December. The Gene Siskel Film Center is sponsoring a mini-festival of three films - on Antonio Gaudi, Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright in Japan. There are conferences on Structural Engineering and making affordable construction green and sustainable. There's Archeworks fall critique. There are lectures by Mark Sexton, Steven Holl, Robert Bruegman on sprawl, Charlie Lazor on his Flatpak House, and and the always provocative Dan Wheeler. Add in lunchtime lectures on the Loop's houses of worship, the Illinois Central Railroad's impact on the lakefront, and a discussion of the Tiffany Domes of the Chicago Cultural Center, and you'll find no shortage of choices to supplement your holiday shopping and final visit to Marshall Fields before it disappears under the smothering mantle of Macy's. Look over all of Decembers events here.

Growth of Chicago's downtown population tracked in new Brookings Institution Report

The Brookings Institution has just issued a new report, Who Lives Downtown, that tracks the growth pattern of the downtowns of American cities over the last three decades. While the 45 downtowns tracked in the study from 1970 to 2000 had a net gain of only 35,0000 housing units, Chicago's downtown alone has grown by over 20,000 residents, a 39.4% gain, to a total of 72,843.

Almost all that growth - over 16,000 people - occurred between 1990 and 2000. During the same 30 year period, Chicago's overall city population declined by 13.4%

Chicago's downtown has the highest rate of home ownership among the 45 cities surveyed - over 18,000 of the 44,638 housing units are owner-occupied. In all downtowns surveyed, the fastest growing segment is adults 25 to 34, while people over 65 and under 18 represent the biggest decline. Chicago's downtown is also very integrated compared to our cities. The only one of the survey's lists of the ten most and least white, black hispanic or Asian downtowns that Chicago appears on is that for Asian's, who comprise 8.4% of our downtown population - in Lower Manhattan, Asian's share of population is 41.8%. 67.6% of Chicago's downtown residents have at least a bachelor's degree, bested only by Midtown Manhattan's 71.5%.

Lest we become complacent, however, during the same period that America's downtowns added 35,000 people, our suburbs gained 13,000,000.

Seeing MacStars in Chicago's Grant Park

Is a franchised Hollywood-style Walk of Fame just the ticket for an underutilized portion of Chicago's Grant Park? Read all about it here.

Learning from North Lawndale - 2006 Burnham Prize Competition Announced

The Chicago Architectural Club has announced the theme for the 2006 Burnham Prize Competition: Learning from North Lawndale - Defining the Urban Neighborhood in the 21st Century. There is no specific program, but addresses the challenge of North Lawndale's 5,000 vacant lots, half of them owned by the City of Chicago. The competition seeks entrees "that address these lots or the or the urban fabric in-between."

Registration closes on January 20, 2006, and Phase One entries will be due next February 3rd. The first round jury, to be chaired by landscape architect Walter Hood and including architect Kerl Lejeune of Booth/Hanson and a balance of members to be named later, will narrow the entries down to five finalists. Second phase entries will be due May 15, 2006. The prize for the winner is an extended fellowship at the American Academy in Rome for the Fall of 2006. Full information, including program, materials and download, can be found on the CAC's website here.

Pigeons in the Rain - Chicago Streetscene, November 15, 2005

Neat new guide to Chicago's Public Art - and its free!

The Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, with the sponsorship of the Chicago Office of Tourism, has issued a rather splendid free publication, The Chicago Public Art Guide. The 80-page publication is a treasure trove of information on everything from the Picasso Statute in Daley Plaza, to artwork in the parks, at the airports and in the neighborhoods.

If you've ever wondered where to find a Henry Moore sundial (try Sundial: Man Enters the Cosmos right by the Planetarium) or who designed the seahorses at Buckingham Fountain (Marcel Francois Loyau), you can find it all here, with lots of photographs - all color - in an easy to carry format, which includes an attached fold-out map of artworks in the Greater Loop area.

The profiles of the artworks are somewhat sanitized - the extended entry on the Haymarket memorial doesn't mention that previous memorials were blown up by 60's radicals, and the description for Milton Horn's Chicago Rising From the Lake leaves out the great story of how it was lost after the Wacker Drive parking garage for which was created was torn down, only to be found decades later in a trash dump, restored and remounted along Chicago's riverwalk. Still, this is the kind of overview that usually exists only in expensive coffee table books, and you can get it for free. I found my copy in the Visitors Center at the Chicago Cultural Center. It may or may not have been distributed to the city's other libraries - my contact at Cultural Affairs wasn't sure - but you can also call The Department of Cultural Affairs at 312/742.1156 to request a copy. It's well worth looking for.

