Developed on one of Chicago’s typical 25-by-125-foot residential lots, the 1,300-square-foot Hem House was the brainchild of Ann Lui and Craig Reschke, co-founders of Chicago-based architecture company Future Firm, and real estate developer Joseph Root.

“While there’s a very vibrant art and culture scene in Chicago, there isn’t a lot of bespoke contemporary architecture, and what exists in residential is almost exclusively very high end — so we’re hoping to help change that narrative,” explains Ann Lui. “Because Chicago residential lots are all the same size, it’s easy for people to repeat plans and end up with a lot of underwhelming architecture. We’d like to be a trend in a different direction.”

“We wanted to create a house using a few strategic construction and design ideas to keep costs down, as an idea for Chicago’s vacant residential lots,” adds Craig Reschke.

Joseph Root agrees. “We see a lot of home builders that want to build on the luxury side, million-dollar-plus homes. And then there’s affordable developers,” he says. “When I looked at the numbers, I said this is a great opportunity to meet in the middle.”

While the Hem House is narrower than average for these lots (16 feet as opposed to 20), it makes up for that loss of interior width with more room for side gardens. The dwelling consists of two different-sized rectangular stacked boxes, creating space for three single-sloped roof areas. Those angles, along with the black metal siding, create a modern look full of ultra-clean lines.

Inside, the house’s stacked shape allows for a two-story-tall ceiling over the kitchen, with high, oversized windows letting plenty of natural light in for added sustainability.

From the entryway, residents step into the laundry/mudroom combination space, and then pass by the 220-square-foot main bedroom, the smaller 150-square-foot bedroom, and a shared bathroom. The hallway opens up into the open-concept kitchen and living area, and stairs grant access to the 150-square-foot mezzanine that includes a bedroom and bathroom.

The architects chose to keep all the interior surfaces white or natural to provide an airy, spacious vibe, contrasting the light walls with polished concrete floors.

After buying the land for just $13,000 from the Cook County Lank Bank Authority – an organization aimed at better utilizing vacant lots in Chicago’s underserved neighborhoods — the design and development team listed the house last summer for $399,000. It sold in just four days.

Darlene Dugo, deputy director of the CCLBA, was proud of the final product. “For too long, blight caused by decades of redlining and the 2008 housing crisis has depressed property values and economic investment in Black and Brown neighborhoods,” she said. “By reclaiming vacant lots and building affordable, beautiful community assets, Hem Development is demonstrating what is possible when we enable local architects and developers to resurrect abandoned space.”

Lui, Reschke, and Root have plans to create multiple versions (two-bedroom and four-bedroom models) of the Hem House for reasonably-priced duplication on other vacant Chicago lots.

The post Hem House Brings Modern Charm to Chicago Suburbs at an Affordable Price first appeared on Dornob.

Though climate change objectives are getting more serious government attention these days, innovative ideas are still needed to help reach carbon-emission reducing targets within the next 10 to 30 years. HPZS took on the challenge by transforming a client’s 1890’s Ravenswood neighborhood property into an energy-neutral build for the future.

Called the Yannell PHUIS+ House, the renovation meets all the strict requirements for the Passive House Institute US (PHIUS 2018+) certifications. In contrast to many of the energy upgrades being included in construction today, the passive home concept is all about building materials into the design that save energy without any extra effort. This means that most of the changes are made within walls and structures rather than with more visible systems like solar, smart thermostats, and Powerwalls.

For the Yannell PHUIS+ House, HPZS gutted the century-old residence down to its studs and sheathing boards. Some may wonder if simply demolishing and building fresh would have been a better idea (especially considering the project’s cool $1.4 million price tag), but in many areas, and especially with historic domiciles, there are less fees and red tape involved for renovation applications than for new structures. Plus, it preserves at least some of the original material.

