Gregg Garmisa named Studio/Gang Principal, General Counsel

Is it a sign that an architectural firm is entering the big leagues when a lawyer becomes one of its key officers?

That became the case today with Studio/Gang Architects when it announced that Gregg Garmisa, a long-time corporate officer at WMA Consulting Engineers, has now been named Principal and General Counsel at Studio/Gang, which is about to make a big move to their own real estate later this year, as we reported on earlier this week. "Gregg's experience and knowledge will be tremendous additions to our firm, as we grow in Chicago and beyond," is Jeanne Gang's comment in the press release.

Weston Walker (collaborator on the design for the proposed Solar Cave Tower in NYC), Juliane Wolf (Writer's Theatre, Glencoe), and Todd Zima, AIA,(Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership at Kalamazoo College and the University of Chicago Campus North Residence Hall) were promoted to Design Principals. Margaret Cavenagh, AIA, was promoted to Director of Interiors, Harry Soenksen, AIA, to Technical Director, and William Emmick, AIA, to Operations Director.

Studio/Gang on the Move: About to Enter its High Polish Period?

former Polish National Alliance (click images for larger view)

What could you do with this building?  Or more to the point, what could Jeanne Gang and her team do?  Gang is taking Studio/Gang Architects to another big leap, but this time it's not about a pathbreaking design - at least not yet - but jumping from the renter class to the ranks of ownership.

On the heels of recent announcements of her firm being in the hunt for major new residential towers both in San Francisco and back at Chicago's Lakeshore East, which her sculpted Aqua tower put on the international map, DNAInfo Chicago's Alisa Hauser's reported last week that Gang's lawyer was appearing before the permit review committee of the Commission on Chicago Landmarks regarding his firm's retrofit of the building at 1520 W. Division as their new headquarters.  Although Gang is proposing the building be landmarked, it wasn't even on the Commission's March agenda, but that didn't stop commission staff from recommending approving - with certain conditions - the architect's plans for making the structure a workable home.

Last December the district in which both Gang's new and old homes are to be found - around a square with an entrance to the Blue Line CTA stop and centered by the Nelson Algren Fountain - was officially designated by the Chicago City Council as the �Polish Triangle�, but its central roll in the lives of Chicago's Polish citizens goes back nearly a century-and-a-half.  Beginning just after the Great Fire of 1871, the three-way intersection was known as the �Polish Downtown�.  According to the Northwest Chicago Historical Society history, �Nearly every Polish undertaking of any consequence in the U.S. during that time either started or was directed from this tight-knight neighborhood.�  With shops, theatres and large department stores (Wieboldt's and Goldblatt's), the district thrived as one of Chicago's many vibrant neighborhood commercial centers, until the lethal combination of the malling of America and white flight to the suburbs wiped them all out in late mid 20th-century.

image courtesy The Chuckman Collection

In addition to strong parishes such as St. Stanislaus Kostka and St. John Cantius, the district has also been home to important Polish institutions, including the Polish National Alliance, founded to aid in the fight for restoring Poland as an independent nation.  In 1896, two lots west of Noble were purchased for $4,900, for the construction of the stately building you see above.  It's now the site of a Shell gas station.

image courtesy of The Chuckman Collection

In 1938, the alliance moved to a new Art Deco styled building at 1520 West Division.  In 1976 the Alliance decamped to 6100 North Cicero, and most recently the structure was home to the College of Office Technology.  Now it's Studio/Gang's turn.

For over a decade, Studio Gang has grown from a small office to taking over the entire second floor of a simple two-story building on Ashland just north of Division at the corner of Milwaukee.  You walked up a long stair to reach a series of offices formerly occupied by a loan company. A more recent social services tenant left behind a Diego Rivera-like labor mural covering one of the walls.

Private offices behind a sequence of glass doors surround a large open space for junior architects, stuffed with books, renderings and models.  

Another room served as a model shop, and there's a small outdoor patio used both as a recreational space and for testing materials against the weather.

More recently, a graphic mapping the terrain of Northerly Island, another Gang project, was mounted next to the otherwise anonymous first-floor entrance.

It was here that the distinctive designs that have made Gang globally renowned originated, from The Starlight Theater in Rockford, to the titanium shingle-clad Chinese American Service League, the still unbuilt Ford Calumet Environmental Center, to Aqua, the Columbia College Media Center, and, the WMS Clark Park boathouse.  The walls are infused with the spirit of that creative history, but Hauser quotes Studio Gang's Harry Soenken as saying that, now up to 50 employees, the old offices are �bursting at the seams.  We hope to have 65 people by the end of this year.�  And to move into their new space shortly thereafter.