Designing Women - Last Week for CAF's Five Architects Exhibition

Five Architects, the Chicago Architecture Foundation exhibition showcasing the midwest projects of five women architects including Jeanne Gang, Carol Ross Barney, Julie Snow, Sejima Kazuyo and Zaha Hadid, is in its final week, closing on November 20th. “We don't know if women think differently than men, and we may not know it for a long time," architect Denise Scott Brown has said. In Designing Women, I look at women architects' long battle to make their way in a traditionally boy's-only-club, and considers how their presence is changing the face of architecture. Read about it here.

Preservation Chicago Debuts New Web Site, 2006 Seven Most Endangered

After a long gestation, Preservation Chicago, the city's grassroots preservation organization, has unveiled its new web site, just in time to cover the group's November 9th announcement of its 2006 list of The Chicago Seven, Chicago's Seven Most Endangered Buildings. The new list includes DePaul's Hayes-Healy Center, scheduled to be demolished for the CTA's rehab of the Fullerton Brown/Red Line Station, and the William LeBaron Jenney's New York Life Building on LaSalle, which stands to be substantially gutted for a new 50 story tower.

The new site offers a handsome design and a wealth of information. It provides a very thorough picture of the perils and posibilities of preserving Chicago's historic buildings. The only drawback I could find is the use of PDF's, rather than HTML, for descriptions of each entry on the Chicago Seven List. It's especially frank in talking both about the buildings they've failed to save as well as their many successes. There's always a concern about whether a site will be kept fresh and updated, but right now the Preservation Chicago website has become an indispensible addition to Chicago's architectural presence on the web.

Tonight's Three Architects Panel at CAF cancelled

Wednesday, November 9th. Tonight's panel at the Chicago Architecture Foundation with Jeanne Gang, Carol Ross Barney and Elva Rubio has been cancelled. Five Architects, however - the arresting exhibition that they all participated in along with Zahad Hadid, Julie Snow, and Kazuyo Sejima, continues at the CAF through November 20th.

Chicago Streetscene - Fall at Millennium Park: November 3rd, 2005

View larger image here.

Frank Lloyd Wright's Right-Hand Woman

Marion Mahony Griffin: Drawing the Form of Nature, an exhibition at Evanston's Block Museum, brings the work and career of Marion Mahony, the first woman to be licensed as an architect, out of the shadow of her collaborators Frank Lloyd Wright and Walter Burley Griffin. Read all about her remarkable career and rediscovered legacy here.

Predock Winner of Kroc Corps Community Center Competition?

The formal announcement is still awaiting coordination with the city of Chicago, but one unconfirmed report says Antoine Predock, the winning architect for a recent competition to build the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, has also won the competition to design the Salvation Army's new $60 to $70 million Ray and Joan Kroc Corps Community Center at 47th and State Street in Chicago. If it's true, you heard it here first. If it's not true, abject apologies in advance.

Chicago Streetscene - August 24th at Millennium Park

Goettsch Partners takes the stage

Effective today, November 1st, the architectural firm previously known as Lohan Caprile Goettsch Architects has officially been rechristened Goettsch Partners, taking the name of James Goettsch, the long-time Chicago architect who spent two decades with C.F. Murphy-Murphy/Jahn in the 70's and 80's before joining his present firm, which traces its lineage back to the original offices of Mies van der Rohe. The name change follows the 2004 departure from the firm of Dirk Lohan, Mies's grandson, to form Lohan Anderson LLC, and the surprise resignation last month of co-President Joseph Caprile. Goettsch is one of six principals who will run the firm that includes James Zheng, who has moved up from Associate Principal. Let's hope the business cards and stationary arrived on time - the company's web site continues to feature the Lohan Caprile Goettsch name.

(An aside to the folks responsible for the design of the Lohan Anderson web site: when you offer an alternative option to Open Fullscreen labeled Open in Pop-Up Window that also opens a window taking over your entire desktop, it's really annoying, especially if you have a large screen.)

The firm latest completed project is 111 S. Wacker, for the John Buck Company, which it claims as "the world’s first high-rise certified LEED-CS Gold." An interesting article in The Chief Engineer details some of structures most prominent features, including a 44-foot-high lobby ceiling formed by the underside of a parking ramp, and a floating foundation poured over the cassions of the old U.S. Gypsum building, a handsome Perkins & Will structure, turned 45 degrees on its site, that has the unfortunate distinction of being the first modern skyscraper to be demolished in Chicago, replaced in 1993 by a surface parking lot. In a post 9-11 move, 111 S. Wacker has stairs that transfer away from the core at the 10th floor, not to the lobby, but to a perimeter exit. There's a separate entrance for fire and emergency workers and equipment. The final component enabling the LEED certification is a green roof planted with wild-growing grasses.

