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The Obama Presidential Center will be transformative, just as it will be truly urban, only up to a point. It’s bound to disappoint anybody who forgets that Obama’s political strategy, as distinct from his larger role in the culture, has always been unshakably centrist. Because (among other reasons) his race continues to make him a lightning rod, a magnet for unhinged opinion, he has preferred the middle to the edge. — Los Angeles Times
Residents of the South Side in Chicago raise concerns about the location of the new center and complain that the Obama Foundation refuses to sign a Community Benefits Agreement guaranteeing construction jobs and other patronage to members of the South Side community. View full entry
Archinect's Architecture School Lecture Guide for Fall 2017 Ready or not, it's the start of a new school year. Back for Fall 2017 is Archinect's Get Lectured, an ongoing series where we feature a school's lecture series—and their snazzy posters—for the current term. Check back regularly to... View full entry
A surge of tall buildings, the vast majority of them housing rental apartments, is creating a densely populated, urban core [...] the Super Loop is patently un-super in at least one respect: It lacks a new version of the technological and aesthetic innovations that made Chicago's reputation as the cradle of modern architecture. As Mayor Rahm Emanuel prepares to host the second edition of a global architecture biennial [...], most of the new high-rises are based on tired commercial formulas. — Chicago Tribune
Chicago's Super Loop is gentrifying and becoming denser as apartment buildings are multiplying and younger generations are moving in. But, most of the new apartments in these high rises are quickly built concrete boxes with glass balconies. The ordinary character of new construction in Chicago's... View full entry
Chicago is one of the global centers of the architectural world, not only for its rich history, but also as a stage for continuous innovation and design exploration. This lineage is a major part of why The Chicago Architecture Foundation (CAF) has decided to create the Chicago Architecture Center... View full entry
Plans for the Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park are being firmed up largely out of public view, and one watchdog group is sounding the alarm about the lack of transparency.
Decisions on the design of the center, the park’s golf course and even whether to eliminate some roads in the park are being worked out by the Obama Foundation, City Hall and the Chicago Park District.
— Chicago Sun Times
Designed by the New York-based firm Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, the Obama Presidential Center will consist of three buildings—a museum, a forum, and a library located near a lagoon that runs into Lake Michigan in Chicago's Jackson Park neighborhood. However, recently Jackson Park... View full entry
A collaboration between the sculptor and performance artist Nick Cave and the architect Jeanne Gang on a site-specific work for Chicago’s Navy Pier is part of the ongoing transformation of the historic waterfront space from tourist trap into cultural destination. — The Arts Newspaper
The performance will involve dancers wearing Cave's silver-colored Soundsuits while interacting with objects designed by Studio Gang as a part of the setting. Fabricating a changeable stage that could be used for other performance groups, Gang was inspired by the idea of a clearing for... View full entry
Chicago architect John Macsai designed Lincolnwood's Purple Hotel and some of Lake Shore Drive's most eye-catching high-rises...From 1955 to 1970, Macsai and his partner, Robert Hausner, helped bring the abstract forms of modernism to the clifflike rows of towers along Chicago's lakefront. Among those designs were a dramatically curving high-rise at 1150 N. Lake Shore Drive and Harbor House at 3200 N. Lake Shore Drive, a standout because of its jutting second-floor window bays. — Chicago Tribune
No Small Plans is a graphic novel that follows the neighborhood adventures of teens in Chicago's past, present and future as they wrestle with designing the city they want, need and deserve. — Chicago Architecture Foundation
Inspired by the 1911 Wacker’s Manual, which was once used in classrooms to explain Daniel Burnham’s 1909 Plan of Chicago, the book is filled with beautiful illustrations and divided into three chapters set in the years 1928, 2017 and 2211. Each chapter ends with a map and a short interlude... View full entry
The 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial will be open to the public and on view from September 16, 2017, through January 7, 2018 at the Chicago Cultural Center, located in downtown Chicago. The Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB) announces special projects, including a SO-IL and Ana Prvački... View full entry
"Almost every day, a visitor will be standing in the house and will ask where the house is," said Jenny Gibbs, executive director of the Elmhurst Art Museum. — The Chicago Tribune
The McCormick House, located in the Chicago suburbs, was built by Mies van der Rohe in 1952 and is one of only three residences designed by the pioneering modernist architect. In 1994, the steel frame row house was moved to a nearby park where it was restored and opened to public as part of the... View full entry
Although the original Foster + Partners renderings for the new Chicago Apple Store did not include a logo on its gray, rectilinear convex carbon-fiber roof, construction workers briefly unrolled the trademark white Apple across what now can only be viewed as a giant MacBook (no word yet on whether... View full entry
The most important question related to the Obama Presidential Center on Chicago’s South Side doesn’t have that much to do with its architecture.
It is instead: What kind of landscape stewardship can a presidential museum and library offer? To be located in Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted’s Jackson Park, the project already has a heap of canonical landscape history to contend with. So can the Obama library make a great park greater?
— landscapearchitecturemagazine.org
"So this new landscape has the potential to improve upon the already very good. But for whom?," Zach Mortice asks in his piece for Landscape Architecture Magazine. "Will these grounds remain public and accessible for all South Siders and Chicagoans, free of charge?" View full entry
[Hearn's] venture also controls rights to the building's name, which has remained unchanged since John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Co. developed it [...] Hearn has been in talks with companies interested in putting their name on the skyscraper since the structure's namesake no longer pays for that right. "We've had interest in it, but have not made a deal yet," Hearn said. That process could be resumed by a new owner. — Chicago Tribune
Chicago-based developer Hearn Co. currently plans on selling the John Hancock Center's office space, parking garage and, perhaps most interestingly, its naming rights later this summer. According to the Chicago Tribune, Hearn would use the proceeds from the naming rights toward a $10 million... View full entry
Frrank Lloyd Wright was never one to fret about meeting deadlines, sticking to budgets or roofs that leaked. So there is something fitting about the delayed, but altogether triumphant, restoration of Wright's Unity Temple, [...] the finest public building of Wright's Chicago years and home to one of the most beautiful rooms in America.
Instead of finishing on schedule last fall, the $25 million project is wrapping up just in time for the 150th anniversary of Wright's birthday, June 8.
— chicagotribune.com
"Success, it's often said, has many fathers, and so it is with here," Kamin writes. "A team of consultants led by Chicago's Harboe Architects has lavished exacting care on every aspect of this project, from the restoration of jewel-like art glass to the recreation of textured plaster walls." View full entry
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... View full entry
