The Obama Presidential Center by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects and Interactive Design moves forward as a federal judge tossed out the lawsuit against it. The planned $500 million, 20-acre campus faced an initial ruling from a district judge that allowed the lawsuit to proceed and stalled construction for four months. Now U.S. District Judge John Robert Blakey stated there will be no halt in construction.
Architect and godfather of Chicago's architectural community, Stanley Tigerman, has passed away. At 88 years old, Tigerman died in his home town of Chicago after a long battle with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Former director of the architecture school at the University of Illinois at Chicago, he founded his own practice, Tigerman McCurry, in the early 1960s.
The Elmhurst Art Museum has unveiled details of a new installation taking place in the Mies van der Rohe-designed McCormick House in Chicago. Designed by Luftwerk, a Chicago-based artistic collaborative of Petra Bachmaier and Sean Gallero, the “Parallel Perspectives” installation is a site-specific exhibition that uses color and light interventions to activate and interpret the house, celebrating the use of geometry in the mid-Century prefab prototype.
OMA and KOO LLC has been announced as winners of an international competition to design an innovative Center for the Arts on the University of Illinois at Chicago campus, serving as a gateway between UIC and the world. The scheme was one of three proposals chosen as finalists for the center, joining Johnston Marklee/UrbanWorks and Morphosis/STL.
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Few architects have had a greater influence on civic design and the public realm than Carol Ross Barney. Advocating that excellent design is a right, not a privilege, Carol's career is marked by her sensitivity. Born in Chicago, Illinois on April 12, 1949, her work is characterized by a desire to bring dignity to the needs of users and the public alike. With a career that spans over 40 years, Carol founded her firm Ross Barney Architects in 1981. She is known for shaping the built environment, the profession, and architectural education. As an architect, urbanist, mentor, and educator, her work upholds a deep commitment to people and place.
The University of Illinois at Chicago has announced the shortlist to design a new $95 million Center of the Arts for the College of Architecture, Design and the Arts. Chosen from 36 teams, the shortlist includes OMA with KOO Architects, Johnston Marklee with UrbanWorks, and Morphosis with STL Architects. The new center will include a 500-seat concert hall, a 270-seat reconfigurable theater, an exhibition hall, rehearsal spaces, and a combination cafe and jazz club. The 88,000-square-foot building will be primarily used by the UIC’s School of Theatre & Music as the new public face of UIC’s East Campus.
Architect Rafael Viñoly has revealed new images for NEMA, a skyscraper set to become the tallest residential rental tower in Chicago. Designed to evoke the structural system of the Willis Tower, the project is sited on the southwestern edge of Grant Park. The 76-story residential tower will create 800 rental units and is designed to be LEED Silver. The new skyscraper will include expansive views of the city's skyline as it frames Lake Michigan and Grant Park.
The Chicago Plan Commission has approved the $6 billion Lincoln Yards project to develop 55 acres of riverfront land in Chicago. Proposed by real estate investment and development firm Sterling Bay, the project has the potential to reshape the city's skyline along the Chicago River. Lincoln Yards would include office, residential and hotel towers, as well as restaurants, retail and entertainment spaces along Lincoln Park and Bucktown.
Five design teams have been selected to present their ideas for the Chicago O'Hare Airport Global Terminal and Global Concourse expansion. The designs are on display at an exhibition opened by Mayor Rahm Emanuel at the Chicago Architecture Center. Teams include Fentress-EXP-Brook-Garza, Foster Epstein Moreno, Studio ORD, SOM and Santiago Calatrava. Known as O’Hare 21, the project represents O’Hare’s first major overhaul in 25 years.
The state of Illinois has launched a new testing program for connected and automated vehicles. Called Autonomous Illinois, the research initiative was announced by Governor Bruce Rauner's office. As Curbed Chicago reports, Created by executive order, multiagency program will be state-wide and led by the Illinois Department of Transportation to advance the state’s research in self-driving cars.
