Architectural Red Carpet to Roll out on Chicago

By Andrew Peerless in Arts & Entertainment on Feb 23, 2005 2:59PM

Wouldn't Millennium Park look nice with a plush, red carpet rolled right over the BP bridge and through the Lurie Garden? Wouldn't Joan and Melissa Rivers' derrieres look positively adorable reflected in the convexity of "the Bean?"

Well, although the Pritzker Prize is essentially the Oscars of the architecture world, Chicagoans should expect slightly less fanfare when the annual award persentation comes to Millennium Park on May 31, 2005. The ceremony, being held in Chicago for the fourth time since its 1979 inception, bestows the architecture world's most prestigious honor upon a single laureate for unprecented contributions to the world of architecture. Former winners include Rem Koolhaas, designer of IIT's McCormick Tribune Campus Center, and Renzo Piano, whose long-planned addition to the Art Institute of Chicago will hopefully see the light of day sometime soon.

Ceremony attendees are expected to include our own architecture-lovin' mayor, former Pritzker recipient Frank "My Goal is to Design Giant Silver Blobs Within Five Minutes of Every Human Being On Earth" Gehry and... you! That's right! For the first time in its history, the Pritzker Prize ceremony will be open to the public, who can sink their toes into the grassy expanses of the Pritzker Pavilion for free. Woo!

The Hyatt Foundation has yet to announce who this year's laureate will be, but he or she will also be in attendance. Odds indicate that this former-architect-cum-Chicagoist is not a likely contender.