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Icehendge? Chicago has a new Frank Gehry, and it's Like Nothing You've Seen [June 19, 2013]. A new reception desk at Chicago's landmark Inland Steel Building has a very distinctive footprint. Read the article and see all the pictures here. The July Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events [June 30, 2013]. Check over 60 great events here. Studio/Gang's Clark Park Boathouse: A Century of Urban Transformation flowing down Chicago's River [June 3, 2013]. On the site of the long vanished Riverview amusement park, the neighborhood throught they were getting a 4,000-square-foot upgrade building for their 19-acre park. Instead, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced a 20,000 square-foot boathouse, one of four, to be designed by famed chicago architect Jeanne Gang, financed, in part by the CEO of a company that makes slot machines. As construction comes to completion, we explore how city and nature interact over time along a half-mile stretch of river. Read the article and see all the pictures here. The June Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events [May 31, 2013]. Check over 60 great events here. The Reveal: Tod Williams and Billie Tsien's Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago
[September 9, 2012]. So, here we are. Over a century-and-a-half after we supplanted a millennia-long ecosystem by dropping the first corpse into the ground of a new City Cemetery, we've come back to where we began. The Nature Boardwalk at Lincoln Park Zoo bills itself as a "multi-sensory, interactive ecosystem . . . (a) newly naturalized oasis in the heart of the city." Its goal is no less than to make the South Pond's 14 acres of land and water, plants, amphibians, fish and fowl into the kind of complex natural habitat that Chicagoans had spent the last century wiping from the face of the city . . . Read the full story of Jeanne Gang and the Nature Boardwalk, and see all the photographs, here.
A Birthday Offering for Mies - the debut of The Architects Page [March 27, 2011] His birthday was actually on Sunday, but the Mies van der Rohe Society is celebrating the 125th anniversary of the great architect's birth with their annual bash at Crown Hall, Monday, March 28th. It might not be the blowout of the 1950's student dance where Mies himself sat in his new Crown Hall happily puffing on his cigar as Duke Ellington and his orchestra set the huge panes of glass shaking, but you're still promised you'll be able to . . .
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Architects' Pages: A link to basic information and all of our articles and an architect and their buildings. |
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Lynn Becker He has appeared on WTTW's Chicago Tonight, and on radio on Edward Lifson's Hello, Beautiful on WBEZ, and Milt Rosenberg's Extension 720 on WGN radio, and lectured at the Illinois Institute of Technology and the Arts Club of Chicago. He has guest curated the exhibiton, Boom Towns: Chicago Architects Design New Worlds, at the Chicago Architecture Foundation, and has been attacked in Sherman Park by enraged squirrels. He is available, and often actually coherent, for talks, as well as tours of Chicago architecture: personal, group or corporate. Please inquire here. Chicago Model City - at the Chicago Architecture Foundation, EXTENDED, through April, 2010 |
Join me next Tuesday, September 23rd for Boom Towns! Well, it's Show Time! Boom Towns! Chicago Architects Design New Worlds, designed by Jason Pickleman, one of Chicago's hottest young talents, opens next Tuesday, September 23rd, with a reception at the CAF, 224 South Michigan, from 5:30 to 7:30 P.M. You're all invited, dear readers, and I'm pretty sure you'll have a good time. I long ago lost all objectivity about this project, but I think the concept Greg and I finally arrived at was a strong one. We compare Chicago architects' signature projects - those that were clearly intended to stand out and define a certain type of building - in a series of pairings from two divergent locales and eras: the boom town of late 19th century Chicago and today's boom towns in Asia and the Middle East. In the 1890's, Chicago architects did most of their best work in their home city, and the result is one of the richest architectural legacies to be found anywhere. Today's Chicago architects must compete on a world stage, and their ambitious projects are as liable, probably more liable, to be built in Shanghai or Dubai or Hyderabad than here. And so we have, for example, Solon Bemen's largely forgotten 1890 Grand Central Station, pictured to the left in the banner at the top of this article, paired with Murphy/Jahn's spectacular Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok, Thailand, shown to the right. Another coupling contrasts Daniel Burnham's plan for Manila, in America's then newly acquired territory of the Phillipines, with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill's eco-plan for Chongming Island, the world's largest alluvial island, just outside of Shanghai. William LeBaron Jenney's Home Insurance building, often cited as the world's first true skyscraper, is paired with SOM's Burj Dubai, now the world's tallest building, and Ross Wimer's twisting Infinity Tower in Dubai. Louis Sullivan's 1893 Stock Exchange Building matches up with Goettsch Partner's new stock exchange complex on Sowwah Island in Abu Dhabi. 