Kroc Corps Community Center Competition Winner Picked - Awaits Announcement

According to Jennifer Mannhard, competition project manager at StastnyBrun Architects, Inc., the jury has met and picked a winner for the competition to design the Salvation Army's new $60 to $70 million Ray and Joan Kroc Corps Community Center at 47th and State Street in Chicago. Mannhard expects the winner to be named once plans for the official announcement are worked out with the office of Mayor Richard M. Daley, hopefully in the next few weeks. The four finalists include Chicago firms Murphy/Jahn, and Ross Barney + Jankowski, as well as Antoine Predock and Behnisch Architects.

Driehaus Foundation Bungalow Award winners announced

The first annual Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Bungalow Award winners were announced last Thursday at the Chicago Architecture Foundation. Supported by a grant by noted investment manager Richard Driehaus, who himself grew up in a bungalow, the awards included first prizes of $750 in each of four categories - best exterior rehabilitation, best interior rehabilitation, best interior restoration, and best landscaping- plus four honorable mentions. You can view the winners (bring your Acrobat) on the Chicago Historic Bungalows website. Especially intriguing is this "Best Rehab" awarded to Loleti and Hensley Gooden, which added living space in the attic and basement, linking it together with this staircase.

Tigerman, Venturi, Gang, Ross-Barney, Rubio, Garofalo and much more - November's architectural events in Chicago

Stanley Tigerman on his new design for Pacific Garden Mission, Robert Venturi on Mies (already sold out), Elva Rubio, Carol Ross-Barney and Jeanne Gang at CAF, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien at the Art Institute, Doug Garofalo's lunchtime lecture at CAF - November offers up another bumper crop of lectures, seminars and panels, and you can preview them all here. Repeat's monthly calendar of Chicago architectural events lets keep track of what's going on. Visionary Chicago Architecture at the Graham Foundation, Sustainable Architecture in Germany at IIT and CAF, a SEAOI symposium on anti-terrorism design for structural engineers - nearly 40 events in all, which you check out on the Repeat monthly calendar for November.

Uptown Theater Update

The situation with the 1925 Uptown Theater, a 4,000 movie palace on the city's north side, continues to deteriorate. As can be seen in this photograph from the Friends of the Uptown, scaffolding has arisen over the ornate front facade, and weatherproofing has been placed over locations where original bricks and ornamental terra cotta have been removed and stored for safekeeping. Otherwise, the building's state of being closed and secured remains unchanged, and boosters continue to try to come up with a plan that could draw investment for the theater's revival.

Thom Mayne and CAC Water Tanks Competition winners tonight at Art Institute

The Chicago Architectural Club will be holding the awards ceremony for its Chicago Prize 2005 Water Tanks competition tonight at the Art Institute. Entries will be on display in the Louis Sullivan trading room beginning at 5:30 P.M., and the program itself will begin in the Rubloff auditorium at 6:00 P.M., ending with a lecture by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Thom Mayne of Morphosis, who chaired the competition's jury. The competition "challenges entrants to salvage a part of Chicago's urban fabric, the industrial water tank, through creative reuse and preservation." In a demonstration of it's unique acoustical properties, Mr. Mayne will give his address from within a vintage water tank reconstructed on the Rubloff stage. (or maybe not)

2.000-foot-high Pigeon Roost Proposed for Chicago's Lakefront

In this morning's Trib, architecture critic Blair Kamin and real estate columnist Thomas Corfmann reveal plans for a $300,000,000, 2,000 foot-high HDTV broadcast tower to be constructed by a partnership of J. Paul Beitler and LR Development along Chicago's lakeshore, not from another 2,000 structure, the Santiago Calatrava designed Fordham Spire. Read about it - and why it's such a bad bet - here.

The Red Line Lake Street Station: It's Great - Let's Trash it Up!

The bright and hugely attractive SOM rehab of the Lake Street subway station on the Red Line has only been open a short time, but that was apparently too long for the CTA, which has erected, smack dab in the middle of the platform, an incredibly shabby and outsightly wood shack whose sole purpose seems to be to shelter a huge new metal display case as if it were the Ara Pacis. Since a large part of the beauty of the station is in the interrupted sweep of its tile-covered vaulting, we can only hope that whatever work is still to be done won't linger forever and the ugly gray box will soon be dismantled and carted away.

We riders are also playing our part in trashing the station. Discarded chewing gum is accumulating in dark, flattened gobs over the surface of the beautiful, pink granite flooring. Where's Lee Kuan Yew when you need him?

LPCI website showcases Driehaus Foundation Preservation Awards

On October 15th, the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation honored nine preservations projects with its Preservation Award. Top prize went to the Renaissance Initiative, Inc., which has rescued 10 historic structures in Danville. Other honorees included the 1920's era American Bankers Building in Jacksonville, and the Hinsdale project that saved the endangered R. Harold Zook Home and Studio and moved it to a village park two miles to the south of its original location. The Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois has done an exceptional job of documenting these projects on their website. There's a brief one page description of each project, accompanied by a slide show that documents it in photographs from start to finish. Particularly good is the slideshow depicting the rescue of a little known civic gem, the 1903 Jackson Park Animal Bridge, from a state of vandalized disrepair to a complete $6,200,000 reconstruction and restoration in 2003 that made the bridge and the numerous animal heads new again and secured their future new generations of delighted visitors. In another sign that Chicago's architectural institutions are finally coming to terms with the power of the internet, the LPCI site does an exceptional job of documenting the honored projects and illustrating the actual process of restoration.

