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Stanley Tigerman Rides Again: Architect's final sketches go on display in Chicago

2019-09-16T20:09:00-04:00

A collection of engrossing sketches created by the late architect Stanley Tigerman are currently on view at Chicago's Volume Gallery. The exhibition, titled Tigerman Rides Again, presents some of the final creative works produced by the iconoclastic architect who passed away in June of 2019.

According to exhibition text, "After a hiatus from his daily drawing practice, Stanley Tigerman picked up his pen and his moleskin notebook in January 2019. He began creating images that harkened back to his early paintings and moved away from the drawings he made to express, explore, and develop ideas on architecture throughout his over five decade-long practice. While he is known for his lively and often colorful collages of buildings and cartoons, these black and white drawings revert to another time. The works produce optical illusions and align with his paintings from the 60’s that reveal influences of his former Yale professor, Josef Albers."

Tigerman Rides Again. Images courtesy of Volum...

Eight brilliantly playful works of architecture by Stanley Tigerman

2019-06-05T17:50:00-04:00

As we announced earlier this week, Stanley Tigerman passed away at the age of 88. As a full life of work lies behind the Chicago architect, we look back on his uniquely playful and humane architecture, much of which was produced in collaboration with his wife, Margaret McCurry.

1. The Titanic (1978)

The Titanic (1978). Photomontage on paper.

Though he had developed a robust portfolio of built works throughout his 53-year-long career, Tigerman was also lauded as a master communicator through illustration and collage. He owed much of his creative practice to Mies van der Rohe, the modernist architect who dotted the Chicago skyline with perfected black boxes, but he offered this image of Crown Hall, one of Mies' most beloved buildings on the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), sinking in Lake Michigan as an opportunity to reevaluate the architect's legacy.

According to the Art Institute of Chicago, the photomontage "meant to provoke architects to contend with the Mies...

Stanley Tigerman has died

2019-06-03T20:35:00-04:00

Hugely influential architect, and godfather of Chicago's architectural community, Stanley Tigerman has passed away.

The provocative, and famously salty, architect blazed a singular trail within late-20th Century architectural design by fusing the technical prowess of modernist era design with the formal play and programmatic invention inherent in the work of later generations of architects. Tigerman's Anti-Cruelty Society Building from 1981 perhaps best exemplifies this penchant by presenting a geometrically-precise but formally anamorphic facade marked by freeform windows and a see-through, pedimented gable.

Stanley Tigerman's design for the Anti-Cruelty Society Building from 1981.

In 1994, along with designer Eva Maddox, Tigerman founded Archeworks, a nonprofit public interest design incubator whose mission is to "use the power of design to challenge social, cultural and environmental challenges in Chicago."

In his later years, while at the helm of Tigerman McCurry, a firm start...

Tigerman McCurry are closing shop and retiring

2017-05-11T18:07:00-04:00

Husband and wife duo Stanley Tigerman and Margaret McCurry, principals of Tigerman McCurry Architects, have had a sizable influence on the profession, particularly in their hometown of Chicago. Now their saga is coming to a close, with Dennis Rodkin of Crain’s reporting that they’re shuttering their practice and retiring.

Tigerman is perhaps best known for his central position in the Chicago Seven, a group of architects that challenged modernist orthodoxy and ushered in the post-modern era. His built work, from the Anti-Cruelty Animal Shelter to the Pensacola Apartments (both in Chicago), exemplifies ideas he expounded in theoretical writing. In 1977, Tigerman organized a conference on “The State of the Art of Architecture”—an event of significant import, as signaled by the appropriation of its theme by the curators of the first Chicago Architecture Biennial.

McCurry likewise holds a position in the upper echelons of the post-modern hierarchy. In particular, her residential work has b...

Stanley Tigerman on the Chicago Architecture Biennial: "I am stunned, if not thrilled"

2015-10-08T14:38:00-04:00

Stanley Tigerman, the Chicago architect whose 1977 conference, "The State of the Art of Architecture," became the namesake for the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial, has issued a statement effusively praising the Biennial's execution.

Co-artistic directors of the Chicago Architecture Biennial, Sarah Herda (director of the Graham Foundation, which hosted Tigerman's 1977 conference) and Joseph Grima, are using the Biennial to illustrate shifting tides in the profession, as architects seek to address multitudes of pressing contemporary issues through architecture, and subsequently diversify the idea of a "traditional" architect.

Tigerman's initial conference addressed the profession as it dealt with the collective hangover from modernism, and faced an existential crisis of sorts to retain a cohesive cultural and professional identity.

The Biennial opened on October 3, and Tigerman, in the below letter to the editor, expresses his satisfaction with its execution, his admiration for t...

