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Inspired
by Nature:
The Garfield Park Conservatory and Chicago's West Side
Programs are co-sponsored by the Chicago
Park District and Garfield Park Conservatory Alliance
April 3 – June 6
LOCATION
The John Buck Company Lecture Hall Gallery
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Preserving Chicago,
Making History
February 7– May 15, 2008
Do We Dare Squander
will examine the role of historic preservation in Chicago by featuring
stories of individuals and grassroots groups whose efforts are central
to the construction of the city and its identity. The exhibition
and accompanying programs will focus on preservationists’
motivations—and evaluate the consequences of their actions.
To view Preservation
Perspectives video website. |
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During
the 1930s, the Chicago Surface Lines streetcar company documented
every major intersection in Chicago. Using large-format cameras, company
photographers captured hundreds of neighborhood and downtown streetscapes.
These remarkable images portray an elegant city, with cops on the
beat, taut trolley wires, wide-open spaces, buildings lathered in
terra cotta, vibrant nightlife, second-floor chop suey joints, and
grand movie palaces.
Until today, this collection of photographs has remained undiscovered
in the archives of the Chicago Transit Authority. The public has never
seen most of the images featured in Intersections. Taken simply to
document the streetcar system, the pictures demonstrate how L trains
and buses help define Chicago life and how they reflect the city’s
growth and development.
These photographs form the heart of a new book, Chicago:
City on the Move, by Michael Williams,
Richard Cahan, and Bruce Moffat. CAF celebrates the release of this
publication with the Intersections exhibition and related programming
throughout the fall. |
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August
8 - November 16, 2007
The exhibition encourages visitors to explore
suburban roads, a coffee shop, a bus stop, a living room, and an
office cubicle to learn how their decisions determine the health
of their neighborhoods and the quality of their lives.
Me, Myself and Infrastructure appears thanks to the generous support
of the American Society of Civil Engineers.
Founded in 1852, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)
represents more than 140,000 members of the civil engineering profession
worldwide. It is America’s oldest national engineering society.
ASCE is the leading advocate for the responsible and sustainable
development of our infrastructure and environment. |
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Price Tower Arts
Center
Photo by Jeff Millies, Hedrich Blessing, 2005. |
Prairie Skyscraper: Frank Lloyd Wright's Price Tower
January 18-April 29, 2007
The exhibition was organized in celebration of
the 50th anniversary of this masterpiece by the Price Tower Arts
Center in cooperation with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation in
Scottsdale, Arizona. "We are thrilled that the Chicago Architecture
Foundation will host an exhibition that celebrates this milestone
work by Frank Lloyd Wright," says Lynn Osmond, Chicago Architecture
Foundation President and CEO. " The city where the skyscraper
was born is also the city of Wright's early architectural legacy.
It is fitting that Chicago should experience the joining of the
two through this exhibition."
"Prairie Skyscraper documents how this singular
building came into existence and demonstrates how it epitomizes
Frank Lloyd Wright's lifelong passion for merging architecture,
design and art," notes Richard P. Townsend, Executive Director
and CEO of Price Tower Arts Center. The exhibit includes a selection
of documents, photographs, building components, and reproductions
of drawings from Price Tower Arts Center and the Frank Lloyd Wright
Foundation archives. It also features original furnishings including
desks, chairs, tables and textiles designed by Frank Lloyd Wright,
many of which have never been exhibited. An illustrated catalogue
edited by exhibition curator Anthony Alofsin will be available for
purchase in the Chicago Architecture Foundation shop.The large-format
176-page book features 150 color illustrations, catalogue entries,
and essays by Wright scholars.
