It’s 106 miles to Chicago, we’ve got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it’s dark and we’re wearing sunglasses – hit it!
I was in Chicago this weekend for the first time. What a fabulous city. I was staying with friends on Michigan Avenue (view from their balcony above), and they just happened to live above the Chicago Architecture Foundation. So I took a little tour….
It’s amazing to think that the Sears Tower, by Skidmore Owings & Merrill, 1968-74, was designed and structurally engineered without a computer.
That Mies van der Rohe’s 1956 Crown Hall is still a thriving home to architecture students at the South Side Illinois Institute of Technology
That the interior of the Burnham & Root’s 1888 The Rookery was remodeled by Frank Lloyd Wright between 1905-07
The Harold Washington Library Center, designed by Hammond, Beeby and Babka and completed in 1991, is the result of an architecture competition, the concept being a post-modern building that reflects Chicago’s conflicting architectural ideas (the side not visible here is of steel, glass and aluminum construction)..
And that OMA/Rem Koolhaas’ McCormick Tribune Campus Center was built in 2003 while maintaining service to the El.
Pretty impressive stuff.
Tags: Architecture, Chicago, Cities