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It's fascinating to document how architectural and cultural trends are deployed across the country, but we've seen that widespread disinvestment — as well as patterns of renovation and repurposing — add to an already palpable sense of impermanence. — NPR
Chicagoans Zach Huelsing and Jon Lehman’s Rural Indexing Project was first launched during the Obama administration and has grown to an archive of more than 1,200 locations spread across 25 different states. Huelsing and Lehman both studied architecture and urban planning respectively, and their... View full entry
If you're currently looking for architectural job opportunities in the Upper Midwest, take a look at this week's curated highlight from Archinect Jobs. We have selected a number of current openings for architects, designers, and academic positions in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Illinois... View full entry
This article was written by Genaro Armas UWM’s School of Architecture is marking its 50th anniversary in a yearlong celebration that concludes with a gala weekend in April. To commemorate five decades of education, research and community engagement, architecture faculty members... View full entry
Technology that would connect the cities of Cleveland and Chicago via a 30-minute commute inched closer to reality this month as a national transportation and housing appropriations bill passed one federal hurdle.
Five million dollars in initial funding for the Great Lakes Hyperloop System, an experimental high-speed transportation project, was included in legislation voted on by the U.S. House of Representatives in late June.
— Crain's Cleveland Business
Kim Palmer reports for Crain's Cleveland: "The passage of the 2020 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development Appropriation bill by the House provides the funds for the U.S. Department of Transportation to create a regulatory framework for development of a hyperloop system." Prototype of the... View full entry
There's no way to sugar coat it, the Polar Vortex of 2019 has aggressively hit various parts of the world. As people have braced themselves for the cold and frigid temperatures, how does the harsh cold remind us of building more resilient structures? Chicago and many other areas in the U.S. have... View full entry
Construction cranes filled the skyline, but much of the best work in Chicago and the Midwest in 2018 was tucked away in settings far from the high-rise commercial maelstrom. — Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune architecture critic, Blair Kamin, takes a look back and lists 2018's most notable architecture moments in the Windy City and the greater Midwest region, including the transformation of Eero Saarinen's Gateway Arch landmark in St. Louis, the anticipated new home of the Chicago... View full entry
Yet now, in our era of elegantly restrained and frequently dour minimalism, when architecture is almost always the province of the rich, it may be that Goff, with his aesthetic idiosyncrasies and affinity for middle-class Midwestern clients (schoolteachers, farmers, salesmen, small-town newspaper publishers), still has lessons to teach us, 36 years after his death. — The New York Times
In her NYT feature, Amanda Fortini revisits the flamboyant and impressive work of the largely forgotten midcentury architect Bruce Goff. "His daring, elaborately imagined homes—he loved unusual shapes and made ample use of found materials—are often dismissed by cultural mandarins as... View full entry
Gentrification. It is a word that we hear with increasing frequency in contemporary discussions about American cities. But what does that word really mean? And, even more importantly, what does it mean in the context of the region that I live in and love – the Rust Belt? [...]
It is important to be clear about the meaning of this increasingly ambiguous term, because what needs to happen in the vast majority of urban neighborhoods in the legacy cities of the Rust Belt is far less ambiguous.
— City Observatory
"Many critics of Rust Belt gentrification are holding cities to an unreasonable standard, and placing them in an impossible situation. If much of the city remains poor and run-down, this is proof that the city does not care, and is not trying hard enough. If, on the other hand, parts of the city... View full entry
While Saarinen’s groundbreaking works gave him international prominence, many people don’t realize that his earliest architectural and design laboratory was in Michigan. — New York Times
John L. Dorman, for the travel section of the New York Times explored Michigan's modern architecture, and more specifically, buildings by modern architect Eliel Saarinen and his son Eero. He reports visiting the Saarinen's house designed by Eliel and the first buildings realized by Eero, such as... View full entry
Today’s show follows up on Archinect Sessions episode 83, when we discussed this first year of Exhibit Columbus. The inaugural exhibition of Exhibit Columbus opens this summer, on August 26, and will include six built structures, designed by teams from six different Midwestern universities... View full entry
Earlier this summer, Midwest convenience store chain Kum & Go revealed a first peek at their new Renzo Piano-designed Des Moines, Iowa headquarters. The initial round of design illustrations were of a rather austere, CAD-like quality, and Archinect commenters remarked that the renderings... View full entry
When Midwest convenience store chain Kum & Go announced the selection of Renzo Piano as design architect for their new Des Moines, Iowa headquarters last November, speculations immediately ran wild about what the Italian master would put to paper.The secrecy has now been lifted with the... View full entry
Renzo Piano Building Workshop will be the design architect for the new corporate headquarters of Midwest convenience retailer chain Kum & Go. The 120,000 sq.foot building will be located at the Pappajohn Sculpture Park in downtown Des Moines, Iowa.
After competing teams submitted written proposals, six finalists were interviewed last month before RPBW won the project. In the next few months, a local architect and general contractor will be chosen as the design process begins.
— bustler.net
UPDATE: Renzo Piano's designs for Kum & Go HQ revealed View full entry
In a paper he recently published in the International Journal of Modern Physics B, Tao points to two regions of China... that have a similar geographic location as the Midwest—but far fewer tornadoes. The difference, he says, is that China's plains are surrounded by three east-west mountain ranges, which slow down passing winds enough to prevent tornados from forming.
Tao, then, is essentially suggesting we build mountain range-sized walls across Tornado Alley...
— motherboard.vice.com
THANKS TO preservation efforts and the museum-building boom of the past decade, America's hot zone for modern and contemporary architecture is still the Midwest. And driving is the best way to see it all, including the star attraction, Chicago. "It's the birthplace of tall buildings," said Zoë Ryan, an architecture and design curator at the Art Institute of Chicago — online.wsj.com