Organized by Price Tower Arts Center, Bartlesville
, Oklahoma, in cooperation with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation,
Scottsdale, Arizona. The exhibition, its tour, and publication are
made possible in part by the Henry Luce Foundation, the Buell Family
of Bartlesville, the Silas Foundation, and the Oklahoma Tourism
and Recreation Department. The exhibition installation has been
designed by Zaha Hadid and Office of Zaha Hadid, London, and co-produced
by Price Tower Arts Center and Yale University Art + Architecture
Gallery. |
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| Aerial
view of Iroquois Landing. Courtesy of Friends of the Parks |
Completing the South Lakefront Parks: The Last
Four Miles January 25 – March
10, 2007
Co-Presented by Friends of the Park
Chicago’s 26 miles of public lakeshore park system create a
linear park expanse that is unrivalled around the world for its beauty
and public accessibility. However, two stretches along the lakefront
totaling approximately 4 miles are not public parks but remain in
private or quasi-governmental ownership.
This exhibition will present the final plan for the design of the
south lakefront, a result of a new initiative undertaken by Friends
of the Parks to work with citizens, park advisory councils, community
groups, public officials and government representatives to envision
a plan to complete Chicago’s lakefront park system from Evanston
to the Indiana border. |
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September
20 – November 15, 2006
The Learning
from North Lawndale exhibition is designed
to promote a deeper understanding of the west side community’s
unique place in our nation’s history. One of the densest communities
in Chicago for much of its early history, North Lawndale is an archive
of early 20th century American architecture. The exhibition interweaves
the community’s many stories and chronicles its transition
from a predominately Jewish community, known as “Chicago Jerusalem”
in the 1920s, to a vibrant African American community, which was
the site of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Chicago civil rights
campaign in 1966. Over 100 images illustrate the community’s
stately greystone homes, elegant parks and gardens, synagogues and
churches, and impressive civic structures. These buildings have
hosted significant historic events and individuals. Benny Goodman,
Golda Meir, Otis Rush, Dinah Washington, and Dr. King all called
Lawndale home at one point. Other exhibit highlights include: Sears,
Roebuck and Company, whose world headquarters were once in North
Lawndale; Route 66, one of North Lawndale’s and the nation’s
most celebrated roads; one of the nation’s first luxury movie
palaces; and the blues music known as the “West Side Sound,”
which originated there. In celebrating North Lawndale’s rich
historic and architectural legacy, this exhibition illustrates the
importance of memory, community reflection, and pride of place among
today’s North Lawndale residents who want to preserve their
heritage, while exploring new possibilities for growth.
Download PDF version of Exhibition Guide |
| EXHIBITION SPONSORS |
EXHIBITION PARTNERS |

Fannie Mae Corporation
The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation
Homan Arthington Foundation
Illinois Department of Commerce
and Economic Opportunity
Illinois Humanities Council
National Endowment for the Arts
New England Builders, Inc.
Steans Family Foundation |
Lawndale Heritage
Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago
Chicago Architectural Club
College of Architecture and the Arts at the
University of Illinois at Chicago |
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Aerial view of
of Ponte Parodi in Genoa, Italy,
designed by UN Studio. |
January 28– May 7, 2006 The
Chicago city motto is “Urbs in Horto”, or “City
in a Garden”. With the exhibition Open: New Designs for Public
Space, the Chicago Architecture Foundation investigates the evolving
conditions of public space in Chicago — from the spectacular
new Millennium Park to the development of streets and gardens in neighborhoods
throughout the city. More than three hundred architectural renderings,
photographs and models illustrate issues of concern to every Chicagoan.
To provide global perspective, Open includes twenty contemporary public
spaces on six continents. These projects represent the most innovative
architecture, landscape and urban design from cities across the globe,
by world-renowned designers such as Will Alsop, Elizabeth Diller and
Ricardo Scofidio, Peter Eisenman, Norman Foster, Kathryn Gustafson
and Zaha Hadid. The projects are organized into five main themes representing
major trends in the design of public space: The Plaza Unbound, Information
in Place, Opening the City, Active Memory, and New Meeting Grounds.
The exhibition on new public space around the world was organized
by the Van Alen Institute of New York, with its Chicago narrative
developed by the Chicago Architecture Foundation. |
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McCormick Buildings 1899
Chicago Historical Society (ICHi 22833) |
Ravinia Pavilion 1950
Holabird & Root archives |
Holabird & Root: 125
Years Through April, 2006
This year marks the 125th anniversary of the famous Holabird &
Root architecture firm. In honor of this major milestone, the CAF
will host a retrospective of Holabird & Root’s achievements
in an exhibition featuring Hedrich Blessing photography. |
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| Federal Campus, Oklahoma City by Ross
Barney + Janowski Architects |
Contemporary Arts
Center, Cincinnati, Ohio by
Zaha Hadid Architects |
Glass Pavilian at the Toledo Museum of Art.
