Archinect - Features

Tulane Graduate Explores the Future of Chicago’s Post-industrial Riverfronts by ‘Re-investing in Productivity’

2021-11-10T13:45:00-05:00

Thesis projects provide architecture students with a gateway into further exploring, questioning, and postulating design solutions. According to Tulane School of Architecture M.Arch graduate Evan Warder, thesis not only serves as a "one-dimensional" variable within an architecture education. It also serves as a "feedback loop on its contribution to the field and the outside world."

With this in mind, Warder decided to use his thesis as an avenue to explore architecture and its interplay between the disciplines of aquatic biology, landscape architecture, urban planning, and social work. In his thesis project, "The Post-Industrial Chicago River: A Social, Productive, and Ecological Urban Structure," Warder uses the Chicago River as a place to explore future infrastructures within industrial areas. He shares: "Chicago presents the opportunity to create a comprehensive solution through reinvestment in productivity, which provides jobs and needed food through high-density vertical farmi...

The Great Chicago Fire at 150: Architectural Historian Jerry Larson Weighs in on Myths Surrounding the Architectural Changes it Brought to the City

2021-10-08T18:32:00-04:00

Today, October 8th, 2021, marks the sesquicentennial anniversary of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. The three-day blaze, which killed an estimated 300 people and destroyed over 17,000 structures, is said to have been a catalyst in the history of modern design, sparking, as a direct result of the “blank slate” that was created, a revolution in the uses of different building methods, materials, and urban planning strategies around the city. From this, many of us learned, a direct line can be drawn connecting a variety of the changes that took place inside of Chicago thereafter with some of the architectural trends that shaped the development of modern cities through the end of the 20th century.

As convenient as this narrative is, it remains amongst the more dated that are still being routinely taught in design curriculums across the country. Today, we will reexamine the impacts the fire has (and has not) made using a simple two-question prompt: How has the event been misconceptualize...

University of Illinois Graduates Aparna Pillai and Ramya Pattanur Vasudevan Propose Integrated Hospital Design for Pandemic Response

2020-08-03T13:00:00-04:00

Planning for better and more integrated healthcare design has become an important topic of discussion recently. Since COVID-19 hit, perspectives and design approaches for how to improve architectural responses to disease and illness have become paramount. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign M.Arch students Aparna Pillai and Ramya Pattanur Vasudevan explore how hospital design can help prepare and react to current and future epidemics and pandemics. Their thesis project, One Health Community Hospital, focuses on a multi-disciplinary approach to healthcare design while focusing on human, animal, and environmental domains.

Archinect connected with the duo as they share their experience working through the pandemic while focusing on a project that aims to engage with pandemic design approaches. The designers explain, "There are recurring patterns in the way epidemics, and pandemics hit us and how we react to them. Our response to such outbreaks has always been reactionary in ...

Fellow Fellows: Anne Dessing

2019-09-30T09:54:00-04:00

Fellow Fellows is a series that focuses on the increasingly important role fellowships play in architecture academia today. These prestigious academic positions can bring forth a fantastic blend of practice, research, and pedagogical cross-pollination, often within a tight time frame. They also, by definition, represent temporary, open-ended, and ultimately precarious employment for aspiring young designers and academics. Fellow Fellows aims to understand what these positions offer for both the fellows themselves and the discipline at large by presenting their work and experiences through an in-depth interview. Fellow Fellows is about bringing attention and inquiry to the otherwise maddening pace of academia, while also presenting a broad view of the exceptional and breakthrough work being done by people navigating the early parts of their careers.

This week we talk to Anne Dessing, the 2018-2019 Douglas A. Garofalo Fellow at the University Illinois Chicago.

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Challenging Normalcy and Bringing Value to the Mundane with Architect Paul Preissner

2019-09-29T09:00:00-04:00

Running a practice can be a balancing act of staying creative, finding the motivation to produce great work, all the while committing to the demands of running a professional business. For Chicago-based architect Paul Preissner and his firm Paul Preissner Architects, this delicate dance also involves balancing creativity and responsibility to the work, as well as reinforcing his creative responsibility to himself.

