Blair Kamin

A new building at the Illinois Institute of Technology looks and works like no other building in Chicago. It exemplifies an emerging trend in architecture — a “dynamic facade” that...

The restoration of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unity Temple in Oak Park and a Loop elevated station that serves as a gateway to Millennium Park were among the winners Friday when...

For years, the Chicago Skyway’s tollbooth canopies served as gateways to Chicago and northwest Indiana. They also happened to be eyesores. No more. Sixty years after the canopies were built,...

Radios, toasters, toy wagons, trains, buses, telephones, microphones, bicycles, tea sets, kitchen tables, even baby buggies and Wrigley Field’s iconic scoreboard clock all had something in common from the 1930s...

When Pritzker Prize-winning Japanese architect Tadao Ando was in Chicago on Oct. 10, he took out a blue marker and made sketches of his buildings on the walls of a...

As the just-concluded design war over Union Station suggests, putting a modern addition on top of a historic building is fraught with peril. Last month, developers withdrew their widely derided...

With Mayor Rahm Emanuel proposing to bend Chicago’s riverfront sign rules to accommodate the wishes of software giant Salesforce, are we in for a repeat performance of ridiculously oversized, in-your-face...