Wednesday: Asthma and Housing; Today: Carlo Caldini - more for November

We're still adding content to the November Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events (and soliciting feedback from our readers whether it's worth all the work to keep the calendar going into 2014.)

Wednesday morning at University Center, the Chicago Asthma Consortium is sponsoring a half-day seminar on the rarely discussed topic of Asthma and Housing, taking design beyond aesthetics to the home environment and its effects on asthma sufferers.  It includes lectures, a panel and roundtable discussion, with participants including Catherine Baker of Landon Bone Baker, Ginger Chew of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, caregiver Sophia Ragland, among many others.

Tonight, Tuesday, at the Graham Foundation, Florence-based architect Carlo Caldini, will discuss his 1970's co-founding of Gruppo 9999, and his contributions to the 1972 MOMA exhibition Italy: The New Domestic Landscape, which is the focus of the Graham's current exhibition, Environments and Counter Environments.  Then on Thursday, as the future of the Egyptian-styled former Nick's Uptown is debated before the Landmarks Commission, preservationist and historian Heather Plaza-Manning will discuss Romancing the Sphinx: American Egyptian Revival Architecture at the Uptown Public Library.

These are just a few of the over dozen great item happening just this week to check out on the November Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

Lambert and Arets, Plensa and Kreloff, Enquist, Bannos, Achilles, Sarah Morris and More - it's the November Calendar! (endangered species?)

You may have noticed, the November Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events was a bit late this month.  Like eight days late.   Can you imagine how many people were writing me asking where it was?

Would you believe . . . one?

I'm coming to the conclusion that the monthly calendar is an idea whose time has gone.  Readership is not large.  Throughout all the days of  a given month, there are fewer cumulative pageviews for the calendar than for a single average post.  It often seems the only people reading the calendar are the those who are on it.  Since I'm now back to a regular 9 to 5 job, my side hours are limited, and I'm thinking they might be better spent on other projects.  So, as with the printed version of The Onion but a whole less funnier, December may see the final version of the monthly architectural calendar.   If you have any thoughts on the matter, pass 'em on

On a cheerier note, as always, there's no small number of great events still to come in November.  This Thursday, Phyllis Lambert will be in conversation with Wiel Arets at Crown Hall and signing copies of her book, Building Seagram.  Also this week, Carlo Caldini is at the Graham on Tuesday, and Jon B. DeVries and D. Bradford Hunt will discuss their new book, Planning Chicago: How Did We Get Here? and why planners always seem to incorporate an initial somewhere in their name, noontime at AIA Chicago on Wednesday, the same afternoon the Chicago Architecture Foundation has their annual Patron of the Year luncheon at the Palmer House, and SOM's Phil Enquist  discusses the Great Cities, Great Lakes, Great Basin initiative lunchtime at CAF, where it's the subject of a just-opened exhibition of the same name..  DeVries and Hunt will also be putting in a appearance at Open Books on Institute Place Monday the 18th.

More? How about Pamela Bannos talking about 1836 through the Chicago Fire at the MCA on Saturday the 16th, where filmmaker Sarah Morris has a preview screening and talk on Tuesday, the 19th, the same day David Wilts of Arup discusses The Smarter Building:  What It is - and Why Bother noontime at AIA/Chicago, and Rolf Achilles talks about his book, The Chicago School of Architecture- Building the Modern City, 1880-1910, at the Glessner House Museum..  The Chicago Midwest Chapter of the Institute of Classical Architecture and Art gives out its First Annual Acanthus Awards at the Elks National Memorial, also on Saturday the 16th.

On Wednesday the 20th Jaume Plensa is in conversation with Reed

Kroloff at MCA, and on Thursday the 21st, Jean Guarino discusses Construction, Demolition and the Remaking of LaSalle Street for Friends of Downtown at the Cultural Center, and designer Lloyd Natof is at Unity Temple in Oak Park.

Catch it while you can.  Check out all the great items on the November Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

Happy Ending for Little Egypt?

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[Update, December 9th, 2013: On Thursday, December 5th, the Commission on Chicago Landmarks voted unanimously to confer preliminary landmark status on Nick's Uptown.]