Chicago Streetscene - Blue Cross Blue Shield Building

Ross Barney Jankowski's Swenson Science Building

Since I'm unlikely to get up to Duluth in the near future - and neither, in all probability, will you - I thought I'd go ahead and post some images from Ross Barney + Jankowski of their latest project, the Swenson Science Building at the University of Minnesota at Duluth. The 100,000 square foot, $33,000,000 edifice was dedicated on September 16th, replacing previous chemistry and biology labs built in 1949 and 1968, respectively, and will house over 1,000 students a semester. More about the building, including photos and plans and the story of three teenagers who vandalized the project and caused $8,200,000 in damage, here.

Crab Tree Farm Benefit for Unity Temple

The Unity Temple Restoration Foundation will be holding a benefit on Saturday, October 29th, with the proceeds going to the ongoing restoration of Frank Lloyd Wright's groundbreaking Oak Park building. It will consist of a day at Crab Tree Farm in Lake Bluff, whose collection of American and British Arts and Crafts is seldom open to the public. Included will be a talk by School of the Art Institute President Tony Jones on the relationship between Wright and Charles Rennie Macintosh. Cost is $70.00 for members, $90.00 for non-members. Call 708/383.8873 for information.

When Modernism Goes Bad - Milwaukee's Amtrak Station and a Plan to Fix it

Late in his life, Mies van der Rohe was asked to describe his typical day. "I get up," Mies replied. "I sit on the bed. I think, 'what the hell went wrong? We showed them what to do.'" It's doubtful he was thinking of Milwaukee when he said this, but that city's 1965 Amtrak terminal is a perfect demonstration of how the principles of modernism could be hijacked by the less talented to create an often dreadful work of architecture, but one that still has its charms. Read about it here.

Chicago Streetscene: Saint Francis of Diversey Harbor - October 5, 2005

Six Degrees of Edmund Bacon

The Philadelphia Inquirer's architecture critic Inga Saffron has written a cogent overview of the life of Edmund Bacon, the legendary and influential Philadelphia planner who died on Friday at age 95. By the time I read Bacon's The Design of Cities in 1975, his legacy was already being discredited. As Saffron relates, his large-scale projects often traded squalor for sterility, and he pushed the development of expressways that carved up the city, at the expense of its residents for the benefit of those who were just passing through. Yet, although I haven't seen it for thirty years, I still remember the Bacon book, especially the maps and the drawings that tried to lay out exactly how creating a vibrant city was done. The book is still used in university courses today.

The best planners imagine better new worlds that the general public may have no interest in. More likely, they may be actively hostile, with a strong attachment to the present, in all its corruption. That's the rub. Although planners are never elected, they don't stand a chance unless they master the political game. And if they do that too well, we run the risk of them becoming autocratic "power brokers," of the type of New York City's Robert Moses.

If Moses had died in 1945, we would have a very different, far more positive view of him than we have today. Robert Caro may never have existed. We would remember him as a reformer whose projects helped revivify New York under mayor Fiorella Laguardia. Instead, Moses held on, becoming more powerful and enduring than any mayor or governor, a master at subverting the democratic process and pushing through schemes that were increasingly destructive of the city's essential character and fabric.

Bacon kept Louis Kahn out of building in downtown Philadelphia. Would Kahn's own set of bold visions - a new city hall like a tinkertoy construction on steroids, and huge parking garages surrounded by office and residential towers - been an improvement on Bacon's vision? Or would they have just been the flip side of the coin of Bacon's own decidedly mixed achievements?

Daniel Burnham might have done it best. He created the landmark Plan of Chicago that bears his name in 1909, and died just four years later, before any curdling of attitude or reputation could set in. Edmund Bacon retired in 1970, at the top of his game, allowing him to spend the next several decades sniping from the sidelines, and to continue refining his beliefs to the point where he made his last big stand, at age 93, taking a spin on a skateboard to protest the city's banning of skateboarders from LOVE park, the plaza he created across from city hall.

Glenlivet Scotches Chicago Architect

The October 17th New Yorker Magazine, dubbed "The Art & Architecture Issue", includes an ad, created by the Berlin Cameron/Red Cell agency, for their client The Glenlivet Scotch that features Chicago architect Douglas Garofalo. The ad copy labels Garofalo one of "The Originators" for bringing the "avant-garde" to the suburbs, and features three photos, unidentified, of Garofalo's dazzling Nothstine Residence in Green Bay, Wisconsin. (To New Yorkers, Green Bay is apparently a suburb - let's hope they don't try to make that argument to a Packer fan.)