Toledo, Ohio by SANAA |
Light Rail Transit
Stations, Minneapolis, Minnesota by Julie
Snow Architects |
SOS Children's Village
Community Center, Chicago, Illinois by Studio
Gang Architects |
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June 23 – November
20, 2005
“Five Architects” is an exhibition of five public buildings
in the Midwest, by five different architects: the Contemporary Arts
Center in Cincinnati, Ohio, by Zaha Hadid Architects; the Federal
Campus, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, by Ross Barney + Jankowski; the Glass
Pavilion at the Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio, by SANAA; Light
Rail Transit Stations in Minneapolis, Minnesota, by Julie Snow Architects;
and the SOS Children’s Village Community Center, Chicago, Illinois,
by Studio Gang.
In contrast to the 1972 book of the same name, in which a group of
young New York architects attempted to define themselves as a unified
“school,” this exhibition illustrates a trend towards
social, geographic, and aesthetic diversity of contemporary architecture.
| Five Architects
is sponsored by |
Lead Foundation Sponsor of Five
Architects |
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Additional funding generously provided
by:
The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation
Graham Foundation
Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity
Illinois Humanities Council
National Endowment for the Arts
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January
27– May 2, 2005 CAF
will host a major traveling exhibition on the Chicago leg of its national
tour. New Federal Architecture: The Face of a Nation has already appeared,
under different names, at the Center for Architecture in New York
City and at the Octagon in Washington, D.C. Organized by the Design
Excellence Program of the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA),
a federal agency often called “the nation’s landlord,”
the New Federal Architecture exhibition will present more than a dozen
U.S. courthouses, federal office buildings, and border stations, designed
by some of the world’s best-known architects, such as Thom Mayne
of Morphosis, Richard Meier, and Antoine Predock.
The exhibition demonstrates the GSA’s renewed commitment to
design quality, after years of commissioning and constructing federal
buildings with a greater regard for the bottom line than for the public
good. New Federal Architecture will also introduce the GSA’s
innovative process for the selection and design of federal buildings;
the process involves the participation
of hundreds of peer reviewers: architects, engineers, and other professionals
who evaluate the quality of an architect’s qualifications, and,
after hiring, review the work in progress. |
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Racine Museum: Building an Institution
The John Buck Company Lecture Hall
Gallery at the ArchiCenter
This exhibition explores the many individuals
and groups who made the construction of the new Racine Art Museum
possible, through a series of specially commissioned portraits by
Scottish photographer Graham MacIndoe. |
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Through January 20,
2005
Some of the world’s best-known
architects and engineers have submitted designs for pedestrian bridges
across Lake Shore Drive.
View all the entries and winners; the winning design will be announced
during the exhibition run. |
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Architectural
renderings, souvenirs, and never-before-seen photographs recall
Chicago’s 1933–34 World’s Fair, A Century of Progress,
which introduced modern architecture to the heartland.
Exhibition Partner
City of Chicago
Richard M. Daley, Mayor
Chicago Park District
Timothy J. Mitchell, General Superintendent & CEO
Exhibition Sponsor
W.E. O’Neil Construction Company
Sponsors
The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation
Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity
Contributors
Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation
Dwell magazine
The Home Depot
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June
1 September 12, 2004 The green
design movement started small, with houses, in the 1960s. Today, architects
adapt
green technology to skyscrapers, shopping malls, and stadiums to meet
ever-growing environmental challenges.
Big & Green: Toward Sustainable Architecture in the 21st
Century, at the Chicago Architecture Foundation from June 1
through September 12, shows how large-scale green architecture can
be both healthful and practical. Models and drawings illustrate
how major projects around the world can be made of renewable materials
and can use energy-efficient utility systems to reduce our reliance
on fossil fuels, improve air quality indoors and out, limit our need
for landfills, conserve water, and even stave off global warming.