Nick's Uptown, the Egyptian-styled Hupmobile showroom that was previously the Cairo Supper Club, is on this Thursday's agenda of the Commission on Chicago Landmarks for Preliminary Landmark Designation.  The bar recently closed and the building acquired by Thorek Hospital, which has a record of demolishing and landbanking. No designation report posted yet, although there is one - reflecting the commission staff's usual excellent work - on the 1890 former James Mulligan School on Sheffield, currently undergoing rehab as housing after a long period standing empty.

photograph: Commission on Chicago Landmarks

Read our original story, Little Egypt on Sheridan Road, here.

Model Chicago Engulfed by Water at CAF, plus AIC, Maggie Daley Park: Thursday Updates Edition

Smokefall production still, courtesy Goodman Theatre

As we continue to work on the November calendar, and just in general take a breather (including taking in Noah Haidle's Smokefall, with the great Mike Nussbaum, at the Goodman Thursday night - closing Sunday), we turn to our indefatigable correspondent Bob Johnson to bring you this update, which begins at the Chicago Architecture Foundation, where its striking model of Chicago . . .

photograph: Lynn Becker

. . . now well into its fifth year, has seen even its tallest tower eclipsed by twin walls of water . . .

photograph: Bob Johnson

 . . .  that form the backdrop for CAF's new exhibition, Great Lakes, Great Cities, Great Basin: Bold Ideas for the Great Basin Park . . .

You know your neighborhood, but do you know your basin? Through this exhibition, the urban designers at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP issue a call to arms for all of us to think about our water, our boundaries and our identity. The Great Cities, Great Lakes, Great Basin exhibition depicts the Great Basin as one region defined by the watershed rather than political boundaries. Visit this exhibition and learn the impact you make not only in your immediate neighborhood or city, but in the basin in which you live.

Now open daily, 9:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.

photograph: Bob Johnson

Meanwhile, Bob provides us this aerial shot of the progress at the $55 million Maggie Daley Park, which the Sun-Times' Tina Sfondeles reported  this week has reached the halfway mark towards a soft opening next fall, and a final completion in 2015.  Viewer drivable webcams here.

And that crane you see in the picture hovering over the Modern Wing of the Art Institute?  That was for the installation of the latest installation at the sculpture garden, Ugo Rondinone's we run through a desert on burning feet, all of us are glowing our faces look twisted, which runs through April 20 of next year, by which time the Picasso's and Matisse's should be back from Ft. Worth and the now closed Modern Wing third floor re-opened..

Now, back to the calendar.  Or maybe just a nap.

Rare! Greenway Self-Park Turbines Actually Spinning!

The usually decorative-only wind turbines at the Greenway Self-Park actually spinning in the fall wind.  Do you think they're actually generating enough juice to power the cool atmospheric lighting?

Read More:

Twirling Rotini and Green Indulgences  in a River North Parking Garage

A New Performance Space for Pianoforte Foundation; A Great Recital by Kimiko Ishizaka Tonight at 7:30

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This afternoon (Saturday, October 26) I stopped by to take a look at the handsome new home for the Pianoforte Foundation.  The Foundation has moved from their former quarters in the Fine Arts Annex, to a three story, 11,000 square foot building at 1335 South Michigan, rehabbed by Neil Sheehan of Sheehan Partners Architects.

The first floor is PianoForte Chicago, a retail piano store opened in 2004 by Thomas Zoells, who the next year established the PianoForte Foundation, �dedicated to preserving and promoting the art of the piano in Chicago and creating a vibrant piano community that closely connects audiences and artists.� 

On the second floor at 1335 are offices, a kitchen, a series of practice rooms, and the aforementioned 100 seat performance space, a comfortable, acoustically alive environment which sounded good to me, although I have to admit mechanical or plumbing sounds sometimes intruded into the room at a low level.

I was taking pictures of the hall when a young woman came in, sat down at the Fazioli piano, and began to play Bach.  She was practicing the Well-Tempered Clavier in a romantic, utterly musical performance, full of color and life, which carried over to the Chopin preludes, and selections from the etudes, Op. 10, that came next.  I was having the extreme good fortune of stumbling onto the rehearsal of pianist Kimiko Ishizaka for her recital at 7:30 p.m. tonight.  If you can make it, do so.  You won't regret it.  She's an absolutely marvelous performer.  The recital is free, and if you come early, at 7:00 p.m., you can hear a discussion about Ishizaka's Open-Source Bach project.

If you can't make it, you can watch a live broadcoast of the concert via Google Hangouts.  I haven't quite figured out exactly how it works, myself, but you can check it out for yourself here.

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