Polish Triangle, 1950's (current Studio/Gang Office below the big Chevrolet sign)
image courtesy of The Chuckman Collection

The Polish Triangle is also changing, in an increasingly upscale way.  There's always been a shoe store beneath Gang's offices, but what used to be a Pay Less is now an Aldo  - a far swankier line, even if it's an outlet.  Last year, what was long a fast food joint was replaced by Wheeler Kearns' spiky 1611 West Division apartments.  Nicknamed the �Tower of Pizza� after the site's former occupant, a Pizza Hut, Crain's is reporting the developer is already looking to cash in by selling off the property.

With many of their employees walking to work, Studio/Gang wanted to stay in the neighborhood, and so they're moving little more than a block away.  This time they get to retrofit an entire building to their needs and tastes.  According to the Permit Review report, the plans include a one-story addition, setback on the rooftop, and replacement of the aging windows.  As is the norm, staff recommended that all new exterior alterations try to match, as much as possible, the original materials.  Staff approved lowering the basement window sills on Bosworth �only if needed.�  Changes to signage are to be reviewed once completed.

No renderings for the interiors have been released.  It's unknown whether any of the original interiors will be protected by the landmark designation, but most often protection is confined to exterior elements.  At their current offices, it was more the energy of the place than any radical design initiatives that energized the space.  I've visited a number of architects' offices, and without exception they've been more work horses than show horses.  Spartan or expressive, however, it's will interesting to be what Gang, Soenken and her team will come up with.

Related: 

Jeanne Gang Before Aqua - a look at her life and early work.

As Jeanne Gang is honored by National Design Museum, a walk through the seasons at the Lincoln Park Nature Boardwalk

click images for larger view

At a gala in New York City last Thursday, October 17th,  Jeanne Gang of Studio/Gang was recognized in the Architecture Design category of this year's National Design Awards handed out by the National Design Museum at Cooper-Hewitt.  Also among this year's honorees were landscape architect Margie Ruddick, interior designers Aidlin Darling Design, and architect and writer Michael Sorkin, with a Lifetime Achievement Award going to SITE's James Wines.

Gang was cited for her . . .

. . . Chicago-based collective of architects, designers, and thinkers practicing internationally. Gang uses architecture as a medium of active response to contemporary issues and their impact on human experience. Each project resonates with its specific site and culture while addressing larger global themes such as urbanization, climate, and sustainability.

We're still working on our piece on Studio/Gang's WMS Clark Park Boathouse, which had it's official opening last Saturday, but for now, what better way to celebrate Gang's mastery of merging structure and environment than by traveling through the seasons at one of my favorite places in the city, the Studio/Gang designed Nature Boardwalk at Lincoln Park . . .


Read More: 

Reimaging Urban Eden: Studio/Gang and the Nature Boardwalk at Lincoln Park Zoo

The Life Aquatic of Studio/Gang: WMS Boathouse at Clark Park grand opening Saturday; Beloit College powerhouse in 2016

Ford Calumet Environmental Center, Studio/Gang (click images for larger view)

It's common knowledge that Jeanne Gang is for the birds.  She was a pioneer in thinking about bird strikes and the often lethal effect glass-walled architecture has on migrating species.  Her still-unbuilt design for the Ford Calumet Environmental Center not only deploys a delicate metal mesh to keep birds from crashing into the glass, but draws its inspiration from the kinds of nests turkeys built from materials both �natural and man made.�

Studio/Gang's relationship with fish may be less clear, but there's an unmistakable aquatic twist to much of the firm's recent work.  Their contribution to the Venice Biennale and recent exhibition, City Works: Provocations for Chicago's Urban Future, consisted of a model that put four different watery projects in a continuous terrain.  First Reverse Effect, the firm's proposal with the NRDC to re-reverse the flow of the Chicago River, then the new Lincoln Park Nature Boardwalk, the redesign of Northerly Island, and finally, a new boathouse on the river's north branch.