Organized by the National Building Museum, Big & Green
compares recent projects like New Yorks Conde Nast Building
and Battery Park City to the Flatiron Building (1905) and Rockefeller
Center (1932). Before air conditioning, skyscrapers used operable
windows and skylights for fresh air and natural light. The newer
projects documented in Big & Green are designed to
sustain both the natural world and economic growth. They combine
healthful environments while fulfilling the demand for new, up-to-date
buildings.
BIG & GREEN is divided into five
sections, each addressing an aspect of environmentalism:
Energy
Light and air
Greenery, water, and waste
Construction
Urbanism Public programs complementing
Big and Green are made possible by a collaboration between
CAF and the Field
Museum, as well as in partnership with AIA Chicago, the U.S
Green Building Council, and the City of Chicagos Department
of Environment and Department of Planning and Development. Generous
support is also provided by the Illinois Clean Energy Community
Foundation and the Graham Foundation.
Chicago Green: Chicago's Architectural Evolution
in CitySpace
View
Big & Green website
Local efforts in green design will inform
Chicago Green, a complementary exhibit organized by
CAF to run concurrently with Big & Green.
Chicago Green will explain public and private initiatives
behind green projects as diverse as a Lincoln Park townhouse and
a biomedical research lab converted from a Mies van der Rohe engineering
building at the Illinois Institute of Technology. |
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Way of Change: Central Michigan Avenue, Past, Present, and Future
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September 25November 23, 2003
in the Atrium Gallery at the ArchiCenter
Michigan Avenue is one of only five streets in the world where a
wall of buildings faces parkland and water. The juxtaposition of
natural and built scenery from Randolph Street to 11th Street is
so rare and striking that last year, the City of Chicago designated
the distinctive streetwall a landmark.
CAF explores Central Michigan Avenues development in a fall
exhibition, The Way of Change, and in a book, Images
of America: Central Michigan Avenue.
Seldom-seen archival images from the Chicago Historical Society
reveal the past, and a new photo survey by Hedrich Blessing illustrates
the present. The streets future under Chicagos new preservation
ordinance will be envisioned by architects and developers and in
a panel discussion
The Way of Change is underwritten by the Driehaus Foundation
and the Central Michigan Avenue Association, with ongoing exhibition
support from Boeing and the Illinois Department of Commerce and
Economic Opportunity. CAFs book on central Michigan Avenue
is dedicated to the memory of Paul Ligon, past president of CMAA.
The exhibition will be open daily, 9:30am to 6pm. Admission is free. |
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Road
Trip: A series on new architecture within a days drive of
Chicago
New Architecture at the Cranbrook Educational
Community
October 6, 2003 January 18, 2004
The John Buck Lecture Hall
Cranbrook, the utopian enclave of schools and museums in Bloomfield
Hills, Michigan, is sensitive about new buildings. Its original
1920s campus reflects the Arts & Crafts movement and the influence
of Eliel Saarinen, who integrated art, academic, and athletic facilities
to symbolize a holistic approach to education.
In the early 1990's, however, an $18 million expansion
began, eventually adding the New Institute of Science building by
Steven Holl, the Natatorium by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, and
an entrance by Huhani Pallasma. Rafael Moneo's New Studios Building
recently completed the expansion.
On display will be photographs and other materials
documenting the design of Cranbrook's expansion
Generous cooperation from the Cranbrook Archives
and finanical support of the Illinois Department of Commerce and
Economic Opportunity.
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Lobby of the
Peter B. Lewis Building.
Photo: Grant Mudford |
Road Trip: A series on new architecture
within a days drive of Chicago
Gehry in Cleveland
June 18 September 28, 2003
The John Buck Lecture Hall
To inspire business students at at Case Western Reserve University
to embrace creativity, beauty, and non-hierarchical teaching methods,
Frank Gehry designed the Weatherhead School's Peter B. Lewis Building
from the inside out. He shaped large common areas and designed no
two classrooms alike. He then wrapped these free-form spaces in
a sculptural steel skin.