Society of Architectural Historians Announces 2015 Award Winners and Fellows

2015-04-22T23:41:00-04:00

The Society of Architectural Historians announced the winners of the 2015 Publication Awards and the 2015 SAH Award for Film and Video at its 68th Annual International Conference Awards Ceremony in Chicago, Ill., on April 16. The Society also named four individuals as SAH Fellows for their lifelong contributions to the field of architectural history.

2015 Publication Award Recipients
Each year, SAH presents publication awards honoring excellence in architectural history, urban history, landscape history and historic preservation scholarship as well as architectural exhibition catalogues.

The winners of the Society’s 2015 Publication Awards are listed below. The 2016 award cycle opens on June 1, 2015. For more information, visit sah.org/publication-awards.

Alice Davis Hitchcock Book Award

Richard Harris, Building a Market: The Rise of the Home Improvement Industry, 1914–1960 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012)

Christopher Curtis Mead, Making Modern Paris: Victor Baltard’s Central ...

Look back, move forward: Weekly News Round-Up for November 3, 2014

2014-11-10T18:55:00-05:00

Friday, November 7:

8,000 Glowing Balloons Recreate the Berlin Wall: A 10 mile chain of balloons will line the path where the Wall previously stood, to commemorate the 25th anniversary of its demolition.
First Ever Chicago Architecture Biennial Taking Shape for 2015: The Biennial's theme of "The State of the Art of Architecture" (named after Stanley Tigerman's 1977 conference), is starting to take shape, and will include a photo exhibition on Chicago from Iwan Baan.

Thursday, November 6:

Massive Hollywood project sits atop quake fault: The California Geological Survey confirmed that the Millenium Hollywood skyscraper sits on top of an active fault, despite the fact that the developer's consultants find no evidence of an active fault in their analysis of the data. LA's Department of Building and Safety will ultimately determine whether the Millenium can be built.
Centre Pompidou To Open Design and Architecture Gallery: Upon the opening of its new photography gallery, the renowned Parisian...

First Ever Chicago Architecture Biennial Taking Shape for 2015

2014-11-07T13:14:00-05:00

The theme of the 2015 edition will be "The State of the Art of Architecture," named after Stanley Tigerman's 1977 conference, and will feature an array of exhibitions and newly commissioned works, including a photo exhibition by lensman Iwan Baan exploring Chicago. [...] The eventt ... is being planned by a group of heavy-hitters, including co-directors Sarah Herda, Director of the Graham Foundation, and Joseph Grima, former curator of Storefront for Art and Architecture

Previously: Chicago plans architectural biennial for 2015

22 Questions for Stanley Tigerman

2014-06-18T15:23:00-04:00

The salty 83-year-old architecture star on his loves (green design), his hates (the IBM building’s redo), and winning the AIA’s lifetime achievement award.

Back to Never Land: Chicago exhibition honors remarkable never-builts

2013-08-22T16:48:00-04:00

The exhibition re-envisions a series of urban environments that are typical for Chicago in order to examine alternatives to the way architecture engages the city. It is a collaborative effort by five teams – David Brown, Alexander Eisenschmidt, Studio Gang, Stanley Tigerman, and UrbanLab – determined to find potentials for spatial, material, programmatic, and organizational invention within the city.

Same as it never was? What inspires a city to look back on abandoned plans? Along with the success of A+D Museum's "Never Built: Los Angeles", and anticipating the Bay Area's "Unbuilt San Francisco", The Atlantic Cities took a look at "City Works: Provocations for Chicago's Urban Future" at Expo 72 in Chicago. Originally presented at the 2012 Venice Biennale by University of Illinois at Chicago professor Alexander Eisenschmidt, the collection of alternate striking visions for the city will be on display through September 29.

The exhibition includes a panorama of the Chicago skyline, where viewers can use the Phantom City app to pinpoint 100+ of these remarkable, unrealized structures, including works by Adolf Loos, Frank Lloyd Wright and Stanley Tigerman.

Tigerman retains bite; exhibit encapsulates work, wit of Chicago's design provocateur

2012-02-05T12:22:52-05:00

Some architects swear by Stanley Tigerman. Others, especially those who’ve been wounded by Tigerman’s biting criticisms, prefer to swear at him. In a disarmingly honest moment, the 81-year-old Chicago design maven tells a film interviewer: “There’ll be a lot of people, when I pass away, that’ll say, ‘He’s gone. Thank God!’

Exhibition at Yale School of Architecture Gallery examines work of architect Stanley Tigerman

2011-08-23T13:24:42-04:00

The career of eminent architect and educator Stanley Tigerman is the subject of a retrospective exhibition opening at the Yale School of Architecture Gallery, in historic Paul Rudolph Hall, on August 22, 2011. Ceci n’est pas une rêverie*: The Architecture of Stanley Tigerman, which remains on view through November 5, 2011...