The HPZS team added 500 square feet to the two-story-plus-basement abode, for a finished product of 3,884 square feet, five bedrooms, and three bathrooms. They started by super-insulating the walls with R-48 graphite-infused expanded polystyrene exterior insulation, which adds internal reflectivity and reduces radiant transmission. The internal walls were similarly foamed in with closed-cell polyurethane insulation, while the roof got 36 inches of R-100 blown-in glass mineral wool.

Additionally, HPZS used triple-pane argon-filled insulated windows, saving even more energy and providing abundant natural light inside. To provide clean, fresh air regularly, the firm installed an Energy Recovery Ventilator that harvests heat energy from the outgoing air to heat the incoming oxygen.

While solar power is not an essential part of passive construction, this home does include a 2.8 KW photovoltaic roof-mounted system that produces 25 percent of the house’s annual energy demand.

All of these design decisions resulted in an extremely air-tight edifice with a test score of 0.0596 cubic feet per minute per 50 square feet (an older home built using traditional construction techniques can test up to 120 cf/m). That ultra-low score earned the house three bonus certifications: Zero Energy Ready Home (ZERH) status from the Department of Energy, EPA Energy Star, and an EPA Indoor airPlus label.

The renovated passive house is currently slated to be resold on the speculative housing market for profit.

“For our team, this project was successful because of our tenacity in the face of a difficult design and building science problem: how can you transform existing buildings today to meet 2050 goals,” explain the Chicago-based designers. “But it also represents, to a greater extent, significant policy issues that we’re going to have to deal with if we want to decarbonize: zoning codes must change to allow for exterior insulation to be added within setbacks, major renovations and new construction should not be allowed new natural gas connections, homes should be blower door tested successfully in order to achieve occupancy permits. This project demonstrates that change is essential to the policy administration of the built environment. It’s just one more call to action.”

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One version of the split-level concept is Water Netsch’s “field theory” design philosophy. The architect and former SOM design partner (who died in 2008) envisioned a building that appeared fairly conventional from the outside but contained multiple interior levels connected by open-riser stairs inside. He applied the concept to his own Chicago residence, originally completed in 1974, and in 2013, SOM helped the new owners update it with modern sensibilities while retaining all the properties that make it special.

Set in Chicago’s Old Town neighborhood, the home lacks any indications as to its unusual interior layout when you view it from the street, unlike archetypal split-levels, where the entry door height is usually somewhere between the lower and upper levels. That doesn’t mean it’s boring, however. Its brick facade juts forward at an interesting angle, with a wall of glass strategically pointed toward the desired view. The home is by no means small at 3500 square feet, but once you step through the door, Netsch’s “field theory” comes into play, making it feel much larger than it really is.

SOM says the theory is “based on complex geometries that establish intricate relationships between form and function.” That’s apparent when you see how the space is divided. Not a single room in the house is rectilinear, and many are only defined as separate spaces by their slight elevation above or below the next.

“Skylights that at first seem strangely placed are soon revealed as highly calculated decisions, framing views and illuminating specific spaces at certain times of the day and year,” say the architects. “Netsch’s application of field theory creates expansive sightlines between rooms; indeed, the only spaces in the entire house with doors are the bathrooms.”

“The renovation added new appliances and cabinetry to a well-worn kitchen. A continuous 40-foot walnut counter and shelf were installed to recall the original linear service bar. The half bath was renewed with new counters, lighting, and a cleverly concealed water closet. New tile work and counters refresh the existing master bathroom configuration. To reconcile the open concept with the need for privacy, concealed sliding doors were designed and installed at the bath and master bedroom area.”

The lack of accessibility of this type of design is definitely a concern, not only to accommodate guests and future residents, but in case your own physical abilities change (and let’s be real, all architecture should be accessible by default). But it’s also easy to see the appeal. There’s something exciting about discovering each new level of the home as you make your way through it.