1890's legendary Mecca Flats, on a site now occupied by Mies van der Rohe's Crown Hall on the IIT campus, is contrasted with Studio/Gang's spectacular residential tower in Hyderabad, India. The company town of Pullman, on Chicago's far south side, finds its modern counterpart in a very different kind of company town, Abu Dhabi's Masdar City, where Smith+Gill Architects' hugely innovative Masdar Headquarters is a city-within-a-city that is designed to produce more energy than it consumes. And Burnham and Root's 1892 Masonic Temple, at the time of its construction the world's tallest building and including what was perhaps the world's first vertical shopping mall, is compared to Xintiandi, Ben Wood's highly influential project that uses traditional Chinese architecture to create an innovative lifestyle center that is one of the most popular attractions in Shanghai. These are all the spectacular projects. If it turns out we sometimes fail to do themfull justice, blame me, because everyone at CAF, from curator Greg Dreicer, to Mike Hollander who assembled the images (a herculean task, believe me), editor Katherine Keleman, program directors Barbara Gordon and Whitney Moeller, CAF President Lynn Osmond and the entire staff and, of course, the aforementioned Mr. Pickleman, have done an amazing job getting this exhibition into shape on an extremely tight deadline, and the participating architects have all been extremely generous with their resources and time. I'll be writing more about this project later, including a photo-essay on Pullman asit survives today, but it's now in your hands. Join me next Tuesday evening at CAF and you get to critique my work. But, as Deborah Kerr once said, "When you talk about this in the future, and you will talk about it, please be kind. . . " It's my first time. Boom Towns! Chicago Architects Design New Worlds opens Tuesday, September 23rd, 5:30 to 7:30 P.M., at the Chicago Architecture Foundation, 224 South Michigan. The exhibition runs through November 21st. This is your underpass. Dead Mall Walking
A Chicago Glorious Fourth
As a serial seducer lurks nearby, Renzo Piano's Nichols Bridgeway, which will join the Art Institute of Chicago to Millennium Park, crosses a major hurdle. See all the pictures here. As consideration of the Chicago Children's Museum move to Grant Park by the Chicago Plan Commission nears on Thursday, a summary exploration of why it's a bad idea. Read all about it here. Why Jack thinks it's a very good idea. Read all about it here. Every time the Chicago Children's Museum issues a new design intended to demonstrate how the project is responding to critics and getting better and better, the thing winds up only looking worse and worse. Read all about the current rampapalooza - and see the pictures - here. Staggered Truss: Not as Painful as it Sounds
The American Institute of Steel Construction brings an innovative new engineering technique to Chicago. Valerio Dewalt Train sexes it up. Read all about it, and see what the thing will look like when it's finished, plus other pictures, here. Skyline Brides How many couples have found Chicago's lake and architecture to be the perfect backdrop for celebrating the most important day of their life? Click on the link to see just a few we've stumbled across over the last few years. The link . . . here Chicago: World's Greenest City - at least on St. Patrick's Day 250,000 LEGO's Can't be Wrong: Really BIG Shew at the Graham The Chicago Spire: You loved the building, now buy the soundtrack
What do the Song of the Dwarves and Santiago Calatrava's 2,000-foot-high tower have in common? Read all about it, and how you can now be among the elect group of people (1,200 in all) owning a home in the world's tallest residential building - and see lots more pictures - here. Endgame for one of Chicago's Great Public Places? The Chicago Daily News Building, Holabird and Root's elegant Art Deco skyscraper from 1929, was the first building constructed over railroad air rights. With its broad graceful plaza, it was the first project not to turn its back on the Chicago River, but to embrace it. Now the Daily News Building is threatened with being cast in the shadows, and its great plaza destroyed, by a new office tower reportedly being considered by billionaire developer Sam Zell. Read all about the building's history, endangered present, and future potential, here. Pedro E. Guerrero's American Century [December 3, 2007] Devout Catholic though he may have been, I've never really equated the great Catalan architect with Father Christmas, but over the last few years he's become a holiday staple on the December calendar as the Gene Siskel Film Center, for the third year, is showing Woman of the Dunes director Hiroshi Teshigahara's 1985 documentary, Antonio Gaudi, the week before Christmas.
