Here’s Your Excuse to Visit Joliet
The coolest piece of architecture in Joliet is no longer the old Correctional Center. It’s the new courthouse. The West Loop’s Wight and Company has been given a big fat architecture award for the Will County Courthouse Specifically, it’s a citation from the American Institute of Architects’ Academy of Architecture for Justice. That’s the AIAAAJ for short. Its friends call it “Buddy.”...
2018 Chicago Neighborhood Development Awards Winners Announced
There are thousands of people who work every day to make Chicago what it is, and shape its future. Some of these individuals were honored today at the annual Chicago Neighborhood Development Awards. This is the 24th year for the awards. Meghan Harte, LISC Chicago Executive Director said, “For more than two decades the Chicago Neighborhood Development Awards and the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Award for Architectural Excellence in...
2017 Ragdale Ring Winners Announced
For more than a century, Chicago architects have had a love affair with the North Shore’s idyllic bedroom communities. For renowned arts and crafts architect Howard Van Doren Shaw, his private Idaho was Lake Forest, and the estate he built there named Ragdale. These days the estate operates as a retreat for 150 creative types selected yearly to spend time away from their regular lives to get their creative juices flowing. In...
People and Projects Honored For Neighborhood Development
The annual LISC Chicago’s Neighborhood Development Awards were recently handed out at ceremonies at McCormick Place. The awards honor “the top real estate development and architectural design projects in the city’s neighborhoods.” It’s a good way to catch up on what’s been going on in the city’s outer neighborhoods, since so much media coverage of real estate development in the city is primarily...
Chicago Bungalow Preservationists Honored
Chicago is the birth place of the skyscraper, and dozens of architectural innovations that led up to it an improved upon it since. But not all things “Chicago” are grand in scale. For example, what’s more Chicago than a Chicago bungalow? The squatty, utilitarian buildings served the city well for generations, but are slowly disappearing, or being altered beyond recognition thanks to gentrification and changes in...
Woodlawn Apartments, Loop Hotel, Grand Crossing Art Space Get Preservation Award
Three Chicago buildings are among nine statewide that have been selected for this year’s Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Preservation Award. The award is given annually by Landmarks Illinois, the advocacy group dedicated to preserving the state’s important landmarks. The Stony Island Arts Bank at 6700 South Stony Island Avenue won the award for restoration. You’ll remember this is the building that used to be the...
P+W Gets High Honor for High School in South Loop
By now you’ve had plenty of time to ogle the new Jones Prep High School in the South Loop. The postmodern-with-a-touch-of-modern school runs for a block-and-a-half down State Street between West Harrison and West Polk Streets. It replaces the brutalist cube that went into service in 1967 and still stands at 700 South State Street. For its work on the new school, Chicago’s own Perkins+Will has been awarded the 2015 Mies...
E2 Gets Award for Design in Evanston
My, how time flies. It seems like just yesterday we were wolfing down free food truck grub at the groundbreaking for E2, the new apartment complex in Evanston, and now it’s all grown up and winning awards. E2, you may remember is the two-tower 356-unit apartment building that FitzGerald Associates put together for Fifield. You can read the full press release below. E2 Luxury Apartment Tower Wins 2015 Design Evanston...
Design With Company Named 2015 Ragdale Ring Winning Team With Shaw Town
When Stewart Hicks and Allison Newmeyer began developing a concept for their Ragdale Ring entry, they found their inspiration in the person of Howard Van Doren Shaw. The outdoor theater at Ragdale was originally designed by Shaw in 1912. The Ragdale Ring competition allows design teams to reinterpret Shaw’s vision. That vision will come to life this summer under the direction of Hicks and Newmeyer, partners in the West Loop firm...
AIA Chicago’s Young Architect Of The Year Focuses Her Efforts On Building Communities
Nootan Bharani quite possibly found her first spark of creativity growing up in Downer’s Grove. She made things out of a nontraditional building material: pompom balls. “I cut them all off of my mother’s and sister’s socks,” she said. She then used the pompoms to add flare to dollhouse furniture. Fast forward to 2014 and Bharani’s career as an architect has taken an equally nontraditional course. She spent the first dozen years of her...