It's easy to make fun of this sort of thing. (Submit your own ideas for product endorsements by specific Chicago architects to the comments section of this posting - I'm not going to touch it.) However, the bottom line is marketing has taken over our culture, and as much as it may give Stanley Tigerman fits, Garofalo's Glenlivet ad could be another sign that the creativity of today's Chicago architects is entering the mainstream of America's cultural awareness.

The current New Yorker is worth picking up. There's articles on the troubled history of the Sydney Opera House, on the building boom in Dubai, and Paul Goldberger on pre-fab designer housing.

Sense and Strangeness Mingle on Chicago Architecture Foundation's List of 2005 Patron of the Year Nominees

The Chicago Architecture Foundation has announced the list of nominees for its 2005 Patron of the Year Award, to be presented at a November 17th luncheon. The award "seeks to honor those individuals or organizations that have helped promote innovative architecture in Chicago." You can see the entire list - in PDF format - here.

While many of the nominee's are no brainers - Studio Gang's Chinese American Service League's Kam L. Liu building, the Ratner Center and Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago, some of the other nominees are fairly inexplicable, especially in the business category, where's there's respectable choices such as Florian Architects' Hyde Park Bank restoration, Brininstool & Lynch's Vue20 Condos on South Michigan, Jim Goettsch's 111 S. Wacker and Pei Cobb Fried's Hyatt Center, and Krueck and Sexton's Shure Technology Center addition, but also such puzzling choices as completely mediocre Pinnacle and Fordham Towers (and no, I'm not trashing them because of their classical detailing, but for being ungainly mishmashes of elements and form), Central Station, and Lakeshore East, which is a combination of the splendid (its new park), the decent (the Lancaster), and the ungainly (The Shoreham.) Somehow age also doesn't seem to matter. Lucien LaGrange's Erie on the Park is an exceptionally fine building, but it's been around since 2002, the same year construction was completed on another nominee, KPF's 191 North Wacker. One suspects the nominations are as much about honoring major CAF contributors - or potential contributors - as it is about recognizing great architecture.

Which is a good thing - it's always a great idea to tap the pockets of wealthy developers to support a good cause. Maybe it's like the Academy Awards, where clunkers like Airport or The Towering Inferno actually garnered Best Picture nods to placate their studios, but the actual awards went to Patton and Godfather II. Last year, the Patron of the Year's first, the actual awards went to a mainstream but solid roster of Millennium Park, the Contemporaine, and the revived IIT campus.

New York Producer Casts Spell on Chicago Critics

David Stone, producer of the surprise Broadway smash, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, apparently thinks he's the new David Merrick. Merrick, the legendary producer of such diverse megahits as Hello Dolly, Gypsy and Marat/Sade, was, as a person, a throughly unpleasant bit of business who cherished his feuds and had few principles. Perhaps his most infamous stunt was opening night of his revival of 42nd Street, where he kept secret the news of the death of its director, Gower Champion, until the opening night curtain calls, when his announcement transformed the rapturous applause of the audience to a grim funereal pall as if with the flip of a switch. It made front pages all across the world.

Stone is not in his league. He had a security guard bar Sun-Times theater critic Hedy Weiss from Monday's press conference for Putnam County. That was merely stupid. What happened next was incredibly puerile. He had four of the city's leading critics come up to the stage, and had them spell words, just as members of the audience apparently do in the actual show. Merrick must have been laughing from his dark circle of Hell to see how easily Stone made the critics an appendage to his PR stunt.

"Ms. Weiss was being held in detention for harassing the other students," Stone is quoted in today's Sun-Times. "We have also decided to withhold her juicebox."

I've only met Hedy Weiss once, waiting for a symposium to start, where we had a very pleasant talk about the mechanics of being a critic. However, I am also aware of her reputation of being a fierce competitor who aggressively protects her turf. Apparently at a press conference earlier this year for Wicked, Stone's megahit that's having an highly successful open-ended run at the Ford Oriental theater, Weiss was very vocal in expressing his displeasure at what she saw as an unfair leak of information exclusively to the arch-rival Tribune.

Stone said Weiss was banned for behaving "erratically and unprofessionally," but my bet is he knew she would have quickly - and loudly - blew the whistle and awakened the other critics from Stone's spell before they could be transformed from objective reporters into bit players in his marketing campaign. (The Sun-Times story reports that the Trib has lodged a complaint about the affair.)

Big Blow in the Windy City

If you're not already maxed out on all the stories, I have an op-ed, Big Blow in the Windy City, on the Marshall Field saga - including a discussion on how deeply ingrained the Field name is in Chicago's history - in this Sunday's Long Island Newsday.