Nouvel Khan, Tatlin garnish Separated by four decades, the two towers offer up cogent and contrasting expressions of their respective era's. Read all about it, and see the pictures, here.
The Age of Bilbao, Ten Years Out A Forest Departs - Tree by Tree
Chicago's Children Museum "fundamentally misconceived" - Blair Kamin A Landmark Event: The Art Institute of Chicago Brings Marion Mahony Griffin's The Magic of America to the Web Read all about it - and see the pictures - here. Really Bad Photos of the Renderings the Chicago Children's Museum Doesn't Want You to See
A Portrait of Mayor Daley's "Nowhere"
That's what Mayor Richard M. Daley derisively calls Grant Park at Daley Bicentennial Plaza, at the east end of the Frank Gehry designed BP Bridge, in still another ploy in his increasingly desperate campaign to muscle a 100,000-square-foot building for the Chicago Children's Museum into that same park. See a photo-essay on the park Daley seeks to destroy here.
Mayor Daley Rants and Rages; the Battle over Grant Park and the Chicago Children's Museum Explodes onto city's Front Pages and News Broadcasts
Who knew? When I wrote my article that appeared in the Chicago Reader last week (and also below) about the clout-heavy, and increasingly under-handed campaign by the Chicago Children's Museum in support of its land grab in Grant Park, I didn't really expect the issue would only days later become one of the biggest battles this city has seen in years.
On Monday, Mayor Richard M. Daley pre-empted 42nd ward alderman Brendan Reilly's announcement of his opposition to the museum's 100,000-square-foot building with an inflammatory rant villfying Reilly and charging opponents with being everything from child-haters to racists.
From my blog, here's a blow-by-blow guide to the conflict, with links to articles by mainstream media within the stories.
NEW TODAY [Saturday, September 22nd, 12:00 A.M.] The World Class Chicago's Children's Museum: We're Number 31! - "World Class Institution?" - Chicago Sun-Times and Parents Magazine beg to differ.
[Friday, September 21st, 12:00 A.M.] Gigi Pritzker crawls into Richard M. Daley's gutter - if it's not really all about race, why can't the Chicago Children's Museum Board President stop talking about it?
Tuesday, September 18th, 9:00 P.M.] Why is the Chicago Children's Museum Withholding Renderings of its New Building? - what is the CCM hiding?
[Tuesday, September 18th, 6:00 P.M.] Daley the Demagogue
[Tuesday, September 18th, 5:00 P.M.] Alderman Brendan Reilly's statement on the Chicago's Children Museum
[Tuesday, September 18th, 11:00 A.M.] Reilly opposes Museum, risks ruin. Daley diverts discussion and grabs headlines with the Big Lie
also, New Eastside Association of Neighbors' Richard F. Ward's web forum posting here.
. . . and this is where we first came in:
Forever Open Clear and Free (except when it comes to me) A Honest Critic's Credo - from a Surprising Source
Sixteen Short Pieces on A City Neighborhood It's Official - Calatrava's Chicago Spire Hole in the Ground Toy Futures, plus Lego Sins of My Youth When Too Much is Just Right Celebrating the anniversary of someone's death is something you'd think you'd wish only on an enemy, but we're always looking for any excuse for a good party. If a birthday isn't available in a large round number, a death can be made to make do.
So over the next few weeks, we're saying a big, "Here's to you, WLJ," with a series of events that commemorate the 100th anniversary of Jenney's passing, including a Saturday symposium at the Chicago History Museum, the dedication of a new Jenney monument at Graceland Cemetery, and a series of lectures at the Chicago Architecture Foundation.
Sao Paulo goes Martin Luther Imagine there's no neon Pope Benedict's current roadshow invocations against the Fleurs de Mal notwithstanding, it's hard to imagine Brazilians giving up sex, but perhaps even more difficult to imagine them giving up advertising - read all about it and see the pictures here. [April 26, 2007] Photos (lots) and quotes from a press preview of Krueck and Sexton's spectacular new Spertus Institute, which brings Chicago's Michigan Avenue historic district into the 21st Century. Read and see all about it here.
Myron Goldsmith, Quiet Poet of American Architecture
[April 9, 2007] You have only five more days to see an exhibition at the Arts Club of Chicago of the often astonishing work of master architect Myron Goldsmith. Read all about it and see the pictures here.
The Architecture of Dreams and Waking
Uptown built as if it were going to conquer Chicago, but spent most of the following century battling a hangover. Today, it remains the place where florid ambition and cold reality collide. Read all about it, and see the pictures here.
