Results tagged “blairkamin”

       

One of the Burnham Pavilions we mentioned a few months back has finally opened in Millennium Park - seven weeks late - in honor of this year's centennial of the Burnham Plan. The Trib's Blair Kamin has more info on the project, designed by London's Zaha Hadid. The pavilion will remain open through October 31 and feature a nightly showing of Thomas Gray's film "Chicago: Past, Present and Future," at 6:30 p.m. The UNStudio pavilion by Ben van Berkel, also pictured above, has been open since June and is still on display at the park.

     

Wow, underground buildings are the new above-ground buildings, apparently. First the Children's Museum revealed its dugout plans, and now the University of Chicago has yet more plans to keep its students sun-shunning mole trolls. We kid, we kid.

The Illinois State Capitol chamber restoration and a private residence in Evanston both earned 2008 American Institute of Architects Honor Awards yesterday. Vinci | Hamp Architects, Inc. won for "the quality of the restoration, including the reconstruction of lost elements of the original design as well as a skillful implementation of modern building systems," according to the AIA's announcement, and Thomas Roszak won for his design of his own home, Evanston's "glass house," which the jury recognized for its "transparency."

There isn't total agreement on just how "green" Chicago is (though if anyone knows, it would be Blair Kamin). The city hopes to make some progress in Al Gore-ifying the city with its two new programs.

The debate over the Chicago Children's Museum plan to relocate to Grant Park has escalated since Monday’s neighborhood meeting at Daley Bicentennial Plaza. There, museum officials introduced plans for a more sunken, environmentally friendly design adjacent to the Plaza. The Museum’s growth has been remarkable. Founded in 1982 in two Chicago Public Library hallways, it’s since moved three times, most recently to Navy Pier in 1995. Twelve years later, they’ve apparently outgrown that tourist magnet....

Here’s what happened while Obama turned 46 and you were rocking your ass off: The Sunday Trib assessed McCormick Place’s new West Building, which opened Thursday. Blair Kamin deems the monstrously huge space a success, citing its flexibility and openness to its neighbors. The list of August dance festivals keeps growing, sort of. Reasons for Moving, an Interdisciplinary festival presented by Striding Lion features theatrical work incorporating movement, text, and music, starts August 9 at...

Now that City Council has banned smoking tobacco on Chicago stages, city actors and audiences will have to get used to that cool herbal cigarette smell. If you're Jonesing for the real thing, you’ll have to head out to suburban Next, Circle, and Northlight theaters. Architect David Fisher, of “Leonardo da Vinci Smart Bathroom” fame, is hoping city leaders will go to bat for his next idea: a skyscraper whose floors spin slowly and independently,...

Because we just can’t get enough of the architectural beat this week, we bring you our third installment: Save the graystones!

The Trib's architecture critic, Blair Kamin, takes a break from analyzing the glistening, starchitect towers to weigh in on Wrigley Field's updates.

Prominent architect Cesar Pelli, who designed the Petronas Towers in Malaysia, has proposed a 2,000-foot tall broadcast tower shaped like tweezers on the lakefront near Navy Pier. The tower would house antennas for local television stations to broadcast high-definition signals. If built, the tower would top Toronto's CN Tower as the world's tallest free-standing broadcast tower. The tower, under the catchy working title of "Tall Tower," wouldn't be a building at all. Instead, it would...

Despite the swirl of scandals that threaten to envelop Mayor Daley, one bulletproof accomplishment cited by his defenders is the revitalization of Chicago’s downtown area. Over the past week, the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times have examined the changes in the Loop and beyond.

Among the 12 designs are two Chicago landmarks -- the John Hancock Center and Mies van der Rohe's minimalist apartment buildings at 860-880 N. Lake Shore Dr. Trib architecture critic Blair Kamin, however, takes exception to the small number of Chicago landmarks included in the set -- and he's absolutely right. If there's one this this city knows -- other than hot dogs and pizza -- it's revolutionary architecture. Blair mentions Marina City and the Farnsworth House as among those which should have been included, and Chicagoist agrees.

The National Park System Advisory Board's Landmarks Committee unanimously recommended yesterday that Soldier Field be stripped of its status as a National Historic Landmark. The recommendation now lands on the desk of U.S. Interior Secretary Gale Norton, who is expected to make a final decision by the end of the year.

In an announcement that has stunned Chicagoist (no, not really), the National Park Service has recommended that Soldier Field's landmark status be withdrawn and that the stadium also be removed from the National Register of Historic Places.