Blair Kamin – Page 9 –

Stone designs on the side of the Central Street Purple Line Station in Evanston.

Column: Advice for the housebound: Take a stroll. There’s architectural beauty out there.

April 6, 2020 at 3:22 p.m.

So you're stuck at home, sheltering in place, and wondering how you're going to get through the coronavirus pandemic without going nuts or putting on 10 pounds. Here's a suggestion:...

Column: This young Chicago architect’s life was cut short by the 1918 flu pandemic. He could have been one of the greats.

April 6, 2020 at 10:17 a.m.

He was a young architect of tremendous promise — a native of Nebraska who was raised in Princeton, Illinois, and became the chief draftsman of the great Louis Sullivan. Parker...

Uptake's office is seen June 21, 2017, in Chicago. Working away from your desk is one way to take social distance from co-workers.

Column: Will the open-plan office make you vulnerable to coronavirus? Or will the virus crisis force offices to become safer?

March 30, 2020 at 11:53 a.m.

Even before coronavirus struck, critics were slamming the layout used in most American offices — the open plan — as noisy, distracting, stress-inducing, and nowhere near the teamwork booster its...

People crowd The 606 trail in the Wicker Park neighborhood on March 25, 2020.

Column: Lightfoot makes right call by shutting down the ‘lungs of the city’

March 26, 2020 at 6:34 p.m.

Chicago's parks and public spaces offer a rare thing in a city divided along the fault lines of race and class: Common ground, a place where people from different walks...

Hopleaf employees Sarah and Sue Tiritilli put together packages of ingredients to go with the restaurant's popular mussels dish, March 17, 2020.

Column: Do your bit for urban vitality. Order takeout from your local restaurant.

March 24, 2020 at 6:12 p.m.

"That's terrible," I said Saturday night when the host of one of our favorite neighborhood restaurants, a joint that specializes in smoked meats, told me we were the only ones...

A man walks past the empty square at the Louvre Pyramid in Paris on March 17, 2020, while a strict lockdown comes into in effect in France to stop the spread of COVID-19.

Column: The things we love about city life — public transit, urban hustle — are the very things that put us at risk for COVID-19

March 18, 2020 at 4:29 p.m.

In Millennium Park, no one was reflected in the polished stainless steel walls of the Cloud Gate sculpture, also known as The Bean. At Navy Pier, the promenade facing Lake...

The foundation hole for the failed Chicago Spire is seen at 400 N. Lake Shore Drive on Aug. 1, 2018.

Column: The latest plans for the Chicago Spire site: Is this land cursed?

March 13, 2020 at 8:43 a.m.

The 76-foot-deep foundation hole of the never-built Chicago Spire is a civic embarrassment, a pockmark on the cityscape. So it's easy to understand why Mayor Lori Lightfoot's urban planners and...

This Sept. 24, 2017, file photo, shows the drafting room at Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Ariz., the winter home of architect Frank Lloyd Wright and the architecture school he founded. The school's board has reversed itself and now hopes to remain open.

Column: Wright’s Taliesin school reverses decision to close, but its future remains uncertain

March 6, 2020 at 12:37 p.m.

The school of architecture founded by Frank Lloyd Wright, presumed dead after a January announcement that the school would close, may have a new lease on life. The school's board...

Ceiling tiles are missing March 5, 2020, at Millennium Station in Chicago.

Column: What’s in a ceiling? At best, uplifting beauty. But that’s not what you find in the train station below Millennium Park

March 9, 2020 at 11:05 a.m.

The ceiling is the forgotten surface of architecture. It shouldn't be. It's impossible to think of French Gothic cathedrals without their soaring vaults of stone, the Pantheon without its majestic...

Chicago’s coveted Pritzker Architecture Prize goes to 2 women architects from Ireland

March 3, 2020 at 1:17 p.m.

Two women architects from Ireland, who are widely respected for their humane approach to design but are little known in the United States, on Tuesday were named this year's winners...

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