Santiago Explains it all for you There'll be a much more to come after we finish transcribing, including a full account of the proposals, prospects and designs for the long-unrealized DuSable Park, just east of the Spire, but for now, read our account on how Calatrava sat down next to an overhead projector, picked up a brush, and began creating watercolors to explain his concepts. ""Just working as I work in my office," Calatrava said, "bringing you into my office, and sitting you across from me and showing you how I would approach a thing like that, such an important thing, (through) a balance of very simple gestures." Read all about it, and see a sampling of the images to come, here. AIA Illinois Finally gets that whole"Best of" list thing right With 150 Great Places in Illinois, they've finally come up with a compilation that comes off neither as a joke nor as something a PR intern tossed off between assignments. It's a great combination of usual suspects and unexpected discoveries, and it's all available on an addictive, informative and superbly designed website. Read all about it and see some of the photos here.
Studio/Gang's Aqua Begins to Flow
[March 19, 2007] It's actually happening. Aqua, the rippling 82-story tower designed by Studio/Gang's Jeanne Gang and Mark Schendel is beginning to rise on its site at Columbus and Lake in Magellan Development's massive Lakeshore East complex.
You usually don't see all the things that go into a skyscraper laid out before you like a jigsaw puzzle ready to be assembled, but that was the case this weekend, as crews from McHugh Construction, the contractor of record for the project, were preparing for the sinking of the cassions that will support the tower. See the pictures here.
Mies van der Rohe devoured by Giant Dinosaur Astounding and Shocking Details Here
o mention them all here, but you can check it all out here.
Endgame: Is the Fix in for the Farwell Building?
In January, to general astonishment, the Commission on Chicago Landmarks flashed a bit of backbone and voted down a Planning Department proposal to demolish the landmarked Farwell Building on north Michigan Avenue. Well, we can't have that, can we? A special session has been set for 9:00 A.M. on Thursday, March 8th to reverse the January vote. Read all about how power works in this city, including the developers and architects who are cutting the big checks to the local alderman promoting the Farwell's demolition here. Young? Chicago? Listomania To mark its 150th anniversary, the American Institute of Architects has proclaimed 150 structures as America's Favorite Architecture. Laughter and ridicule ensue. Feel free to join the fun. I do my part here.
Urbanlab Wins City of the Future
Thursday, February 8th: It was announced this morning that Chicago firm Urbanlab has won the $10,000 first prize in the History Channel's The City of the Future Competition, for their vision of the Chicago of 2106. The firm had already won $10,000 for winning the Chicago leg of competition, and now wins the additional $10,000 for beating out entries from similar competitions in New York and Los Angeles.
The winner was selected by the public via the City of the Future website. The award was announced by architect Daniel Libeskind, who served as "national competition juror." "UrbanLab is thrilled to have been named the National Winner of the City of the Future competition," said the firm's Martin Felsen, "especially considering the high caliber of ideas and proposals generated by the competition participants. We'd like to thank The History Channel for providing such an important forum, at a pivotal time, for an open discussion of future design directions of our cities. Read my take on the competition, and see the pictures here.
Kamin unveils latest design for Calatrava's Chicago Spire
Less than a week after it was withheld from a packed public meeting, Santiago Calatrava's latest design for the 2,000-foot-high Chicago Spire is unveiled by Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin. Read all about it - and see the pictures - here.
Calatrava Spire Enshrouded in Irish Fog
Donald Trump step aside. Garrett Kelleher may be the most confident developer on the face of the earth. Monday night - January 15th - the man behind the proposed Chicago Spire, the twisting 2,000-foot-high tower from superstar architect Santiago Calatrava - flew in from Ireland to present his project to a meeting sponsored by the Grant Park Advisory Council. But in patiently – mostly - taking on questions from an overwhelmingly enthusiastic crowd that braved snow, ice and cold to pack Daley Bicentennial Plaza fieldhouse just east of Millennium Park, he raised as many questions as he answered. Read all about it - and see the pictures - here
Extreme Makeover, North Lawndale Style
Tonight's (Sunday, January 14th, 7 P.M.) installment of ABC's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition goes back to the city to rehab a home in Chicago's historic North Lawndale neighborhood.
Read all about it - and see the pictures here.
