Stick a Skyline in Someone’s Stocking
When looking for Christmas gifts for the architecture enthusiast in your life, Legos have been a go-to staple for decades. Now there’s a new reason to risk stepping on the little bricklets while walking around the house barefoot in the middle of the night. The company that makes the best thing to come out of Denmark since diminutive sea brides has announced that it’s putting out a new Lego set about Chicago....
Millennium Park Named A ‘Great Public Space’ By Meeting Org
Millennium Park may well be one of the most-visited public gathering places in the country, or the world. Rain or shine, you’ll see visitors to Chicago sitting, chatting, eating, bean-photographing. The park has also been named one of the six great public spaces by the American Planning Association (APA). The other five are Balboa Park in San Diego, Pearl Street Mall in Boulder, Flint Farmers Market in Flint, MI, Santa Fe Railyard,...
Spilling The Bean: Cloud Gate Gets A Twin In China
Millennium Park’s iconic centerpiece sculpture “Cloud Gate” evidently has a twin bean, all the way over in the Chinese town of Karamay, according to the government-run newspaper People’s Daily Online. The oil producing town fittingly refers to its sculpture as a “big oil bubble.” People’s Daily reports that the stainless steel sculpture is scheduled for official unveiling later this month. The sculpture has been in the...
Slice of Life: Getting Plowed at Millennium Park
On an early, snowy spring morning, crews with tiny bulldozers shove huge mounds of snow away from Cloud Gate, making way for the throngs of shivering tourists coming later in the...
Chicago Buildings Get the Blues
It was in the name of art that I bundled up in layers last night and headed to The Bean. I was meeting up with the Chicago Digital Photo Meetup Group to photograph the city skyline in blue. Yesterday was Autism World Awareness Day, and blue is the official color of the event. What I found was a just handful of blue buildings—although the Pritzker Pavilion flashed blue, cyan, and a bunch of other colors, with the Blue Cross Blue Shield...
Slice of Life: Quiet Cold
Here’s something you don’t see every Winter’s day: Both Cloud Gate and the McCormick Tribune Ice Rink devoid of tourists. Very peaceful. Very very...
Week Links: March 2, 2012
In order to declutter this publication a little bit, the “Briefly” segments that were being published Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons will now be called “Week Links” and published only Friday afternoons. “What’s weak this week” was already taken. What does a British tabloid think of Chicago? Check out this review from The Mirror, which includes things you’d expect (Cloud Gate,...
Slice of Life: Curves, Stripes, and a Spire
Everyone’s favorite new Chicago landmark, Cloud Gate, grabs onto the stright lines of 150 North Michigan Avenue, the Trump International Hotel and Tower (401 North Wabash Avenue), Millennium Park Plaza (151 North Michigan Avenue), and the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois Tower (300 East Randolph Street) and bends them to its...