The result, wrote Michel Marriot in The
New York Times, is an explosion
of rippling brick, warped glass and cascading shingles of stainless
steel frozen between Ka and Boom. The interior has been compared
to an art gallery with its off-kilter atriums, curving white walls,
and natural light directed downward from high, slanting windows.
Peter B. Lewis, the iconoclastic founder of the Progressive Corporation,
primary donor to the building fund and a long-time Gehry client,
says the building challenges the students, the university,
and the City of Cleveland to break boundaries. In models,
drawings, and photographs, this exhibit will interpret Gehrys
design proces |
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| Brian Healy Architects |
Caples Jefferson |
Office dA |
Team O'Donnell |
3D Design Studio |
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in the Atrium Gallery at the ArchiCenter
July 15 - September 7, 2003
To serve seniors who are raising their grandchildren, the City of
Chicago asked architects around the country to design a housing
complex that would include day-care and seniors' social services.
The winning design will be a prototype for 10 complexes around Chicago.
From 47 entries, a jury of designers chose five diverse, visionary
firms to exhibit models and drawings:
Office dA, Boston, (winning design)
Brian Healy Architects, Boston.
Caples Jefferson, New York.
. Team O'Donnell/Freear/Rural Studio, based at Auburn University,
Alabama.
3D Design Studio, Chicago.
This exhibition is funded
in part by the City of Chicago Departments of Housing and the Environment,
Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, and by
grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and The Chicago
Community Trust. The Chicago Departments of General Services, Graphics,
and Reprographics, the Chicago Public Building Commission, and the
Chicago Housing Authority provided in-kind support.
Competition Director: Denise Arnold AIA, Mayors Office for
People with Disabilities
Jurors: Grandparent activist Linette Kinchen and architects Jack
Catlin, Eva Maddox, Sandro Marpillero, Eric Owen Moss, and Nasrine
Seraji Bozorgzad
Educational Partner: Archeworks |
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111 South Wacker Drive
in CitySpace
June 2003
Lohan Caprile Goettsch Architects designed 111 South Wacker at the
southeast corner of Wacker and Monroe, the former site of the US
Gypsum building. Originally designed to sit atop a 120-foot pedestal
supported by diagonal braces, the building was redesigned after
September 11, 2001. The final design, as seen in the renderings,
features a round, glass-enclosed lobby with space for a plaza and
large-scale public art. Construction began in April, and the 50-story
office tower is scheduled to open in 2005.
CitySpace is CAFs interpretive space
in the ArchiCenter. Its permanent exhibits include a 12x12-foot
architects model of downtown Chicago, models of new Chicago
buildings, interactive virtual tours of skyscrapers, videos of tours
and interviews with famous architects, and a Chicago architecture
timeline |
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| St.
Boniface |
Winning
Proposal by Brininstool + Lynch, Ltd. |
CAF hosts archdiocese competition for adaptive
reuse
Recognizing that historic churches are the centerpieces
of Chicagos oldest neighborhoods, the Archdiocese of Chicago
approached CAF to sponsor a design competition to save the façade
of one of them: St. Boniface, a Romanesque Revival church at Noble
and Chestnut streets that was closed in 1989.
Four prominent local firms were asked to submit designs resulting
from a three-day, charette-style effort. Booth Hansen Associates,
Studio Gang, Brininstool + Lynch, Ltd., and annex/5, the in-house
design studio of A. Epstein and Sons International, Inc., submitted
designs combining housing, retail, and/or public use.
As InSites went to
press, the anonymous designs were to be judged by Donna Robertson,
dean of the College of Architecture, Illinois Institute of Technology;
Charles H. Shaw, chairman of The Shaw Company; Jimmy Lago, archdiocese
chancellor; David Bahlman, president of the Landmarks Preservation
Council of Illinois; and Ned Cramer, CAFs curator. This
jury represents all points of view- architect, developer and client,
Cramer said. Archdiocese representatives have said that the successful
purchaser of the St. Boniface property will be encouraged to consider
the designs in a redevelopment plan. |
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