In a vote that appeared to shock both city planners and preservationists, a proposal to strip the facade from the landmark Farwell building, store, repair and reassemble it on a new building, was today defeated in a close vote by the Commission on Chicago Landmarks. Read the update post here or read the original article on the controversy here.
A new headquarters for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in Washington, D.C. raises questions about the message of federal architecture in a time of the war against terror. Read all about it here.
Universally, Christmas is a celebration of darkness over light. We may just have a more bulbs than most. See all the pictures here.
Frank Lloyd Wright's Pacific Overture
Frank's Home, a new play by Richard Nelson at Chicago's Goodman Theatre
by Richard Nelson starring Peter Weller and Harris Yulin captures Frank Lloyd Wright at the point between despair and resurrection. Read all about it here.
It's Not Bombed-Out Berlin - It's Our Legacy!
The brilliant graphics designer Bruce Mau says his exhibition Massive Change is "not about the world of design; it's about the design of the world." The world may have other plans.
Massive Change and it's accompanying exhibition, Sustainable Architecture in Chicago: Works in Progress, showcasing green projects from seven top Chicago architects, are in their final weeks at the Museum of Contemporary Art. (Massive closes December 31st, Sustainable January 7th)
What's the disconnect between the wonders on display and their actual impact on our world? Is Mau's grandiose vision a roadmap to paradise or a triumph of public relations?
Read all about it - including Mau's commentary as he toured his exhibition - with lots of pictures and links, for both shows - here.
Calatrava's Latest Twist from Spire to Licorice Stick
Architect Santiago Calatrava's towering lady is packing on some pounds. Both Crain's Chicago Business and Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin have filed reports on this week's announcement of changes to The Chicago (formerly Fordham and AKA Calatrava) Spire, the megaproject taken over earlier this year by Dublin's Shelbourne Development Corporation. Read about all the changes and the challenges to getting the project built, and see the pictures here.
At a session that begins at 11:00 A.M. this Thursday morning , architect Lynette Stuhlmacher of Docomomo Midwest and Lisa DiChiera from Landmarks Illinois will recommend that Bertrand Goldberg's Marina City complex be designated an official city landmark.
One of the most important complex of buildings in Chicago's history, Marina City, known for its twin, 578-feet high "corncob" towers each that have become an icon of the city throughout the world. It has no official landmark protection, and the base of the pioneering mixed used development's hotel has recently undergone a unfortunate repainting. Read all about the battle to protect Chicago's rich modernist legacy here. A half century after its design and four decades after the architect's death, Le Corbusier's Eglise Saint-Pierre à Firminy is finally completed, while legendary Chicago writer Richard Stern offers up his alternative translation of Rainer Maria Rilke's final poem. Read about them both here. (photograph: Der Spiegel) \
Richard Nickel's Chicago creates an moving portrait of the city and its people at mid-century, of wonders lost, and of the photographer who gave his life trying to save them.
Richard Nickel photographed ghosts. His subjects were the remains of the “City of the Century,” whose wild growth -- from 30,000 people to over a million and a half in under 50 years -- fueled the building boom that created Chicago’s earlyskyscrapers, its great houses, and the fantasy world of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. But by the time Nickel began taking pictures of Chicago in the 1950s, the inner city neighborhoods that had been the city’s pride had been panic-peddled s into slums, and by the late 60's rage piled on neglect and set the streets ablaze, while in the besieged Loop, a rich architectural heritage that was admired worldwide was decimated and discarded as if it were yesterday’s garbage. Read the rest of the poignant story - and see some of the photos - here.
The Short, Brutal Life of a Parade Balloon Friday, June 2nd - TIF's - Robin Hoods in Reverse?
Step right up, step right up, ladies and gentlemen, and guess - Postscript: UrbanLabs wins $10,000 first prize.
How fires, demolitions, scaffoldings, and arson investigations have hijacked the celebration of the 150th anniversary of Louis Sullivan's birth. Read all about it here.
Happy 150th Birthday Louis Sullivan - We've Burned Your Third Building This Year!
In January, it was the K.A.M. Pilgrim Baptist Church. Little more than a week ago, it was the 1887 Wirt Dexter Building. Today, an early morning blaze has made the George M. Harvey House the third Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan landmark to be destroyed by fire just this year. Architectural preservation in the city of Chicago has hit another new low. Does anyone here know how to play this game? Read all about it and see the sad pictures here
New management steeps the House of Blues Hotel in ugly as a part of another renovation of the former office building in architect Bertrand Goldberg's world famous Marina City complex in Chicago.Read all about it - and see the photos - here.
