Lucas, Obama and lessons for city-building
George Lucas picked an architect who does look-at-me, iconic buildings. Barack and Michelle Obama picked a pair of architects who would no more drop a spaceship on the lakefront than...
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Obamas choose New York architects to design Chicago library and museum
A renowned husband-and-wife team of New York architects was named Thursday to design the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, with a unique challenge: Shape the first presidential library to be...
Who are Obama library architects Tod Williams, Billie Tsien?
New York City architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, who on Thursday were named the architects of the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, are highly regarded modernists who built their...
Lucas reaps bitter fruits of arrogance as Chicago museum plan collapses
In the end, it wasn't about Darth Vader or Luke Skywalker. It was about the lakefront. George Lucas didn't court Chicagoans. He never made the equivalent of a visit to...
Parks group says deadline given on Lucas Museum deal; city denies timeline
How tense have things gotten over Mayor Rahm Emanuel's attempt to bring the Lucas Museum to the lakefront and Friends of the Parks' bid to block it? Consider the ominous-sounding...
Chicago architecture biennial lakefront kiosks delayed
The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, tied up in federal court, isn't the only lakefront project Mayor Rahm Emanuel can't seem to get off the ground. Last year, the mayor...
Gertrude Kerbis, groundbreaking architect, dies at 89
Inspired by a Life magazine article about Frank Lloyd Wright, Gertrude Kerbis, then a student at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, hitchhiked to Wright's Taliesin estate in Spring Green,...
What design can — and can’t — do to thwart terrorism
After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, skyscrapers like Chicago's Sears (now Willis) Tower and other high-profile symbols of American culture, such as Orlando's Disney World, were viewed as the next...
Block 37 represents a painful missed opportunity
It's been 26 years since wreckers finished clearing everything but an art deco electrical substation from Block 37 in the heart of the Loop. Bold plans have come and gone....
New York’s MoMA plans Frank Lloyd Wright retrospective
Is there any that hasn't already been said about Frank Lloyd Wright, the subject of myriad books, exhibitions and television programs?The people who run New York City's Museum of Modern...