Saturday, October 19th, marks the official grand opening of what is now called the WMS Boathouse at Clark Park, named for the company, located just across the river, that gave $1 million towards the facilities $9.45 million cost.  ROWtoberfest will open the facility to the public from 8:45 to 2:00 p.m, featuring a 12:30 p.m., ribbon cutting and opportunity to lunch on a piece of the 65-foot-long �Chicago's largest bratwurst.� (It matches the width of a rowing shell)  The boathouse is the new home to the Chicago Rowing Foundation, which promises �the premier rowing center in the city, with year-round training and facilities unmatched in the region . . .  one of the jewels along the Chicago River.�  The boathouse is at 3400 North Rockwell.

WMS Boathouse at Clark Park (under construction)

Studio/Gang has back at the waterfront still again with last week's announcement Wisconsin's Beloit College has chosen the firm to lead the effort to turn Alliant Energy's century-old Blackhawk Generating Station, on the Rock River next to Beloit's campus, into an activity and recreation center for the school.

photo: Trevor Johnson, courtesy Beloit College

 No details on the design have been released, and funding is still to be procured, but the thinking seems to be that the Studio/Gang brand will help in raising the $30 million cost of the project.  The college has defined a three-year-long �window� to negotiate sale of the property from Alliant.  In the press release, Beloit President Scott Bierman stated the project �should be a model�for connecting college to community, campus to river, and our city�s past to its future while honoring the role Alliant Energy and its employees played in powering our state�s growth over a century.  This is a vision Studio Gang is already helping shape and make possible. We are thrilled to see what they can teach us, discover, and do for the college and our region.�  [full press release after the break]

Read More:

Studio/Gang's Clark Park Boathouse: A Century of Urban Transformation flowing down Chicago's River. 

A Closer Look at Studio Gang's Clark Park Boathouse (Curbed Chicago, photographs by Kevin Dickert)

How I Built a Better City by Going Off the Grid

Smash the Birdie - The fatal allure of architectural glass

Reimagining Urban Eden: Studio/Gang and the Nature Boardwalk at Lincoln Park





For Immediate Release
Beloit College selects Studio Gang Architects to convert power plant to campus center
College and building owner Alliant Energy outline three-year plan for transitioning ownership
Beloit, WI -- The Board of Trustees of Beloit College has selected 2013 National Design Award winner Studio Gang Architects to lead its efforts to convert a century-old power plant into an activity and recreation center.

The college�s trustees approved the selection on Saturday after a series of updates regarding the college�s ongoing partnership with Alliant Energy�s Wisconsin utility, which has been working with college officials for more than a year to explore a possible sale of the Blackhawk Generating Station in Beloit. Alliant Energy officials and the college recently outlined a three-year window aimed at aligning and connecting their efforts so that the college and Alliant Energy would formalize a transition of the property in 2016, should all go well.

�We�re picking up speed,� said College President Scott Bierman. �Alliant Energy and the college have spent more than a year together investigating this opportunity and its challenges. We have a shared belief in, and enthusiasm for, this project and we�re ready to accelerate and further align our efforts.�

�This project should be a model�for connecting college to community, campus to river, and our city�s past to its future while honoring the role Alliant Energy and its employees played in powering our state�s growth over a century,� Bierman said. �This is a vision Studio Gang is already helping shape and make possible. We are thrilled to see what they can teach us, discover, and do for the college and our region.�

Chicago-based Studio Gang is recognized as one of architecture�s most innovative, well regarded, and closely watched firms�and one uniquely interested in projects aimed at connecting, enhancing, and restoring urban and natural landscapes. The firm is led by MacArthur Fellow and FastCompany Master of Design, Jeanne Gang, FAIA. In just the last year, Gang and her firm have been the subject of a solo exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago and feted in the Wall Street Journal Magazine (�A Renegade Architect Connects Cities and the Natural World�). In September, Gang and Managing Principal Mark Schendel accepted the 2013 National Design Award in Architecture from the Smithsonian�s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum at a White House reception. Studio Gang�s work is designed to resonate with its specific site and culture while addressing larger global themes such as reuse and sustainability.

A selection committee composed of Beloit trustees, staff, faculty, and students selected Studio Gang �for their creativity, talent, vision, and care, but most of all�their enthusiasm for approaching this project as both collaborator and partner, learner and leader,� said committee co-chair and Dean of Students Christina Klawitter. Gang was one of five national firms approached (�recruited,� Klawitter says) for the project. The committee presented their selection to Bierman and the trustees at the October 5 meeting of the board in Beloit, which convened in the college�s LEED Platinum-certified Center for the Sciences building, whose northwest corner sits a little more than 100 yards away from the power plant. 

�The Studio Gang team is very excited to partner with Beloit College,� stated Jeanne Gang.

