Observations and Images on Architecture, Culture and More, in Chicago and the World. See it all here.
Chicago architectural coverage withers -
AIA/Chicago and Lee Bey to the Rescue?
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Things haven't been going well in the world of architectural discourse in Chicago. Then on June 14th, Edward Lifson of WBEZ announced on his New Modernist blog that he was also packing his bags to head to Harvard (the one you can't get to on the Metra northwest line) to become a Loeb Fellow for the 07-08 semesters. Gentleman that he is, Lifson put a positive spin on his departure, but Deanna Issacs in this week's Chicago Reader gives a inside picture of "increasing interference with his programming", which will come as no surprise to his listeners. General Manager Torey Malatia has pursued a general dumbing down of the station's content as part of his strategy of aping commercial broadcasting by replacing the pursuit of excellence with a quest for ratings and marketable demographics. In recent weeks, Lifson's program had been migrating towards still another version of short attention span theater, with interviews sliced and diced into small segments placed between other short segments heavily riddled with promos. And if that wasn't enough to evoke nightmare memories of those power-play classicist architects from the effete East seizing control of the design of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, there's the sad case of the Chicago Sun-Times Kevin Nance. Nance came to the paper from the Nashville Tennessean a few years ago primarily as an architecture critic, a long-delayed replacement for its sorely missed former critic Lee Bey. Since becoming the paper's "critic-at-large", however, Nance's architectural articles have become few and far between. Just this Sunday, he's got the cover story on the Controversy section's front page, plus another big book review inside, and a full-page story on the faces of Crown Fountain in the main news section. His last piece on architecture was on June 1st. (You have to take comfort, though, that the departure of Conrad Black hasn't softened the paper's ability to work its writers to bone.) On Sunday the 17th, a large, syndicated AP article by Carrie Antifinger on restoring Frank Lloyd Wright homes in Milwaukee, complete with multiple photos, ran in both the Trib and Sun-Times. In the Trib, it was used as filler in the humongous real estate section. In the CST, however, it was given a prominent, almost full page position in its Sunday Show section. So we're back where we started, with the Trib's Blair Kamin the only full-time architecture critic in the city. Yes, there are other blogs that touch on architecture - Gaper's Block, YoChicago, GreenBean, to name just a few- but overall, it's not good. Stepping into the breach is AIA/Chicago, which has announced that it's reinventing Focus, it's house organ, as Chicago Architect, a four-color magazine It will be a joint venture with McGraw-Hill, the publishing behemoth behind the Architectural Record, effectively the publication-of-record for the architectural profession. Chicago Architect's editor will be Chicago Magazine contributing editor Dennis Rodkin. Rodkin's recent track record as a writer at the magazine isn't especially encouraging - his primary focus seems to have been articles about neighborhoods transparently designed to hawk real estate, plus a May expose on the dangers of penis enlargement surgery. But who knows? Maybe his new surroundings will set him free, and knowing his way around the development community might prove a big help with ad sales. More promising is the list of other writers AIA/Chicago is touting for CA, especially former Chicago Sun-Times architecture critic, former Deputy Mayor and SOM alumni Lee Bey, and architect and writer Ed Keegan. Also listed are interior design writer Lisa Skolnick, plus Laurie Petersen and Cindy Coleman. “It is our hope that Chicago Architect will develop into a regional publication on par with the leading national publications in our industry,” the release quotes AIA Chicago's EVP Zurich Esposito. Oh, and it will be green - recycled paper, vegetable oil inks, acid free paper, citrus cleaners - you know the routine. The inaugural issue of Chicago Architect is set to debut this coming October 26th, at the organization's annual Designight award event. And getting back to Lee Bey, I hadn't checked his web site, The Urban Observer, for a few weeks because it didn't seem that much new was going on there. But in late May, he switched over to a blog format, and I must tell you, Urban Observer, . . . you look mahvelous. Lee is in that euphoric stage, just before the postpartum letdown of realizing
Join a discussion on this story. © Copyright 2007 Lynn Becker All rights reserved.
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that will publish bimonthly. According to 
what a pain it can be keeping up with a blog's ravenous appetite for new content, where he's posting tons of great new stuff, plus more of his own highly accomplished photos of lesser know marvels of Chicago architecture, such as this shot of the 1939 First Church of Deliverance at 4315 S. Wabash, the work of Walter T. Bailey the first licensed Afro-American architect in Illinois. I hope he finds a way of putting back somewhere all those wonderful building profiles that didn't make it over from his old site, but the new version could prove a major addition, as much as CA, to architectural discourse in Chicago.
