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Some members of Chicago's design community have said privately that the Navy Pier project's parameters, which limited the scope of changes, stifled creative possibilities, even for highly regarded designers such as Corner.
"Anything that makes it more parklike is all to the good," said eclectic Chicago architect Stanley Tigerman. "It can only go up, architecturally."
— articles.chicagotribune.com
The president still has three years in office, but eventually his thoughts will turn to what comes afterward. [...]
A presidential library has to be easily accessible to scholars and visitors, so Chicago has a clear advantage. That’s why Honolulu’s leaders named their public campaign carefully: The Hawaii Presidential Center Initiative, not a presidential library.
— marketplace.org
Previously: The LA Times' Christopher Hawthorne reviews the "fittingly blunt" Bush presidential library View full entry
Winners have been announced recently at the fifth annual Mock Firms International Skyscraper Competition, organized by Chicago Architecture Today. [...]
The top title of International Skyscraper and Mock Firm Champion (a combination of architectural and marketing efforts) was awarded to the team AZAHAR Architecture composed of five architecture students and one professor from the Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain.
— bustler.net
Two preservationist groups have dropped a lawsuit challenging the City of Chicago’s decision to deny landmark status to the old Prentice Women’s Hospital.
Northwestern University plans to demolish the building in Chicago’s Streeterville neighborhood to make way for a new biomedical research facility. The decision to drop the lawsuit clears the way for Northwestern to carry through on it plans.
— chicagotribune.com
Among Gang’s intentions is to invite a “more wild version” of nature into cities, using what she refers to as “green infrastructure” to support and enhance urban landscapes. “Nature as we see it in cities is created, it’s man-made, it’s redesigned in a certain sense,” says Gang. “I think it’s important not for romantic reasons, but for practical and experiential reasons, to extend biodiversity within the ecosystem.” — businessweek.com
Making a mess of the built environment and the politics of space, one issue at a time. — SOILED
With the arrival of a new year, SOILED has big plans. Building on our first three issues, Groundscrapers, Skinscrapers, and Platescrapers, we aspire to elevate our forthcoming issue No. 4 Windowscrapers: more dynamic, more tactilely pleasurable, and filled with more ephemera for you to soil... View full entry
A judge on Friday gave preservationists 30 days to amend their legal challenge to a landmarks commission ruling that would appear to doom old Prentice Women's Hospital, but strongly hinted that time is running out for the Streeterville structure. — articles.chicagotribune.com
The study argues that re-using Prentice and developing a new facility would generate more money and jobs than demolition and new construction.
The study claims the rehab would generate one-time taxes and temporary jobs, in fields ranging from construction to finance and insurance. And a re-designed, multi-purpose Prentice would mean 980 permanent jobs and just over $1 million a year in local tax revenues.
— wbez.org
The reuse alternatives for Prentice were unveiled at a press conference on January 3, 2013. You can view the presentation here (PDF file). View full entry
The Chicago Architectural Club has selected three winners from a total of 71 new visionary proposals for Bertrand Goldberg’s Prentice Women’s Hospital submitted to the 2012 Chicago Prize Competition: Future Prentice (plus an additional 10 solicited from up-and-coming Chicago architecture and design studios). The Chicago Architectural Club had partnered with AIA Chicago and the Chicago Architectural Foundation for the initiative. — bustler.net
On Tuesday, Mayor Rahm Emanuel came down on Northwestern University's side in its battle to raze the old Prentice Women's Hospital, a building that preservationists want to save.
Is that the last chapter in the story?
Some architects hope not.
— blogs.suntimes.com
Tod Williams and Billie Tsien’s Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts opens to the public this weekend at the University of Chicago, setting up shop just steps away from storied structures designed by Mies van der Rohe and Eero Saarinen. The $114-million project has been over ten years in the making — blogs.artinfo.com
... if they do tear down the building, they'll replace it with another architecturally significant structure. When I spoke with Ron Naylor, who works in Facilities Management at Northwestern, he promised a building "the aesthetics of such that people are going to marvel at it." — wbez.org
Why bother, then? It’s a key building in the history of structural engineering, and its unusual form, a poured-concrete cantilevered shell, has few if any equals in modern engineering. Almost nothing else looks like this building, and in a world of carbon-copy architecture, its loopy, futuristic curves are unique: a concrete rocket ship amid Chicago’s glass boxes. A little weird, yes, but the more you look at it, the more you like it. — vanityfair.com
Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) Provost Alan Cramb announced today the appointment of Wiel Arets as the new dean of the IIT College of Architecture. Born in the Netherlands, Arets, an internationally acclaimed architect, educator, industrial designer, theorist, and urbanist, is known for... View full entry
Los Angeles architect Frank Gehry and Chicago architect Jeanne Gang are among more than 60 prominent architects, educators and historic preservationists who on Wednesday urged Mayor Rahm Emanuel to save architect Bertrand Goldberg's old Prentice Women's Hospital and grant city landmark status to the threatened structure. — featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com