�Together we can transform this historic structure into a new hub for wellness, green power, and great architecture. By reflecting Beloit�s core values in the design, values shared by our team, we will create a model that will bring many benefits to the college, city, and region. This is a project that has the potential to inspire other communities around the globe.�

�Our partnership with Beloit College has taken another important step forward with an agreement on an outline of steps to the potential ownership transfer of the Blackhawk Generation Station,� said Patricia Kampling, Chairman, President and CEO�Alliant Energy. �We share the college�s excitement in the hiring of Studio Gang Architects to transform the riverfront property into a state-of-the-art campus center for its student body, and Alliant Energy is pleased to play a role in this innovative project.�

Additional details:

• Alliant Energy and Beloit College have agreed upon a three-year window for developing this project. Under this arrangement, Beloit will have three years to raise the $30 million needed for the project, after which the college and utility will formalize a sale of the property to the college. In the meantime, Alliant Energy is moving ahead with remediation work at the Blackhawk Generating Station (which is adjacent to campus and sits astride the Rock River).
• Final sale of the building to the college will be contingent on, among other things, Beloit successfully raising $30 million to fund the purchase and restoration.
• The hiring of Studio Gang at this point in the process is intended to help inform Alliant Energy�s building preparation efforts, including determining what interior components would be removed and recycled when fundraising is completed, and what could remain at the property. Formalizing the college�s plans for the building in the year ahead, including its design and interaction with its surrounding area (it sits just north of the city of Beloit�s downtown district), is also seen as an important component of the college�s fundraising efforts.
• Beloit College has already completed an initial, campus-wide programming study that informed and enlarged its initial plans for the facility. The college believes the powerhouse project will dramatically enhance Beloit�s residential experience, complete a 25-year redevelopment of the city�s riverside, and become a model for sustainable and cost-conscious renewal. A semester-long programming study for the building (completed in spring 2012) yielded a list of 10 pressing space needs for the college�from a 150-seat public auditorium to a competition-grade swimming pool.

How I Built a Better City by Going Off the Grid: Last Days to see City Works: Provocations for Chicago's Urban Future

click images for larger view

You have only through this Sunday, September 29th, to see a fascinating show, City Works: Provocations for Chicago's Urban Future, at the Expo 72 Gallery on Randolph across from the Chicago Cultural Center. Originally created for the 2012 Venice Biennale, the exhibition features four separate investigations of the state of Chicago's grid and its future potential.

curator Alexander Eisenschmidt

Last Wednesday, each of the four contributors were on hand to talk about their work.  Curator Alexander Eisenschmidt noted that �What was at stake was finding alternatives to how architecture engages the city. As a collection, I'm arguing that these projects form a kind of parallel city, a city that isn't real, but that does exist in our architectural consciousness . . . sometimes more so than the ones actually constructed.�

Stanley Tigerman

Eisenschmidt gave each participant the exact same 12-by-3 foot tabletop real estate to work with.  In the case of architect Stanley Tigerman's Displacement of the Gridiron with the Cloister, that meant �revisiting the essential nature of the city.� After much of Chicago burned down in the great fire of 1871, a grid was imposed on the endlessly flat terrain of the city.  Tigerman explained . . .

That grid is abstract as well as realistic. It's optimistic, because it is an equivalency of a democracy of buildings. If you're building you could be anywhere in the grid.  It's also alienating, because there's no distinction, there's just the grid block after block.

In Europe, the urban model is much more hierarchical, residential quarters spinning out from a cloistered center around a cathedral or town hall.  Tigerman superimposes the cloister onto his model of Chicago's street grid through representations of buildings, many his own, that break the grid in different ways.  The traditional way of seeing the city is through the hierarchy of its grand boulevards, but Tigerman defended the grid:

We see the downside [of the grid] in the alienation, in the sameness block after block. but that's equally democratic, and in that end if I look at it, I would prefer the grid. Everyone looks down at the side streets of - let's say - Lawndale, Woodlawn, etc., but the side streets of all of those areas - particularly in the summer - are absolutely beautiful.  Taken care of by people who are very proud of them. The most interesting for me is the side streets of the grid, and without making a value judgement that's it's better or worse- it's both democratic and alienating - they're quite wonderful for me to look at again, and I'm constantly reinvigorated when I see them.