If you find this unusual type of interior layout intriguing, check out two versions from Japan: a dramatically cantilevered home in Osaka with eight tiered interior levels and a narrow wooden house in the city of Toyota full of compact platforms that ascend from the ground level up to the ceiling in a spiraling pattern.

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The new year will bring the completion of a pretty dazzling array of architectural projects, some of which have been in the making for a decade or more. Major firms will be cutting the ribbons on career-defining structures, and some of them are record-breakers, too.

These five exciting examples include a new super-tall tower for Chicago, the posthumous completion of a striking hotel designed by Zaha Hadid herself, an Olympic stadium, and two examples of buzzworthy concepts looking to prove themselves in the real world.

Opus by Zaha Hadid Architects, Dubai

The first and only hotel in Dubai to be designed inside and out by famed architect Zaha Hadid herself, the “Opus” is a cube-shaped volume with a “carved” central void, bringing some of Hadid’s signature curvature to the project. Located within the city’s Burj Khalifa district, the building will contain a “ME by Melia” hotel as well as 12 restaurants, a rooftop bar, and 56,000 square feet of office space. Each side of the cube is conceived as its own separate tower, connected by narrow bridges at the top and bottom.

“The Opus will be aligned with Omniyat’s vision of treating each project as if it were a unique work of art,” says Mahdi Amjad, Executive Chairman and CEO of Omniyat. “The design conveys the remarkably inventive quality of ZHA’s work; expressing a sculptural sensibility that reinvents the balance between solid and void, opaque and transparent, interior and exterior.”

There’s no word yet on exactly when the hotel will open to its first guests, but construction is nearly complete as of early 2020.

Nanjing Zendai Himalayas Center by MAD, China

When architects first began proposing futuristic-looking developments resembling mountains years ago, they seemed like fantasy concepts that would never actually be built. MAD Architects is proving that theory wrong with its Nanjing Zendai Himalayas Center, which is quickly nearing completion in China. The mixed-use development occupies over 560,000 square meters of building area and will host residential, hotel, office, and commercial facilities, and it’s all characterized by mountain-like towers around the edge with glass screens that “flow” like waterfalls.

The firm explains that “these features provide interior spaces with energizing light and wind to form a subtle, calming ambiance. The project mimics the site’s surrounding mountains and meandering rivers that are essential parts of Chinese aesthetic philosophy. Towers along the edge of the site act as a mountainous backdrop, while water features such as ponds, waterfalls, brooks, and pools connect buildings and landscapes to integrate all of the center’s elements. This integration goes beyond form, with the water features functioning as reservoirs to collect and recycle rainwater for irrigation.”

Vista Tower by Studio Gang, Chicago

It’s not every day that a city gets a new landmark that dramatically alters its skyline. In Chicago, the tale of the failed Spire super-tower has become legendary after what was supposed to be the tallest building in North America never made it past the construction of its giant foundation hole. That hole has now sat empty for well over a decade. The new Vista Tower by Studio Gang may not fill the literal hole in the ground, and at 1,186 feet, it won’t be anywhere near as tall, but once completed, it will be the city’s third-tallest skyscraper.

“Residential and hotel amenities combine at the upper levels, creating a vibrant social center,” say the architects. “At ground level, the building creates an essential pedestrian connection between the Chicago Riverwalk and the nearby community park’s outdoor recreational facilities.”

1,000 Trees by Heatherwick Studio, Shanghai

A lot of concept architecture over the last decade has featured full-scale trees adorning the facades of buildings. While it certainly looks cool, there have been a lot of good questions raised about the weight of the soil, the impact of the tree roots as they grow, and lots of other potential problems. As Heatherwick Studio completes its 1,000 Trees development in Shanghai, we’ll finally get to see how it all works out. Heatherwick’s design differs from others in a few crucial ways, like the use of concrete structural columns to support the trees. The mixed-use project also resembles an artificial mountain from afar, adding some interesting topographical dimension to an otherwise flat city.