Classicists at the Gates

Both classicist architects and their more pragmatic Chicago counterparts have a weakness for returning to the past, but the way they choose to do it couldn't be more different. Read it here.

Old Cook County Hospital Again in Jeopardy

Cook County Board President John Stroger has three basic obsessions: protecting his massive base of patronage workers' jobs in the safe harbour that is county government, raising taxes to support them, and tearing down the historic old Cook County Hospital. He may not place much of a priority on figuring out how to stop making poor people wait 8 to 12 hours or more to have their prescriptions filled at the new Cook County, which he modestly allowed to be named Stroger Hospital, but when it comes to protecting his perceived turf, he's a bulldog.

Last year, Chicago's Antunovich Associates architects created an extensive pro bono study that documented the old Cook County Hospital's viability and provided a detailed reuse plan. Stroger fired back, using pinched county funds for a $1,400,000 no-bid contract awarded to politically-connected U.S. Equities, which has now fulfilled its mission by producing a report telling Stroger exactly what he wants to hear: tear down Cook County.

The Beaux Arts building, dating from 1914, was the primary health facility for many of the city's poor. In 1983, it became the site of the city's first HIV/AIDS clinic. It's ornate terra cotta facade has been the backdrop for many of exteriors on NBC's ER television series, and the hospital also appears in the 1993 Harrison Ford film, The Fugitive.

Preservation groups like the Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois and Preservation Chicago have again raised the alarm. Although the County Board has so far refused to vote for demolition, the U.S. Equities report may provide cover for machine loyalists on the board to fall into line behind the increasingly embattled Stroger.

This morning the editorial page of The Chicago Tribune weighed in that "the political pedigree of the consultant study raises questions about its impartiality. When the study was announced earlier this year, we said: 'This exercise is launched with a fair amount of suspicion.' That cautionary advice still rings true today."

Kroc Corps Community Center Competition down to Four Finalists

With little fanfare, last month the competition to design the Salvation Army's new $60 $70 million Ray and Joan Kroc Corps Community Center at 47th and State Street in Chicago was narrowed down to four finalists: Chicago firms Murphy/Jahn, and Ross Barney + Jankowski, as well as Antoine Predock and Behnisch Architects. The four will submit their proposals to the jury beginning on October 24, with the announcement of winner scheduled for October 27th. You can download PDF's of the profile and team descriptions submitted by each finalist from the competition website.

Reminders: Matthias Schuler at UIC tonight, Blair Kamin on the Chicago Seven in yesterday's Trib

Matthias Schuler of Transsolar, one of the foremost environmental architectural engineers of our time, will lecture tonight at 6:00 P.M. at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Details here. A regular collaborator of Helmut Jahn and, co-consultant, along with Atelier 10, on the environmental rehabbing of Mies van der Rohe's Crown Hall, Schuler's global projects are documented in the firm's book, TRANSSOLAR: Climate Engineering.

Also, if you missed it in yesterday's Chicago Tribune, catch Blair Kamin's account of the reunion of the Chicago Seven, the young architects who in the 1970's helped redefine Chicago architecture by bucking the city's Miesian autocracy, at the Museum of Contemporary Art last Tuesday. (You have probably about six days to read the article before it passes into paid archive hell. My own writings, on the other hand, may be long-winded, poorly argued and needlessly beligerent, but they're free.)

The sold-out event actually wound up being a reunion of the Chicago Six, with the ever iconoclastic Stanley Tigerman declining to appear, causing him to be compared by one panelist to Bobby Seale, one of original Chicago Seven, activists indicted for their actions during the 1968 Democratic convention, who was bound to his chair, gagged, and eventually separated from the trial by Judge Julius Hoffman. The comparison was engaging, if imprecise. If Judge Hoffman were alive today, he would soon discover that any effort to gag Stanley Tigerman would be an effort in futility, and that the only enforcable separations would be those myriad instances where Tigerman, himself, has chosen to sever himself from those whose efforts, attitudes or ethics he has found wanting. The event at MCA began with a concise and adroit overview of the history of the Chicago Seven by IIT architectural historical Kevin Harrington, Kamin provides a good overview of that history, but covers very little of the actual discussion, which was moderated by architect Doug Garafalo. It's hoped that the Chicago Architectural Club, which sponsored the event, will document the evening by putting a transcript or synopsis up on their website.

Chicago Streetscape: Prefab Stonehenge on Irving Park Road

September 30, 2005 - Prefab concrete elements lowered in place at metroNorthliving condo project on Irving Park Road on Chicago's northwest side.