David Brown

The U of I's David Brown's Available City draws on development potential of the 15,000 vacant lots - mostly on the south and west sides - that have come to be owned by the City of Chicago, largely acquired through its fast-track demolition program for abandoned and dilapidated structures during the 1980's and 90's.  Taken together, they comprise a land area twice the size of the Loop.

The city would begin to promote the use of those lots as the basis of a kind of collective space. Individual lots . . . implemented through local community organizations.  Each one of those would have an activity, programmatic recreational, educational or other types of activities and at the same time present some kind of work opportunity. 

The program would also be about . . .

encouraging private development occurring on a combination of city-owned lots and privately-owned lots, with the idea that anyone who was building could do so to a higher height, in exchange for provisions for collective space.

Martin Felsen

UrbanLab's Free Water District envisions the grid and abandoned industrial infrastructure in a new way.  Said UrbanLab's Martin Felsen . . . 

The first crisis we were interested in is the population loss in Chicago.  Over the past 12 to 15 years, the greater Chicago area was the only one of the top 15 cities to lose population, down to the sunbelt,  and jobs down to the south.  The crisis down there is kind a resource crisis, mostly around water. A lot of corporations use huge amounts of water in their production process.  Those companies are often where, let's say Arizona, you need an enormous amount of water, and it's very, very expensive.

A new initiative,  Chicago Sustainable Industries,  says to those companies :  why don't you move back to Chicago?  We're a very green city,  We'll work with you to change our infrastructures because we're rich in certain resources.

We took a look at the area around the [former industrial area] at Lake Calumet . . . now it's become really just these brown, empty, sometimes toxic fields.  They're just kind of leftover nothing.  They're turning into prairie. So we thought how can we change that ground, that land, that site, in a way that rethinks the grid, and the infrastructure of the grid, to work with buildings and figure out a way that the water that these companies use could be taken out of the lake, used, and then send that water back into the grid of the city itself and have the grid clean all water before it went back to the lake.

So we create a loop.  Take the water out.  Use it as much as we want.  But hold on to it.  Let the landscape and the grid take care of it and clean it naturally, using very little energy, and then send that water back. The benefit to the corporations is to get a resource that they spend billions of dollars on every year.  The benefit to the city is that they get jobs and a new kind of infrastructure that really thinks about a sustainable way of building a city.  And what the area around this renovated, revitalized district gets is, potentially, a new kind of the park system.

UrbanLab partner Sarah Dunn talked a little more about the idea of a �stormwater park� . . .

.  . . as a cultural attractor. These mounds are sometimes seating for an outdoor theater, sometimes places for sheep to graze.  There are tennis courts, basketball courts.  When the infrastructure is not functioning as a floodplain, it's also a drive-in movie theater.

Lindsey Moyer of Studio/Gang talked about her firm's entry, Reclaiming the Edge . . . 

What's included in the model is really representative of the way that we work in the office.  When we start thinking about a project, we become these research nerds and we're just learning everything about the region, the area immediately around our site, and zoomed out a little bit further. 

In all these projects it was about starting to look at the water that intersects with the sites  and thinking about the condition of the water as it was at the point that we started and how we could revitalize that, and think about how it could be this lasting benefit for the city in future.  I guess in a way all of these projects are architecture in response to crisis.  In each of these sites, the water was in a condition that was not great for recreation or for habitat and we've worked with engineers and ecologists to revitalize these waterfronts and these water habitats.  Each of these sites are an ongoing exploration where the architecture becomes the first step in the process.  It is a spotlight on these sites, and can be become a catalyst in rethinking about how we think about the waterways.

The model lays out Studio/Gang's Chicago waterfront projects as a continuous - if geographically incongruous - urban terrain.  It begins with an idea - the  Reverse Effect project dealing with re-reversing the flow of Chicago river - and moves on to river boathouses and the Lincoln Park  Nature Boardwalk.  Then the proposed Ford Calumet Environmental Center, which is about  . . .

nest-making and gathering and taking all of the materials that have been kind of dumped in the Ford Calumet region and gathering those to create a building that's about how to use these recycled materials.

 . . . and concludes with Studio/Gang's plan for Northerly Island . . .

about integrating with the museum campus to create this outdoor component to that circuit, where you can learn about this inland lagoon, canoe, and even dive to view a sunken ship.

The model actually descends below the water level.  Be sure to check out the tiny models of both the sunken ship and small plane lying on the lake bed.

The models are supplemented by printed material stashed in, and graphics printed over the constructions, as well as circular light pods in the floor projecting illustrations and more information.