Preissner describes his practice as "a pretty good architecture and design office from Chicago, Illinois." However, you'll learn to find that his work extends beyond the quirky and obscure. Having experience in working in realms that include housing, civic buildings, furniture, installations, and architectural exhibitions, Preissner continues to show the importance of staying true to the idea of just making things work. For this week's Studio Snapshot, Archinect was able to connect with Preissner to discuss how to making "normal things weird" and "popularizing the idea th...

Midwest Architecture Journeys Shares the Sacred and Profane History Behind Chicago's Streamline Moderne Church

2019-09-28T09:13:00-04:00

Belt Publishing's forthcoming title, Midwest Architecture Journeys, features contributions from over twenty architects, critics, and journalists, taking the reader on a tour of some of the regions most inventive structures. The collection of writings feature works by Eliel Saarinen, Frank Lloyd Wright, Bruce Goff, and Bertrand Goldberg, among many others, while also giving equal attention to unique sites along the way, such as indigenous mounds, grain silos, parking lots, flea markets, and abandoned warehouses.

Midwest Architecture Journeys is edited by Zach Mortice, a design journalist based in Chicago. The book will be released on October 15th and may be purchased directly from Belt Publishing.

The Manifold Transparencies of Virgil Abloh

2019-06-28T12:03:00-04:00

Archinect has published news posts about fashion designer, artist and Louis Vuitton director Virgil Abloh in the last year, but only to announce any time that he had collaborated with an architect or an architectural theorist. What we had never mentioned, however, is that Abloh is himself trained as an architect, having obtained a Master of Architecture degree from the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in 2003, and has since gone on to describe the lessons learned and architecture studied during these years as crucial to his current success.

Apple's Latest Offering is a Wood, Metal and Glass "Town Square", Designed by Foster + Partners

2017-10-25T18:47:00-04:00

With the grand opening of Apple’s brand new Chicago outpost this month, it appears that the tech giant’s new line of stores, recently renamed "town squares", has well and truly dropped. We saw a sneak peek of their glass curtain wall system and super slim roof lines at the Apple Park this year but it now appears that this is more than just a one-off thing for their big time California HQ; it seems that this is their latest rendition of Apple Architecture, delivered by Foster + Partners.

Exploring the architecture of the atomic age, starting with the Chicago birthplace of the world's first nuclear reactor

2017-08-24T09:30:00-04:00

The 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial blog is edited in partnership with Consortia, a creative office developing new frameworks for communication. This article also features embedded content from Are.na, an online platform for connecting ideas and building knowledge.

The Continuous Reinvention of Chicago's Palace of the People

2017-08-10T09:00:00-04:00

Photographing the demolition and transformation of Chicago's public housing

2017-07-25T12:00:00-04:00

A decade-long photo series shows the demolition and transformation of Chicago's public housing from a human perspective.

This article was originally published on the blog of the Chicago Architecture Biennial, the largest platform for contemporary architecture in North America. The blog is edited in partnership with Consortia and invites designers, writers and other contributors to independently express their perspectives on the Biennial across a range of formats. The 2017 Biennial, entitled Make New History, will be free and open to the public between September 16, 2017 and January 6, 2018.

What we can learn from Chicago's CARYATIDS, the feminist curatorial collective that fought sexism in architecture

2017-06-27T13:11:00-04:00

This article was originally published on the blog of the Chicago Architecture Biennial, the largest platform for contemporary architecture in North America. The blog invites designers, writers and other contributors to independently express their perspectives on the Biennial across a range of formats. The 2017 Biennial, entitled Make New History, will be free and open to the public between September 16, 2017 and January 6, 2018.

