Articles About Architecture

Noted Chicago architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s famous maxim “Less is more” should apply to ambitious plans for revamping Chicago’s Navy Pier, the city’s top tourist destination.  Writing in the Chicago Tribune, architectural critic Blair Kamin says “The good news about the latest vision for the pier is that it discards the excesses of […]

The recession has thwarted real estate billionaire Sam Zell’s plans to raze the art deco, 80-year-old, 26-story 2 North Riverside Plaza building that housed the Chicago Daily News until 1960 and replace it with an office tower.  Instead, Zell’s Equity Group Investments is beginning a multi-million dollar renovation of the building, which the advocacy group […]

The opening of the new Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago spurred me to finally trek out to the other great piece of museum architecture in the Midwest, Santiago Calatrava’s Quadracci Pavilion, a sculptural addition to the Milwaukee Art Museum which opened in 2001, and cost approximately $121 million. The museum initially hired […]

The Alter Group’s One11 West Illinois Street, its 10-story, 227,604 SF Class-A-to-own office building in downtown Chicago’s dynamic River North neighborhood recently received a rave review and from the Chicago Tribune’s Pulitzer Prize-winning architectural critic Blair Kamin. Kamin praised architect Martin F. Wolf, Senior Principal with Solomon Cordwell Buenz & Associates, who “was challenged with a […]

Buildings four stories and higher use 65 percent of electricity generated in the United States, according to a recent article on the website http://www.tmcnet.com/. Several states – notably California – are requiring all new government buildings to qualify for green certification.  Additionally, California is looking at the possibility of granting preferences to private building owners […]