Architecture’s a hot topic in Chicago right now–and vice versa. The current issue of the trade journal Architectural Record is dedicated to the city’s revival, with nods to Soldier Field, Millennium Park, Koolhaas and Jahn’s new buildings at IIT, and Ralph Johnson’s Skybridge development just north of Greektown, plus an overview of hot younger architects, including Jeanne Gang, Doug Garofalo, Darryl Crosby, and Melinda Palmore. This weekend the sixth annual Great Chicago Places and Spaces offers more than 130 free architectural tours of the city (see schedule in Section Two). And next month the American Institute of Architects will hold its yearly convention in Chicago for the first time in over a decade.
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To stay on top of the action, a good guidebook is a must, and Chicagoans have their choice of two, Chicago’s Famous Buildings and the AIA Guide to Chicago, both of which have been revised recently. The former was first published in 1965 by the newly created Chicago Landmark Commission as a guide to the city’s first 39 official landmark buildings and other notable structures. (That 20 of these were soon demolished shows how anemic the spirit of conservation still was at the time.) The fifth edition, edited by Franz Schulz and Kevin Harrington, came out last year from the University of Chicago Press and is more than 100 pages longer than the original. The AIA Guide to Chicago, edited by Alice Sinkevitch, was first published in 1993–the last year the AIA held its convention here–and it’s been specially revamped for the return of the conference this summer.
The larger AIA Guide can seem a bit overwhelming (“Too many buildings!” was the reaction of a Seattle architect visiting the city last month), but the prose is lively enough to encourage sustained reading. Perry R. Duis’s introduction provides a great overview of the city’s history and architecture in just 20 pages, and Jack Hartray’s critique of the concrete gulag of River North is right on the mark.
“The Farnsworth House is the most significant house designed in America in the 20th century,” says Richard Moe, president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. It’s a good thing he feels that way, since he paid $7.5 million to buy it at auction last December. The house, 65 miles southwest of Chicago in Plano, Illinois, will be run by the Landmarks Preservation Council, which was also instrumental in raising the cash.
