New Navy Pier Plans, McCormick CTA Renderings Revealed
Above: “Gateway Fountain” in warm and cold seasons. (Courtesy Navy Pier)
Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration Wednesday revealed details about two initiatives they said would amount to $1.1 billion in investment: a new 10,000-seat arena for DePaul University located across the street from McCormick Place, and an overhaul to Navy Pier — the city’s largest tourist attraction.
Unity Temple Congregation May Yield Ownership in Costly Restoration Campaign
Unity Temple, Oak Park, IL. 1904.
Unity Temple, Frank Lloyd Wright’s first public building, may come under new ownership as part of a $10 million deal to help restore the 105-year-old national landmark.
Local nonprofit Alphawood Foundation Chicago and longtime owners the Unity Temple Unitarian Universalist Congregation announced Tuesday a joint fundraising campaign aimed at fixing water damage that, according to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, “urgently requires a multi-million-dollar rescue effort.”
Where Are Chicago’s Most Bikeable Neighborhoods?
Protected bike lanes on Kinzie Street. (Josh Koonce / Flickr)
Steven Vance, editor of StreetsBlog Chicago and frequent contributor to AN, dug through Walk Score’s breakdown of the most bikeable neighborhoods in Chicago.
The rankings are based on several factors, including the prevalence of bike lanes, connectivity, commuting mode share and hills. It also considers the number of neighborhood destinations and, as Vance points out, may consider a shared lane marking as a bike lane. That led to the Illinois Medical District’s surprising fourth place ranking, tailing East Ukrainian Village, Ukrainian Village and Wicker Park.
See the national list of WalkScore.com’s most bikeable neighborhoods here, and read StreetsBlog’s post here.
Kroloff Leaves Full-Time Post at Cranbrook
SMITHGROUP’S ADDITION ALONGSIDE SAARINEN’S ORIGINAL MUSEUM. JIM HAEFNER
Reed Kroloff will leave his full-time position as director of Michigan’s Cranbrook Academy of Art and Art Museum for a part-time role, the academy announced Tuesday. In his stead, Cranbrook Trustee and Academy Governor Allan Rothfeder will serve as a special advisor to assist Cranbrook President Dominic DiMarco during the transition period.
Letter to the Editor> Moussavi Missed in Cleveland
MOCA Cleveland. (COURTESY DEAN KAUFMAN)
[ Editor's Note: The following letter is an excerpt of a comment left on archpaper.com. It pertains to the new Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Cleveland designed by Farshid Moussavi, which Stephanie Murg critiqued for AN's Midwest edition last November. AN welcomes reader letters, which could appear in our regional print editions. To share your opinion, please email editor@archpaper.com. ]
MOCA’s form is a simple game of extruded geometry. The base form shifts from a hexagon as it rises to a square at its top. A third year architecture student would have been given a C- and asked, “Is that all you could come up with?” The exterior is clad in black stainless steel panels that are already streaking at the corners. They also present a range of colors that indicate the material selection and/or production was not up to the task of producing uniformity.
On View> Sharing Space: Creative Intersections in Architecture and Design
(Courtesy Art Institute of Chicago)
Sharing Space: Creative Intersections in Architecture and Design
The Art Institute of Chicago
111 South Michigan Avenue
Through August 4
This new exhibition at The Art Institute of Chicago explores the influential impact that color inevitably has on our perception of geometry. It presents an extensive collection of modern and contemporary works ranging from the 1940’s to 2012 created by architects, urban planners, graphic designers, and industrial designers. One of the works prominently featured in the exhibit is Camouflage House (above), Doug Garofalo and David Leary’s theoretical project in which the pair “colored-in” the contours of a building, blurring the rigid lines and sharp angles of the structure and causing it to blend in with the surrounding natural landscape. The exhibition underlines the contrasting relationship between color and geometry and highlights the effect this relationship can have on architecture and design.
