As he receives a Lifetime Achievement Award from AIA Chicago, A Stanley Tigerman Miscellany

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A Confession: I've been working on a piece on Stanley Tigerman's Illinois Holocaust Museum ever since it opened ever since it opened over three years ago.  I've been grappling with it ever since, so, for the moment, all I can give you this very informal photo essay on just some of the buildings from his very long career.

This evening, Friday, October 25, Stanley Tigerman will be honored by AIA Chicago with it's Lifetime Achievement Award.  You can read an interview with Tigerman by AIA Chicago's Peter Exley here, or watch last night's interview with WTTW's Geoffrey Baer below.
When I wrote my first article for the The Chicago Reader over ten years ago, it was about the dismal current state of architecture in the city.  My editor Kiki Yablon suggested I get in touch with Tigerman for some input, and although he didn't know me from Adam, he still was incredibly patient and gracious, as he's been in every one of our encounters ever since.  I asked him for some up-and-coming architects we should be watching.  One he mentioned, Darryl Crosby, is a very talented architect we haven't heard enough from.  The second was David Woodhouse,  The third was Jeanne Gang, then largely an unknown.

It just goes to show you how, across six decades, Stanley Tigerman has not just hand his finger on the pulse on Chicago architecture.  He's helped define it, not only through his iconoclastic, often witty buildings, but through his acerbic, pinpoint criticism, and his never flagging activism for architectural education and social justice through the built environment.  If Stanley Tigerman didn't exist, no one could ever have figured out how to create someone like him.  We're all the richer for his enduring presence.

Read more:

The Architect as Zelig:  Tigerman's Ceci n'est pas une reverie

 

 

 

 

 

 

Baer, Urban Provocations with Tigerman, Eisenschmidt, UrbanLab, Bruner Awards with Larry Kearns - More Great New Events for September

Never too late to be adding great new events to the September Chicago Architectural Calendar . . .

On Thursday, September 26th, WTTW's Geoffrey Baer will be at Frank Lloyd Wright's Unity

Temple in Oak Park to talk about his documentary, The Ten Buildings that Changed America.   On Wednesday, September 18th, at the Expo 72 Gallery on Randolph across the street from the Cultural Center, there'll be a panel discussion at the exhibition City Works - Provocations for Chicago's Urban Future with Stanley Tigerman, John David Brown, Studio/Gang, UrbanLab and exhibition curator Alexander Eisenschmidt, moderated at AIA Chicago's Zurich Esposito.

This Wednesday the 12th, there'll be the presentation ceremony at the Garfield Park Conservatory for the 2013 Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence, with a panel discussion

with Metropolis editor Susan Szenasy, Gabriel Goodman, Benet Haller, Ann Marie Lubenau, Eunita Rushing, Susana Vasquez, and architect Larry Kearns, whose design for Inspiration Kitchens won this year's Gold Medal.  The the next day, Friday the 13th, AIA Chicago will host Promoting Design and More through Rudy Bruner Awards, with Kearns, Bruner Foundation director Lubenau and Emily Emmerman of the Gary Comer Youth Center, which won the Bruner Silver Award in 2011, and Ed Uhlir, whose Millennium Park won Silver in 2009.

Also coming up this week, we've got Pecha Kucha Chicago Volume #27 at Martyr's tomorrow (Tuesday), photographer Richard Wasserman talking about Midstream: The Chicago River, 1999-2010 Wednesday lunchtime at the Chicago Architecture Foundation, which is also hosting a special river cruise with the designers currently remaking the Chicago's riverfront - CDOT's Michelle Woods, Carol Ross Barney, Sasaki's Gina Ford, Studio/Gang's Claire Cahan and bKL Architecture's Tom Kerwin - Thursday evening.  Lunchtime on Thursday, Friends of the Parks will be hosting a lecture on The Brilliance of the Forest Preserve District of Cook County: Celebrating 100 Years, lunchtime at the Cultural Center.  

On Saturday, the 14th, the Museum of Contemporary Art, in conjunction with its exhibition, Homebodies, will have a gallery talk with artist Julia Fish and architect Dan Wheeler, while Landmarks Illinois has its 2013 Skyline Social fundraiser at the Elks Memorial.

And that's just scratching the surface.  There are over 40 great events still to come this month.  Check out all the details on the September Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

Chicago Drawbridges and 10 Buildings that Changed America - two new Documentaries this week

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Tonight at 9:00 p.m. on WYCC - Channel 20, there will be another showing of a fine new documentary, Chicago Drawbridges created by Stephen Hatch and Patrick McBriarity.  A companion piece to the book, Chicago River Bridges, scheduled to be published by the University of Illinois Press this October, Chicago Drawbridges chronicles �the importance of the bridges in the making of the Windy City, from the very first wood footbridge, built by a tavern owner in 1832, to today�s iconic structures spanning the Chicago River.�  You can check out a preview on the documentary's website here.''

Then, this Sunday, May 12th at 9:00 p.m., WTTW and PBS stations nationwide will debut 10

Buildings That Changed America, written and directed by Dan Protess.  Geoffrey Baer takes his architectural overviews national to visit a Top Ten list that ranges from Thomas Jefferson's University of Virgina to Frank Gehry's Disney, with stops at the Seagram, the Wainwright, Trinity Church, Robie House and others in between.  The photography looks exemplary, as is an impressive roster of talking heads that includes Gehry, Tim Samuelson and Phyllis Lambert.  An interactive mobile website is promised to come live this Wednesday, and you can check out a preview of the documentary here.