National Stadium by Kengo Kuma, Tokyo

Japanese architect Kengo Kuma’s National Stadium was technically completed in November 2019, but this summer, we’ll get to see it in use for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics. Kuma is a master of wooden architecture, and the new stadium is one of his largest and most complex projects to date, made with over 70,000 cubic feet of larch and cedar wood sourced from all of Japan’s 47 prefectures. The stadium was originally set to be designed by Zaha Hadid, but her firm’s predictably curvy design was deemed too expensive.

Which one of these projects are you most excited to see finished?

The post 5 Buildings We Can’t Wait to See Completed in 2020 first appeared on Dornob.

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Sometimes a home is simply too far gone or too eclectically assembled to ‘save’ as it is – a restoration would simply seem kitschy and false. So what do you do when you want to preserve historical elements of your hodgepodge home while rebuilding it to be your dream house? This strange Chicago residence is at once a tribute to the history of the house and neighborhood while also existing as a radical aesthetic departure from its context.

At first glance one would never guess that the core of this house dates back to the 1880s, when it was originally a stable. It was slowly added to over the years, accumulating piecemeal wood and brick additions, extensions and reconstructions that eventually led it to being an actual home. This most recent and remarkable set of changes has resulted in something hardly recognizable yet still tied to its roots.

By the time the current owners decided they would like to restore some kind of original form there were too many iterations to choose from and too little structure to safely preserve. As a result, they commissioned Studio Gang Architects to create a stunning gray brick screen around the home and held onto what few rooms and structural elements they could in the core of the house.

“The ‘Brick-Weave’ House sits on the footprint of a century-old stable in Chicago’s West Side. With a modest budget, the owners hoped to salvage the entire building until hidden fire damage was uncovered. Strategically cutting away damage and weaving in new construction allowed 30% of the original structure to be reused. Front walls and roof were removed, creating a garden surrounded by a porous “brick-weave” screen that demonstrates a sensibility in the use of traditional materials in new and surprising ways.”

“Variation in ceiling heights and floor levels weaves together the two-story garden at the front of the house with the single-story volume at the back through a cascading section.”

“The screen animates the garden and interior with dappled sunlight, establishing a visual connection to and from the street. Rectangular voids in the screen throw hexagonal patterns of light inside. At night, the pattern reverses: the screen becomes a lantern.”

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A photographic exhibit at this year’s Chicago Architecture Biennial, entitled “A Love of the World,” looks at how architectural photography can be used to tell a project’s story. Curated by Jesús Vassallo, the exhibit features the work of James Welling, David Schalliol, Luisa Lambri, Marianne Mueller, and many others.

James Welling’s use of multi-film exposure techniques creates colorful, 1960s-style photographs of Mies van der Rohe’s typically neutral buildings, placing these already famous structures in a strange new light. Anyone who’s familiar with Mies’ buildings knows that many of them have become icons of the modern movement. Welling adds flashy textures to staid photographs, forcing your attention on them. It’s almost like watching Babe Ruth hit a home-run in color.

Marianne Mueller used the biennale’s venue, the Chicago Cultural Center, as a subject to show attendees parts of the building that they would normally never look at when admiring the exhibit itself. Typically, curators place the focus on the work being exhibited, not on parts of the event space.

The subversion of the established narrative is most obvious in the work of photographer and sociologist David Schalliol.

In the early 2000s, when the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) received more than a billion dollars in federal funding to demolish and reconstruct that city’s public housing, Schalliol was there to document the process in photographs. To this day, the CHA’s established plan is to turn low-income areas into mixed-income neighborhoods. This massive shift is most evident in the demolition of large-scale projects in residential areas, which ultimately results in a decreased sense of community as people wait their turn to be evicted from their homes. As of this year, only 16,846 households, or 7.81 percent of the CHA’s units, are located in mixed-income neighborhoods. That means a lot of other people are still watching their communities crumble around them.

