The Tribune’s Blair Kamin’s picks for the buildings, books and events of the fall
Some things not to miss this fall in Chicago architecture
Despite the dark shadow cast by COVID-19, the fall architecture season in Chicago promises a luminous array of exhibitions, books and buildings. It will culminate the construction boom that took shape after the Great Recession.
Here’s a preview:
Vista Tower reshapes the skyline: The Vista Tower, Chicago’s third-tallest building and the world’s tallest building designed by a woman architect, is finally ready for its close-up.
Designed by Chicago architect Jeanne Gang and her firm Studio Gang, the 101story hotel and condominium tower is expected to welcome its first residents in mid-October. Work to complete the tower’s exterior is still ongoing, but it already has reshaped the city’s skyline.
From its base at 345 E. Wacker Drive, Vista rises as a cluster of three interconnected high-rises, or “stems,” as Gang calls them. Each stem appears to curve inward and outward, giving the tower a distinctly sculptural presence. In Chicago, only Willis Tower and Trump Tower are taller.
Chicago’s tallest office building since 1990: Another superlative is in store: Chicago’s tallest office building since the completion of Two Prudential Plaza in 1990.
It’s the Bank of America Tower, designed by Chicago’s Goettsch Partners and located at 110 N. Wacker Drive. Although it has 56 stories, the high-rise climbs to a height of 815 feet because of its higherthan-average ceiling heights and 45-foothigh lobby.
Replacing the low-rise General Growth building, the glassy tower sits alongside the south branch of the Chicago River. Architectural highlights along the river include a strongly vertical, serrated facade and a covered, 45-foot-wide riverwalk framed by exposed structural columns. Completion is expected in September.
A new hotel on Navy Pier: With relatively few visitors because of the coronavirus pandemic, Navy Pier is closed until next spring to save money. But the lakefront attraction is still expected to get the first hotel in its 104-year history.
Designed by Chicago’s Koo architects, the hotel has been built atop existing structures near the pier’s east end. Part of the Hilton Curio Collection, it has about 220 rooms and is named “The Sable” in honor of a World War II training ship, an aircraft carrier, that docked at Navy Pier.
The hotel’s developer is aiming for a Nov. 1 opening. Koo’s design includes subtle nautical references and framed views of Lake Michigan and the skyline.
A head-turner at the U of C: Construction is expected to wrap up this fall on the University of Chicago’s David Rubenstein Forum, a high-rise meeting place designed by New York architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro.
Located on the south side of the Midway Plaisance, the glass-sheathed building consists of a two-story base and an eightstory tower. The tower flaunts a series of stacked boxes, several of which are dramatically cantilevered.
It will house multipurpose meeting spaces for workshops, academic symposia and lectures. The building’s ground floor will include a wine bar and cafe.
The university plans to hold some classes in the Rubenstein Forum this fall, but because of the coronavirus pandemic the building won’t be fully operational or formally opened until next year.
Chicago showcase for an Indian master: In 2018, Balkrishna Doshi became the first Indian architect to win the Pritzker Architecture Prize, the field’s highest honor. This fall in Chicago, about 20 of Doshi’s projects, from private homes to entire cities, are being showcased in a traveling exhibition billed as the first U.S. exhibition of his work.
Called “Balkrishna Doshi: Architecture for the People,” the show appears at the Wrightwood 659 gallery, at 659 W. Wrightwood Ave. in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood, through Dec. 12. On view are drawings, models, sketches, films, photography and full-scale installations that illustrate the experience of Doshi’s buildings.
Tickets are only available online; wrightwood659.org.
Open House adapts to COVID-19: Open House Chicago, the popular festival that gave participants a free, behind-the-facade peek at interiors throughout the city, will have a new (and I hope temporary) format this fall, one forced by the coronavirus pandemic.
The festival will present self-guided exterior tours and online explorations of buildings and urban spaces in more than 20 city neighborhoods, as well as the neighboring suburbs of Evanston and Oak Park. The neighborhoods will include 10 areas on the South and West sides that are the focus of Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s Invest South/West program, which seeks to revive struggling business districts.
To celebrate Open House Chicago’s 10th anniversary, the festival will run 10 days, from Oct. 16-25, instead of the usual two days. For more information, go to openhousechicago.org.
The Farnsworth House and the Glass House: The Farnsworth House, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s modernist masterpiece in far southwest suburban Plano, has mounted a photo exhibition that compares and contrasts the house with a modernist icon it influenced, Philip Johnson’s Glass House in New Canaan, Conn.
Called “Side by Side: Farnsworth House + The Philip Johnson Glass House,” and scheduled to run through Nov. 22, the exhibit displays pairs of images of the two houses by photographer Robin Hill. It will appear in a gallery alongside the house’s visitor center.
Admission is included with a guided tour of the Farnsworth House, which will continue the fascinating exhibit “Edith Farnsworth’s Country House.” That show fills the house with furnishings that resemble those of its namesake, Chicago kidney doctor Edith Farnsworth.
Does one size fit all? From the size of credit cards to batteries, global standards are ubiquitous. Yet not everything is uniform. Airline guidelines for carry-on bags differ, for example.
The Art Institute will explore the impact of standards and deviations from them in a new exhibition, “Ambiguous Standards Institute: An Institute Within an Institute,” that runs Nov. 21 to May 3, 2021.
Wooden crates will display 10 case studies of standards investigated by the Ambiguous Standards Institute of Istanbul, a research and education establishment.
Chicago’s heavy-metal heart: Chicago’s Loop wouldn’t be the same without the elevated tracks and CTA trains that form its thunderously loud core. But how did the “L” come about? And who saved it from being torn down in the 1970s?
In November, Southern Illinois University Press will publish a book by former Chicago Tribune reporter Patrick T. Reardon that addresses these and other questions. Titled “The Loop: The ’L’ Tracks That Shaped and Saved Chicago,” the illustrated, 304-page book calls the “L” “the most important structure ever built in the city.”
Midcentury houses for the Midwest: Fans of mid-20th-century modernism, especially as it took shape in the Midwest, will likely want to check out another book that went on sale in late August: “Modern in the Middle: Chicago Houses 1929-1975.”
Published by Monacelli Press and written by architectural historian Susan Benjamin and Michelangelo Sabatino, an architecture professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology, the book explores how Chicago and its suburbs played a pivotal but overlooked role in developing the modern single-family house.
More than 50 houses are surveyed, including homes by such noted architects John Vinci and Henry Dubin. The book contains 325 historic images, many from the archives of Chicago photography firm Hedrich Blessing.
A tribute to a former president: For the Obama Presidential Center, the long-running federal review of the project’s impact on historic Jackson Park is nearing the finish line, but a ground-breaking has not yet been scheduled. The architects are Tod Williams and Billie Tsien of New York.