AIA Chicago Names Small Projects Awards Winners
(Studio Thomas Photography)
The Chicago chapter of the American Institute of Architects honored 107 projects with its annual small project awards last Friday, putting the spotlight on objects, small structures, and small firms. According to the AIA Chicago, “the goal of this award program is to raise public awareness of the value that architects bring to small projects and to promote small practitioners as a resource for design excellence.” This year, the third year for the awards program, small projects were honored in four categories: Additions/Remodeling, Kitchens, New Construction, and Small Objects.
“Big ideas and transformational spaces come from creative people, and those people are at firms small and large,” AIA Chicago Executive Vice President Zurich Esposito said in a statement. “The Small Projects Awards reward that innovative thinking that works on a smaller scale.”
Anheuser-Busch Taps Plans For St. Louis Biergarten
A new outdoor “biergarten” at the Anheuser-Busch brewery in St. Louis will be a first for any of the beer conglomerate’s 12 U.S. breweries. (Courtesy Anheuser-Busch)
An 18-foot, bright red “B” plucked from St. Louis’ Anheuser-Busch brewery will find a permanent home in the beer conglomerate’s first U.S. “biergarten.” The “B” is a relic of the neon Budweiser sign replaced by LEDs in February.
Located adjacent to the brewery’s tour center at 12th and Lynch streets, the beer garden joins what is already one of the region’s largest tourist attractions, drawing 350,000 visitors annually. Five of the dozen U.S. breweries are owned by A-B, which itself is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Belgium-based A-B InBev, but the St. Louis location is so far the only one with a beer garden on tap.
Spontaneous Interventions To Spruce Up Chicago’s Millennium Park This Summer
(Courtesy MAS Studio)
Starting Memorial Day, Chicago’s Millennium Park will host the U.S. debut of a bright array of public design projects, many of which appeared at the 2012 Venice Biennale. Spontaneous Interventions: Design Actions for the Common Good will feature 84 works, including more than a dozen for Chicago and several that also appeared in Venice.
AN’s Eavesdrop Makes A Mark on Chicago Nightlife
Left to right: Thomas Demand, Marina Fine Arts #23, 2011; Thomas Demand, Beyer #15, 2011; Thomas Demand, Segel #25, 2011. (Courtesy Graham Foundation)
Get Out Your Scotch Guard—Eavesdrop Is Coming! If the hors d’ouevres make a party, Luminaire threw quite the fête last month. The huge design showroom in Chicago’s River North staged the top floor with more affordable items from their inventory, alongside of pop-ups from local artisans, including European bike-lifestyle guru J.C. Lind Bike Co. This was our first stop of several that evening, so the substantial hors d’oeuvres—a.k.a. Prosecco sponges—were fully appreciated. What didn’t appreciate them?
Rockefeller Foundation Issues Grants To Support Bus Rapid Transit
Chicago BRT Proposal. (Courtesy CDOT)
The Rockefeller Foundation has announced that four cities will receive a combined $1.2 million in grants to foster research, communications, and community outreach efforts in an endeavor to educate local stakeholders about the advantages of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) systems. The Foundation’s solution to “Transform Cities” and promote fiscal growth and quality of life proposes better mass transit investments. Boston, Chicago, Nashville, and Pittsburgh will participate in the project.
What Do We Want? Docent Rights! Farnsworth House Opts For Paid Labor
The Farnsworth House. (Courtesy Farnsworth House)
For seven years, Eavesdrop has lived in Chicago without a car and that means we’ve never made the trek out to Mies van der Rohe‘s Farnsworth House. But with all the flooding in the Midwest this year, we could have just used a boat. Now, a little bird has whispered in our ear that at least one docent is bent out of shape by recent changes. It would appear that the National Trust for Historic Preservation is replacing volunteer docents with paid part-time tour guides. Can you imaging, the desire to pay your help? Quelle horreur! We say: way to go Trust!
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