Surrounding the exhibition, on the walls of gallery, is Eisenschmidt's Phantom Chicago, in which the drawings of iconic visionary projects from the 20th century, from Adolph Loos entry to the Tribune Tower exhibition to Greg Lynn's Stranded Sears Tower . At one point, Eisenschmidt has actually placed the buildings on their own peninsulas in a realistic, if surreal, re-envisioned juncture of the Chicago River and Lake Michigan.

 (There's also a  Chicago component on the iPhone app, Museum of the the Phantom City, which maps provides information and graphics on such unbuilt projects as the Loos and Gropius Tribune Tower entries.)

This is a great show.  Not only are the ideas behind it intriguing, but the models are rather beautiful in their own way.  They also in include some of the neatest, tiniest model people you'll ever see.  If you look closely UrbanLab's Free Water District, you'll even find horses, sheeps and cows.

City Works: Provocations for Chicago's Urban Future runs only through this coming Sunday, September 29th. Expo 72 Gallery is at 72 East Randolph, open 8:00 a.m. through 7:00 p.m., Monday through Thursday, Friday 8:00 to 6:00, Saturday 9:00 to 6:00, Sunday 10:00 to 6:00.

Hunting of the Snark(itecture): A Photo Tour of Architecture and Design at Expo Chicago 2013, through Sunday

click images for larger view (recommended)

Early yesterday afternoon, I made a quick survey of the second annual edition of Expo Chicago, the massive art show in the Festival Hall of Navy Pier, showing work from 120 galleries representing 17 countries and 37 global cities.  (My apologies to all the galleries whose work I photographed while it was still receiving finishing touches.)

Studio/Gang was back again this year designing the exhibition, with its layout patterned after a Chicago street grid lined with exhibition spaces.  Only one of last year's mylar domes returned, the huge reflective piece hovering over the centerpoint of the exhibition space.

New this year - and beneath the dome - is Snarkitecture and Volume Gallery's Bend, �a series of upholstered  foam cylinders that bend, twist, and drape over one another to create a reconfigurable seating environment.  Inhabiting a world between collapse and animation, the elongated cylindrical forms creating a shifting landscape for relaxation.� Or for checking messages on your smartphone.

Snarkitecture also designed this year's Museum of Contemporary Art Pop-Up Store.

. . . a scheme based on a singular modular and flexible millwork unit.  Each piece has a distinctive excavated surface that is cut away to reveal interior shelves for the display of books and objects . . .

The domes that last year marked two other gathering areas were replaced this year with fabric �frustrums�, which both enclosed the area and allow views through them.  The one above the cafe, at the east end, is a white scrim . . .

 

. . . while the other, at the west end, is an almost turban-like affair that marks the exhibition area and lounge for Expo Video - new this year - which will show videos curated by the Walker Art Center's Dean Otto.

�Natural wood display display stands and log seating define the lounge space without obstructing views to the galleries beyond.�

While you're at the south end, be sure to walk up the stairs to the mezzanine to check out Edgewater's 6018|North's Home, curated by Tricia Van Eck, in which four artists have each made a room for an �artists' home.�  The kitchen . . .

. . . by John Preus and Dilettante Studio, is constructed out of reclaimed cabinetry, and will host performances, workshops and talks curated by SHOP's Laura Shaeffer with John Marciniak.

Lise Haller Baggesen created her own artists' studio . . .

. . . �replete with disco balls, glitter, and glam� for visitors to sit in and �contemplate life as an artist.�  There's also a �chill-out living room� from Sabina Ott, and Jane Jeradi's �performative bedroom [which] presents a captivating space to relax.�

The relationship between art and architecture, of course, is a strong one, and as you walk through the galleries, you'll encounter it repeatedly, from intricately constructed sculptures, architecture captured and transformed through photographs, actual furnished rooms . . .

and even debate, as at the gallery of the Hyde Park Art Center . . .

And if you really like getting your head into art, the National Resources Defense Council has constructed Metropolis by Vaughn Bell . . .

. . . in which you can actually pop up your head into �a large-scale terrarium comprised of acrylic skyscrapers composed of native Midwestern plants and mosses,� creating �an immersive experience that challenges our relationship to the natural world.�

Expo Chicago 2013 runs Friday and Saturday from 11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., and Sunday 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.)  Map and information here.  This year also marks the first edition of Expo Art Week, which a large number of related events throughout the city.  Info here.

From Last Year:

Big Shiny Things:  Studio/Gang at Expo Chicago 2012