Schalliol’s photographs are a symbol of the spatial and emotional tumult experienced by the residents. However, when one watches the video produced back in 2010 by the CHA about the progress of the plan, the sense of disruption and degradation is not as glaring as it is in these photos. In the city’s eyes, the change is for the better, but for most public housing residents, it is a forced transformation into the unknown.

Not all works in “A Love of the World” are part of a counter-narrative. Some, like Luisa Lambri’s photos of Mies’ “Farnsworth House,” simply juxtapose the austere interiors with the chromatic changing of the leaves outside.

Still, architectural photography can be used as an alternative to, or a protest against, an established narrative, and it can add in the realism that has been glossed over.

The post Architectural Photography that Tells a Story first appeared on Dornob.

Seven Point, a new dispensary in Chicago’s Oak Park suburb (where the plant is still highly regulated), is a perfect example of the high-end design that’s now gracing cannabis outlets everywhere.

Upon obtaining his marijuana seller’s permit, Brad Zerman, Seven Point’s owner and CEO, saw an opportunity to create an elegant and inviting space for consumers to come and purchase their cannabis. After all, many weed dispensaries are sterile, uninviting spaces, with gun-toting guards manning the doors and an air of secrecy and delinquency about them. Zerman wanted his dispensary to be the antithesis of all that. He wanted a retail space that would be able to give customers a feeling of comfort and relaxation, and a space that would have a boutique-like air about it.

Not long after that, Zerman tapped Curioso, a practice that specializes in hospitality and putting the customer at the front and center of the design, to set about actually bringing the place to life. Curioso co-founder Nina Grondin says of the project: “Our interest in working with the cannabis, or really any industry, stems from our strong belief that hospitality extends beyond hotels, restaurants, and bars. It really applies anywhere where humans reside. We loved the idea of taking on new design challenges, especially those presented by a new industry, delivered through the lens of one of the oldest industries in the world— hospitality.”

Curioso made a big point to balance Seven Point’s requirements, such as a separation between client and product and a member of staff on-hand at all times to greet customers upon arrival, with decorative flourishes that reflected the beauty of the cannabis plant itself. Subsequently, the dispensary’s concierges are now set against an impressive weed-themed background mural, and all visitors must make their way down a hip hallway lined with translucent polycarbonate sheets and branded signage before getting to the actual store.

The cannabis is kept in customized boxes inspired by cigar humidors, with a storage room protruding out into the waiting and reception area to foster a connection between the activities of the customer and those of the staff — but the shop still meets all regulatory conditions, of course.

Seven Point’s branding was handled by Curioso’s sister company La Tortillería, who named the dispensary in reference to the number of points on a typical marijuana leaf. Both companies took inspiration from famed retailers such as Aesop, whose branding and retail environments are all conceived of holistically to help customers recognize the company at a glance.

So what do you think? Will cannabis’ sleek new face help sway the general public in its favor?

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In June of 2018, McDonald’s opened a shiny new headquarters in Chicago’s lively West Loop neighborhood. Right up until its unveiling, the building resembled little more than a giant canvas covered in Big Macs. Still, it does look the the company is going back to its roots with this surprising new facility, having been based in the Windy City for nearly two decades in the middle of the 20th century. Not only will the HQ provide state-of-the-art workspaces for the company’s 2,400 employees, but it will also feature McDonald’s flagship Hamburger University.

From a design perspective, the focus here falls squarely on amenities, flexible working conditions, education, and innovation. Scott Phillips, McDonald’s Director of Corporate Real Estate, explains that the vision behind the project was “to connect work and people, foster and showcase innovation, and create a sustainable, flexible, and evolving workplace that would respond to changing needs.”

The design is a joint effort between interiors company IA Interior Architects, who were previously involved in the masterplanning of McDonald’s Oak Brook headquarters, and architects Gensler, a company renowned for its industrial approach to large-scale projects. The team knew they wanted to maximize employee collaboration from the start of the design process, making a point to allow staff members to work in every single corner of the building whenever they so felt like it. Each one of these corners marks a distinct “work neighborhood,” complete with huddle rooms, communal tables, workstations, private phone rooms, and personal lockers.