September 30 Final Deadline for submitting abstracts to Greening Rooftops Conference

A last-minute reminder that today, Friday, September 30th is the last day to "submit your research project, your innovative green roof project, or your green roof idea to the Green Roofs for Healthy Cities committees for review. Composed of industry professionals, researchers and experts, the GRHC Committee members will jury all submissions for acceptance in our International Conference." Submission requirements: A 300-word abstract and 50-word biography by September 30, 2005. See details at www.greenroofs.org or email jphilp@greenroofs.org."

"The fourth annual Greening Rooftops for Sustainable Communities Conference, Awards, & Trade Show, May 10-12, 2006 in Boston, will bring together experts from diverse fields across North America, and around the world. The conference will raise awareness of the many benefits of green roofs, share new research findings and provide information on the latest designs, implementation techniques and products. It is a great opportunity to broaden networks and develop new business contacts while building more sustainable cities through green roof implementation."

Signs of Life outside the MCA

Courtesy of Edward Lifson of WBEZ's Hello Beautiful, here a few shots of this past Sunday's Musicircus, which provided a touch of humanity, however briefly, to the grave haunches of the building housing Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art, designed by the late Joseph Paul Kleihues. The work was first created by composer John Cage in 1967, since which it's been put on throughout the world, but Sunday's performance represented it's Chicago premiere.

The Chicago Symphony at Gehry's Pritzker Pavilion - There IS a Difference

Classical music in American, like pretty much everything else, is increasingly about marketing. Very fine ensembles, often in the suburbs, market proximity, price and informality as much as music they play. It's just too much of a hassle to trek down to the Loop to attend Chicago Symphony concerts, they assure us. The suburban counterparts are "good enough," and a lot more convenient. This, of course, is like a Roman saying they've never visited the Sistine Chapel because the parking is better at the local parrish. Read about it here.

Alert: new Stand competition registration deadline is October 1st

Information on the new Stand competition sponsored by Architecture for Humanity Chicago here. The inexhaustible Stanley Tigerman will head the jury, which will also include Patricia Saldana Natke and Henry L. English

Chicago Schedule

Architecture's Fall Season Begins With a Bang Next Week

Return of the Chicago Seven
This Tuesday, September 27th, at the Museum of Contemporary Art - a reunion of the Chicago architects who challenged and overthrew the hegemony of Mies's followers. Information.
New Orleans and the Netherlands: Living Below Sea Level
A special panel discussion added to the Sustainable Waterfronts conference at IIT. Panel includes Dico van Ooijen, senior advisor for dikes and dams of the Netherlands Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management, Peter Torbijn, director of national spatial planning policy and advisor to the Dutch Minister of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment, Larry J. Prather, assistant director of civil works, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Dave Sanford, director for navigation policy and legislation of the American Association of Port Authorities. Information.
Three Generations of Classical Architects: The Renewal of Modern Architecture
A three-day conclave of classicists at the School of Architecture at Notre Dame. The extensive roster of announced speakers and panelists includes Robert Adam, Thomas Beeby and Leon Krier. Information

The Death of Marshall Fields and the Dissolution of The Sense of Place

Finally, the deed is done. Yesterday, Federated Department Stores announced that all of the stores of Marshall Field's, a Chicago institution for over a century and, with Wanamaker's, one of the two creators of the concept of the department store in America, would be converted to Macy stores in 2006.

From their inception, department stores were like a museum, a riverfront, a memorial, or a stadium - something that defined the unique character of a city. Now they're just roadkill in Wal-Mart America. A look at Field's recent history helps explain just how this happened, and what it may mean for the future of America's cities. Read it here.

Dutch Symposium at IIT to add program on New Orleans and the Dutch experience at Holding Back the Sea

When hurricane-force winds broke through the barriers, the result was a catastrophic flood that killed over 1,800 people, destroyed over 3,000 homes, and left over 700 square miles under water. However, the place was not 2005 New Orleans, but The Netherlands, circa 1953. Like New Orleans, large amounts of its territory is below sea level, and the country's survival down through the centuries is a direct result of what it's learned about keeping out the sea. (Read more here.)

Now, the organizers of Sustainable Waterfronts, Learning from the Dutch Experience, a symposium to be held at IIT on September 29th and 30th, have added a panel discussion for September 29th - time still to be announced - considering the Dutch experience and the challenges facing New Orleans as it rebuilds.

Participants will include:
- Dico van Ooijen from the Netherlands Ministry of Public Works and Water Management who will show the efforts of the Dutch since the flooding in 1953 to protect their country from a recurrence.
- An official from the Dutch Ministry for the Environment and Spatial Planning who will talk about the planning and environmental impacts in the Netherlands where a large part of the country is below sea level.
Two American participants are expected to be added shortly.

More information on the symposium and registration here.