Massive Fire Claims Adler & Sullivan landmark
A five-alarm fire Tuesday claimed the landmark Wirt Dexter building in Chicago's south Loop, one of the few surviving structures from the partnership of Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler. Coupled with the loss of the firm's K.A.M. Pilgrim Baptist Church, also to fire, early this past year, it raises questions about the city's commitment to protecting its architectural legacy. Read the full story and see all the pictures here.
Chicago's Orchard Street - Urban Menace?
Today's Chicago Tribune Sunday magazine is largely devoted to how the city's wealthy elite are creating mega-mansion mania on a several block stretch of Orchard Street in the city's Lincoln Park area. "There goes the neighborhood," is the Trib's Blair Kamin's take. Why?
What's really going on? Is the Tribune Sunday Magazine, in the words of its editor, "indulging in real estate pornography?" Or should we all lighten up and just enjoy it? Read all about it - and see all the photos - here. Not the Usual Campus Suspects Last Friday saw the sudden announcement by its current owners that the century-old Carson Pirie Scott department store on State Street, one of architect Louis Sullivan's greatest masterpieces, will be shut down by March of next year. I'll be writing a lot more about this, and about the journey of Chicago's State Street from one of the world's greatest shopping venues to a a diminished collection of discounters and outlet stores, when Federated rebrands the venerable Marshall Fields store in Macy's colors as its local flagship in September, but for now here's a few initial thoughts - and more pictures - on what's going on and where we might be heading. Read and see it here.
Today, Wednesday, August 9th, is the last day to see Tall Ships Chicago 2006, 17 different sailing ships docked along the Chicago River and Navy Pier. In their own time, these ships were among the tallest man-made structures, scraping the heavens on water as the spires of churches and cathedrals did on land. Read about how they stack up next to Chicago's tall buildings - and see all the photos - here.
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Form Based Codes - Reform or Legislated Mediocrity?
The City of Evanston's Plan Commission is sponsoring a talk tonight, Tuesday, August 8th, by Paul Crawford, chairman of the Form Based Codes Institute, with the title Form Based Codes: An Alternative Approach to Regulating and Shaping Development. To quote from the commission's description, "Often associated with Smart Growth and the rise of “New Urbanist” planning concepts, form-based codes place primary emphasis upon the physical form of development, including building height, bulk, façade treatments, the relationship of the buildings to the street and to one another and the location of parking." Get more information, and read a few cautionary comments, here.
Adler & Sullivan's Last Frame House On Hit List?
What do you give one of history's greatest architects for his 150th birthday? If the city is Chicago and the architect Louis Sullivan, the gift could wind up being one less surviving building. The current owner of the 1888 George B. Harvey House is threatening to apply for a demolition permit. Will the house survive, or be replaced by another stack o' condo's? It's shaping up to be a classic battle between money, clout and culture. See the photographs, and read all about it - including a very hopeful postscript here.
Freedom Tower, from Tragedy to Farce
What is a freedom tower made of? Pure spin., Architect David Child's final design for the Freedom Tower on the World Trade Center site may be bringing a long, sad saga limping to a close. Read all about it here.
Sketches of Frank Gehry, a new documentary from veteran director Sydney Pollack, is less a hard-nosed investigation than an engaging and affectionate portrait of a close friend. Pollack, whose work as a director includes Tootsie, Out of Africa, The Firm,and The Way We Were, made the picture over the course of a five-year period that saw Gehry rise from being merely famous to inescapably ubiquitous. Today, Gehry stands alone. Like Frank Lloyd Wright in the 40's and 50's, Frank Gehry, for many, has become the personification of the word, "architect." Read the full review and see the pictures here.
Before Sandra and Keanu - Building The Lake House
Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves may be the stars, but the title character of the new film, The Lake House, was quite a production itself. Read all about it here.
A Lost World - a vanished era finds it voice in the ruins of a movie palace
The era of the movie palace is one of the most incredible - and largely unexamined - periods in American history. A new documentary on Chicago's Uptown Theater, debuting this Thursday, June 8th at the Portage Theater, recaptures the lost optimism of that time. Read the full story and see the pictures here.
A James Turrell Skyspace Comes to a Very Different Maxwell Street in Chicago The University of Illinois at Chicago refabricates the neighborhood formerly known as Maxwell Street as a new and very different urban reality. Read all about it and see all the photographs here.
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