Helmut Jahn on His Practice, His Career, and His Most Recent Chicago Project 1000M

2017-06-07T16:40:00-04:00

Back in the day, he was known as “Flash Gordon”—a daring young German-American architect with equally daring designs for his adopted home of Chicago. Now, just over 50 years since he first arrived to the Windy City, a more experienced and restrained Helmut Jahn is working on a major new project for a prominent site on Michigan Avenue.

Enjoying architecture with Kwong Von Glinow Design Office

2017-04-24T09:00:00-04:00

They may not have even reached their paper anniversary, but Kwong Von Glinow Design Office has already made waves having won a few high-profile competitions including the 2016 Chicago Prize. Founded by Lap Chi Kwong and Alison Von Glinow in December of 2016 (which for those that are counting, is all of 5 months ago!), the two Harvard GSD grads have impressive CV's including stints at Herzog & de Meuron, Wang Shu, and SOM.

For obvious reasons, we have included them in our weekly-series, Small Studio Snapshots. Read on as the duo discuss collaborative working models, getting clients to support innovative design, and simply, enjoying architecture.

Screen/Print #47: Fresh Meat's 'Of the City', from UIC

2016-11-09T12:05:00-05:00

Individuality is a prized commodity. “Dare to be different,” we’re told. “To thine own self be true,” inspirational posters implore, butchering a quotation from Hamlet that originally implied multiple, different meanings. But how? After all, the most punk of punks is the one who copies the best.

"African Modernism: Architecture of Independence" showcases a history of no easy answers

2016-03-27T11:44:00-04:00

"African Modernism: The Architecture of Independence" is a sprawling and immersive exhibition that uses every inch of available gallery space at Chicago’s Graham Foundation. Curated by Manuel Herz with input for this particular exhibition by Sarah Herda, head of Graham Foundation, the show is based on Herz’s voluminous tome of the same name. At over 700 pages, Herz’s scholarly investigation and cataloging of modern architecture in Ghana, Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire, Kenya, and Zambia provided a surplus of projects and information, requiring a careful distillation to produce the exhibition.

The humanity of the Chicago Architecture Biennial

2015-10-13T09:15:00-04:00

As anticipation rumbled towards the opening of the Chicago Architecture Biennial, excitement and reservation came hand in hand. The eclectic mix of over 120 participating firms, coming from over 30 countries, made the snapshot of the profession appear, depending on your side of the spectrum, as a vibrant collage full of diverse applications, or frayed and vacillating. But after its opening on October 3, it’s clear that the criticisms dealing in this binary miss the point – the Biennial is more about architects than it is about architecture.

Screen/Print #30: SOILED's "Cloudscrapers"

2015-03-31T09:01:00-04:00

SOILED is back, dirtier than ever. Our first-ever Screen/Print featured SOILED's Windowscrapers, and for its next issue, the Chicago-based publication devoted to making “a mess of the built environment and the politics of space” set it sights a bit higher up. After scraping the windows, it gazes to Cloudscrapers, centering its architectural storytelling into the upper reaches of our atmosphere.

Screen/Print #19: "Chicagoisms" honors the Windy City's architectural clout

2014-06-17T12:53:00-04:00

Judging by its nicknames, Chicago is a city driven by industry and a competitive mentality, whether matched up against comparable US metropolises or cities abroad. And while it may no longer be regarded as the urban symbol of architectural influence, Chicago has played an undeniably central role in the creation and dissemination of new ideas, inspiring those who passed through (including Adolf Loos and Frank Lloyd Wright) regardless of how long they stayed. A new collection of essays, gathered under the title Chicagoisms, explores the city’s personality and influence on the forefront of architectural progress, setting a new tone for how architects talk about the “Second City.”

Screen/Print #4: MAS Context

2014-01-07T18:31:00-05:00

Screen/Print is an experimentation in translation across media, featuring a close-up digital look at printed architectural writing. Divorcing content from the physical page, the series lends a new perspective to nuanced architectural thought.

For this issue, we’re featuring MAS Context's Narrative.

Do you run an architectural publication? If you’d like to submit a piece of writing to Screen/Print, please send us a message.