Venturi Lecture Tops Architecture Events at 2005 Chicago Humanities Fest

Mies is More - Learning from Mies is name of a lecture to be given by Robert Venturi at IIT on Wednesday, November 9th as part of the 2005 Chicago Humanities Fest. Coming from the guy who coined the immortal retort, "Less is a bore", and who, along with partner Denise Scott Brown continues to confound and expand conventional architectural thinking, this event stands to be one of the highlights of the season. Tickets are free, but reservations have to be made through the festival here. Today, Monday, September 19th, marks the first day the general public can register for Humanities Fest events and buy tickets.

Unfortunately, the appearance by Shigeru Ban appears to have been cancelled, but other events include:

Saturday November 5th -
The Avant-garde Interiors of Francis Elkins, a lecture by Stephen M. Salny. Author of Frances Elkins: Interior Design, discusses the work of Elkins, who was also the sister of architect David Adler.

Sunday, November 6th
The Perfect Houses of Andrea Palladio, lecture by Witold Rybczynski. There will also be an event offering a discussion of Rybczynski's work.

Saturday, November 12th
Public Housing Beyond the Walls is a panel discussing "the importance of stable, affordable housing for low-income families."

Sunday, November 13th
Re-Placing Home is a lecture by Roberta Feldman, co-director of the City Design Center at UIC on the "meaning of home and its diverse physical representation in our mobile society." Feldman is also curator of the Out of the Box exhibition on pre-fab housing currently at Chicago's Field Museum.

The Festival includes over 180 events across all art forms, most either free or no more than $5.00. It includes scheduled appearances by Salman Rushdie (already sold out), Joan Didion, Adam Gopnik, Charlayne Hunter-Gault, Susan Orleans, Mia Farrow, Martin E. Marty, Rachel Barton-Pine, Elizabeth Futral, and Timuel D. Black, Jr., to name just a few. View all programs here.

Zoka Zola profile in this week's Chicago Reader

There's a great profile in this week's Reader by Dennis Rodkin on Chicago architect Zoka Zola: her life, work, philosophy, and the origins of her highly alliterative name. Pick up a copy or download it in Adobe Acrobat form here.

Architectural Exhibition at Oak Park Public Library

An exhibition organized by the Oak Park Architectural League is on display at the village's Public Library through September 30th. The show highlights the work of 23 Oak Park architects, and includes Annuradha and Arun Gandhi's entry, pictured to the left, to the Chicago Architectural Club's 2004 Burnham Prize competition for a series of three water taxi stations along the Chicago river.

The Return of the Chicago Seven

In 1976, just as Mayor Richard J. Daley controlled Chicago, the legacy of Mies van der Rohe was seen as controlling new architecture in the city, even though the master had died in 1969. When the Musuem of Contemporary Art's exhibition One Hundred Years of Architecture in Chicago squeezed the history of the preceding century through a forced Miesian and monumentalist perspective, provocateur Stanley Tigerman led a group of younger architects in mounting a counter-exhibition, Chicago Architects, where the work displayed a creativity and freedom that directly challenged the orthodoxy and dominance of Mies's followers. The group, expanded to include Tom Beebe, Larry Booth, Stuart Cohen, Jim Freed, Jim Nagle, and Ben Weese, became known as the Chicago Seven, an homage to the radicalism of the anti-war activists put on trial in the city in 1970. Several other historic shows followed, and many of the same crowd were instrumental in reviving the long dormant Chicago Architectural Club.

On September 27th, the Museum of Contemporary Art is hosting a panel, Celebrating 25 Years of the Chicago Seven, that hopes to reunite those seven architects. It beats still another Stones reunion hands down. Information here.

Great Blair Kamin reporting from New Orleans - what the city could learn form Chicago

There's a splendid extended article in today's Chicago Tribune by architectural critic Blair Kamin on the present state and potential future of New Orleans. His first hand report talks about what it's like to be a solitary tourist in a largely abandoned city, and talks about how much more of the city endured than reports have indicated. He makes a strong case for the rebuilding of New Orleans, both its feasibility and its necessity. Kamin talks about how reversing the flow of the Chicago river, to avoid the contamination of the lake and its drinking water, is just one concrete example of how a city triumphed over nature. If you can, pick up a copy of the paper so you can also see Chris Walker's great photos. If you can't, you can reader Kamin's account, free for the next seven days, here.

An even more cogent example, and one which I've yet to hear anyone discuss, is that in its early history Chicago almost drowned in its own muck and filfth, with regular and vicious outbreaks of cholera until the decision was made in 1850's to raise the level of the entire city six to ten feet. You can still see it clearly in the old neighborhood houses where stairs lead down to what used to be the entrance, and especially along the riveredge of the Loop, where you can clearly see how the current level of the streets are over a full story over ground level. Lower Wacker Drive is where Chicago's "natural" level lies.

As New Orleans is rebuilt, why can't we do something similar to raise its lower districts back above sea level?

Chicago streetscene - September 10th, 2005