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Architecture firm SOM has designed Kinematic Sculpture, an origami-like pavilion installation for Chicago Design Week. Exploring kinematics as the science of motion, the sculpture was formed as one of the firm's ongoing interdisciplinary research projects. As a test in integrated design, the structure aims to establish ideas that foster new architectural and structural solutions for pressing challenges in the built environment.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has announced the figures for the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial, which closed its four month run on Sunday, January 7th.
The second edition of the event, helmed by Artistic Director Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee, was able to match the success of the inaugural edition, seeing 554,866 visitors from around the world.
Just a few months after the opening of Apple’s first town square concept retail store, the Foster + Partners-designed glass-box structure is facing the wrath of its first Chicago winter – and it doesn’t appear to be handling it so smoothly.
As reported by the Verge and 9to5Mac, nearly all of the store’s riverfront outdoor space has been roped off due to the presence of large and potentially dangerous icicles that have formed on the edge of the building’s MacBook-shaped roof. Signs reading “watch for falling snow and ice” now surround the store and at the entrance on Pioneer Court.
This article was originally published on the blog of the Chicago Architecture Biennial, the largest platform for contemporary architecture in North America. The 2017 Biennial, entitled Make New History, will be free and open to the public between September 16, 2017 and January 6, 2018.
When we think of contemporary architecture in China, we often refer to the megaprojects by international architecture studios that tend to get covered most in the design media. From OMA’s CCTV Headquarters and Shenzhen Stock Exchange to the recently completed Tianjin Binhai Library by MVRDV and Poly International Plaza by SOM, these projects dominate urban skylines at a singular scale that suggests they were built to impress.
Beyond individual buildings, China’s mega-architecture boom is rapidly developing entirely new cities, a process designed to relieve the country’s principal metropolitan areas of their high density, while offering new prototypes for urban life. These highly branded environments are prompting displacement – as a form of rural exodus – and social stress throughout the country, while also ignoring the legacy of traditional Chinese architecture in urban centers.
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The first in a new generation of Apple stores has opened in the heart of Chicago. Designed by Foster + Partners, Apple Michigan Avenue employs the tech giant’s “Town Square” concept, which subverts the typical retail experience in favor of a community-inclusive approach.
The Chicago Architecture Foundation (CAF) has announced the creation of the Chicago Architecture Center, a new headquarters and experience center that will invite visitors to discover “Chicago’s architectural legacy and its role in shaping cities everywhere.”
Located within the Mies van der Rohe-designed 111 East Wacker Drive along the Chicago River, the 20,000-square-foot center will provide space for a variety of exhibitions and educational initiatives, including direct access to the Chicago Architecture Foundation River Cruise. The new interiors will be designed by Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture.
Home to Frank Lloyd Wright for many years, Oak Park, Illinois is also the site of the greatest concentration of Frank Lloyd Wright-designed homes and buildings than anywhere else in the world. Having designed structures for the neighborhood for nearly four decades, Wright used Oak Park as a place to try out new techniques and evolve his personal style.
Picking up on this, Illustrator Phil Thompson of Cape Horn Illustration has created a new map of Wright’s Oak Park designs. Organized both chronologically and by location, the map allows viewers to make connections between the structures, as their lines evolved from gabled to flat roofs and expanded in scale and in ambition.
One of Louis Kahn’s most unique and lesser-known projects, the floating concert hall known as Point Counterpoint II, is at risk of demolition, reports the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.
Built from 1964 to ’67 as part of celebrations for the American Bicentennial, the 195-foot-long vessel has since been used as the waterborne home of the American Wind Symphony Orchestra (AWSO), allowing the group to take their own venue places as far away as Paris, France and St. Petersburg, Russia. Along with circular doorways and portholes, the structure features a 75-foot-wide stage that can be opened and closed using a hydraulic lift system.
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_Benny_Chan_(1).jpg?1540293132 "Kinematic Sculpture. Image © Benny Chan")
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