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Shanghai Transforming explores the vast changes taking place in China's most populous city. With photos and graphs, the exhibition provides a portrait of a city that offers unprecedented opportunities to architects and urban planners. In contrast to new construction in the established cities of Europe and America, Shanghai's new architecture and infrastructure challenges traditional spatial and social relationships. The exhibition asks us to consider the future of China—and of our rapidly urbanizing planet. Architect and urban planner Iker Gil is curator of the exhibition. Photography is the work of Juan de Dios Pérez. The companion book, Shanghai Transforming,
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The exhibition explores similarities and differences in the architectural responses to boom conditions in two centuries and cities. Free and open daily, the exhibition includes photographs, drawings, graphics, models and videos that encourage visitors to travel between eras and continents in order to consider how international networks of architects transform dynamic societies. Chicago was the focal point Fueled by massive immigration, technological innovation and new models of social organization, Chicago was the focal point of an unprecedented population boom at the end of the 19th century. The city led the development of a new architecture that changed the practice of building worldwide. A century later, another boom on a dramatically larger scale is occurring in Asia and the Mideast. The result of the new boom is an architecture previously inconceivable in size, density and scope. Located between the settled eastern seaboard and the beckoning frontiers of the American West, Chicago combined the massive influx of European immigrants with a seemingly inexhaustible abundance of natural resources. This helped create a boom town on a scale never before experienced. From 29,000 residents in 1850, Chicago’s population exploded to 298,000 by 1870 and nearly 1.7 million by 1900. Now Asia and the Middle East are the brave new worlds Fast forward a hundred years. Now it is Asia and the Middle East that are the brave new worlds of the 21st century. Great cities of the past like Beijing and Mumbai awaken roaring from long slumbers, while entirely new metropolises of staggering proportion appear to arise almost overnight. As recently as the 1970s, the port city of Shenzhen, China, was a fishing village with 25,000 inhabitants. By 2005, over 8,000,000 were making it their home. In the city of Abu Dhabi, the first paved road wasn’t completed until 1962, and traditional mud-brick huts still lined the streets. Today the average net worth of the citizens of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi is $17,000,000 and more than a trillion dollars has been invested in the city itself. Among the great swells of humanity drawn to these boom towns are the architects. In 19th-century Chicago, they created an architecture that influenced practice throughout the world. Today, that history and reputation has helped Chicago architects of our own time to participate in the planning of the mega-cities of Asia and the Middle East. Is this really a new world or a repeat of the old, recycled in shiny new containers? Are forests of skyscrapers from Shanghai to Dubai the solution to today’s urban challenges, or does the low-rise, zero-energy city of Masdar present a more enduring alternative? What is substance, what symbol? Pairings of iconic works Boom Towns! is composed of pairings of iconic works of architecture from late 19th-century Chicago with parallel works in today’s China and the Middle East. “Capital Building” contrasts Adler & Sulivan’s 1894 Stock Exchange Building with Goettsch Partners’ stock exchange complex on Abu Dhabi’s Sowwah Island. “Gateway” considers symbolic portals, the synapses that connect a city to country and world, through a pairing of Solon S. Beman’s 1890 Grand Central Station with Murphy/Jahn’s Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok, Thailand. “Proud Tower” contrasts William Le Baron Jenney’s 1885 Home Insurance Building with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s Burj Dubai, now the tallest structure ever constructed on earth. Planning, company towns and infrastructure are among other topics depicted through statistics, renderings, models, and animations. Boom Towns! explores the architecture of explosive growth through the convictions and contradictions represented in some of the most ambitious building projects of the past 125 years. Boom Towns! is supported by generous grants from the Graham Foundation and the Zell Family Foundation. |
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| CCCP:
Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed July 10–October 3, 2008 During the course of his travels in the former Soviet Union, French photographer Frederic Chaubin documented an extensive collection of startling architectural artifacts built during the last two decades of the Cold War. The exhibition is a collection of vibrant photographs and a map of this overlooked but compelling chapter in the history of 20th century design. These monumental buildings are dramatic and exciting in contrast to the repetitive and lifeless architecture typical of the late Soviet era. CCCP: Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed also traces the intellectual and political undercurrents that act as a backdrop, and at times inspiration, for the work of these Soviet architects. CCCP is presented in partnership
with:
CCCP was originally curated by the Storefront for Art and Architecture. |
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June 24–September 5, 2008 Green with Desire explores the relationship between the emotional and physical components that make up our homes. A large-scale evocation of a house, along with eight case studies of Chicago-area housing types, examine the meaning and consequences of our expectations—such as comfort, convenience, and affordability. Our apartments and houses were designed to fulfill these expectations, rather than conserve resources and reduce waste. Are Chicagoans ready to add ‘green’ to their desires? Exhibition and program support for Green with
Desire: Can We Live Sustainably in Our Homes? is provided by
generous grants from: Grand Victoria Foundation |
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Inspired
by Nature: 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. Exhibition and program support was provided by
generous contributions from: |
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Festival of Maps January– March, 2008 Festival of Maps was presented with a generous grant from: |
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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. Exhibition and program support was provided by generous contributions
from: |
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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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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. |
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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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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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| 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.
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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 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 |
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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 York’s 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 Chicago’s 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 |
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| The Way of Change: Central Michigan Avenue, Past, Present, and Future
September 25–November 23, 2003 |
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Road Trip: A series on new architecture within a day’s drive of Chicago New Architecture at the Cranbrook Educational Community
October 6, 2003 – January 18, 2004 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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Gehry in Cleveland |
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in the Atrium Gallery at the ArchiCenter
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. |
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111 South Wacker Drive CitySpace is CAF’s interpretive space in the ArchiCenter. Its permanent exhibits include a 12x12-foot architect’s 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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CAF hosts archdiocese competition for adaptive reuse Recognizing that historic churches are the centerpieces
of Chicago’s 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. 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, CAF’s 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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