A huge, Escher-esque staircase at the center of the building further encourages interactions between staff members from different departments. The sixth floor “Work Café” is filled with stadium seating and huge floor-to-ceiling glazing that provides expansive views out over the city. All the offices are also peppered with outdoor terraces, and the ninth floor is even equipped with a wellness center to help employees stay in shape.

The concept behind this headquarters is very much in line with those found in Silicon Valley, encouraging staff to work at their own pace and in their own way while providing them with the facilities and amenities necessary to lead a balanced life at the same time. The building is also LEED certified, maintaining McDonald’s commitment to sustainability in the workplace. On top of that, all the food waste produced in the new HQ’s kitchens is composted and reused on its green roof. McDonald’s iconic heritage is also on display throughout the building in the form of mini-museums, with exhibition cabinets housing hoards of Happy Meal toys from over the years.

Of course, no McDonald’s HQ would be complete without a proper McDonald’s restaurant. This takes up the entire ground floor, featuring all of the classic menu items as well as some international meals that don’t otherwise appear on US menus. The restaurant has been dubbed an “Experience of the Future” location, and it places a heavy emphasis on the connection between the food industry and technology.

The post McDonald’s Chicago Headquarters Sets a New Benchmark for Contemporary Office Design first appeared on Dornob.

Harnessing some of its most captivating original features, including a set of majestic stained glass windows, dramatic vaulted ceilings and open spaces, exposed brick walls, and wooden ceiling turnbuckles, this revamped holy house does a great job of paying tribute to its past while serving an entirely modern purpose.

Now encompassing six bathrooms, seven bedrooms, and a few large public areas, the church has been lovingly converted into a contemporary eclectic home by American designer Linc Thelen. Thelen created a fluidity throughout the new home by leaving the 25-foot-high lower level of the building open-plan, allowing the living area, kitchen, and dining room to all blend seamlessly into one another. He wanted to preserve the essence of the building’s heritage by keeping the stunning golden windows and other original features he believed would bring character to the space while still making it feel like a livable and loveable residence.

Most of the interior adheres to a color palette of black, white, and gray, while the stained glass adds splashes of red, green, and yellow to the mix, with accessories and fixtures featuring additional gold accents. The lower level also contains a separated master bedroom, bathroom, and closet, while the upper level houses the other bedrooms, a playroom featuring a custom-made climbing wall and sliding barn door, a game room, and a nursery. The ultra-macho game room has actually been built in the church’s old bell tower, allowing for further fantastical thinking when the inhabitants are deep in their leisurely element and overlooking downtown Chicago.

Meticulous care was taken with the redesign in order to to work around a few major challenges that arose in the process, including the installation of proper of heating and cooling systems and the owners’ request for an isolated additional room to accommodate their growing family. The home was designed playfully in order to portray the personalities of the owners, providing them with a luxurious suburban home in a vintage farmhouse design style. The occasional modern twist keeps the space functional but leaves enough of a unique aesthetic to spark some really interesting conversations among guests!

After entering through a pair of wooden blue double doors, visitors ascend a short set of steps and walk through the entrance hall, emerging in an open space consisting of raw materials, canvas-like white walls, staggering volumes, and brass accessories. In charming juxtaposition to these elements are the vestiges of the old church: thick wooden beams, a black quartz chimney, and of course, the whole holy exterior. The wallpapers tend to feature bright prints or geometric shapes, while the floors are adorned with colorful ceramic tiles. A few of the church’s nooks and crannies have been turned into reading corners and other creative crawl spaces, adding allure and curiosity to every possible living space and ensuring that every feature is used to its fullest potential.

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Piet Mondrian and Mies Van Der Rohe were two of the most influential designers of their time. Van Der Rohe in particular made significant contributions to Chicago’s famous architectural landscape, designing iconic buildings like the 860-880 Lake Shore Drive apartments and the Chicago Federal Center. These buildings marked a seachange in skyscraper design at the times of their completion, and now their aesthetic is reflected in the sophistication and minimalism of the East Oak Street COS store.

The store was designed by COS’ in-house designers, who explain that “Mies’ buildings, still present in the area, offered a great range of interesting framework and inspiration for the store’s detailing. In particular, the sheerness of Mies’ work and use of steel profiles and glass surfaces influenced the store design.”

The influence of other noteworthy designers makes an appearance inside the store, with chairs and furniture by Charles and Ray Eames, Hans J Wegner, and Finn Juhl dotted throughout the shop’s seating areas, which themselves are mostly interspersed by COS clothing displays. The designers used hanging rails to define, enclose, and break down different areas within the shop, with clothing racks acting as spatial tools that not only allow customers to browse with ease but also give the clothes space to breathe.

The new store will be COS’ largest brick-and-mortar location in the US. COS Managing Director Marie Honda said of the project: “We are thrilled to have opened COS Chicago and to now be present in a city that inspires us with its creative influence and architectural history.”

The store will be stocked with menswear, womenswear, and childrenswear, taking its place in the brand’s roster of thoughtfully designed retail premises around the world. As well as being known for designing clothes that appeal to a wide range of people because of their minimal and streamlined appearance, COS is also often at the cutting edge of retail design, collaborating with architects and interior designers to create new properties and pop-up shops where their clothes can be fully appreciated alongside impeccable design.

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“Between States,” an exhibition at this year’s Chicago Architecture Biennial, displays some community-oriented ideas for underutilized spaces in the city. Proposals by 50 local designers will be on display in the Chicago Architecture Foundation atrium gallery until December 31, 2017. One of the architecture firms invited to participate is Future Firm. Their proposal for Chicago is the creation of an Office of the Public Architect.

“When you commit a crime, if you cannot afford a lawyer, you have the right to a public defender,” the firm explains on its website. “When issued a building violation, should you also have the right to a Public Architect?” The proposal was inspired by the many calls that Future Firm received from residents looking to resolve building violations.

Due to a lack of funding, most of the tens of thousands of building violations that American cities issue every year go unresolved. In Chicago, they publish data for every building violation online, detailing the date the violation was discovered and fixed, the type of violation, its location, and its status (open or complied). They also include comments from building inspectors, which inspector noted the violation, the frequency of inspections, and the property type. These violations can be anything from loose floor tiles to missing handrails on a staircase and missing smoke detectors. Some of them are due to incompetent designers and individuals pretending to be architects when they are not.

Since January 2006, building inspectors have found 1,464,713 building code violations in Chicago. Most building owners do not seem interested in resolving those issues, because not doing anything is a cost-effective solution. In some cases, only a contractor is required, but many cases also require a licensed architect. There is also a perception that architectural services are too expensive and that only the wealthy can afford them.

If every city had a Public Architect, building owners could hire them to provide consulting services and resolve their violations free of charge. Future Firm proposes to have these Public Architects working out of underused U.S. Postal Service offices.

If most violations go unresolved, sometimes for more than ten years, then why bother fixing them? The question that Future Firm’s “Between States” proposal asks is “do we collectively agree on a safe and humane built environment for all — and the agency of architecture to affect this vision?” Without a doubt, the answer is yes. It would be a huge opportunity for architects to show their value to the average citizen and improve the overall quality of the built environment in our cities.

The post Is a 10-Year-Old Building Violation Worth Fixing? first appeared on Dornob.

An October 4 discussion panel called “Building with Digital Fragments” at this year’s Chicago Architecture Biennial looked at how some of these technologies are being used to recreate a multi-sensory history of buildings. Looking at the use of three of those technologies, we can see how centuries-old buildings are brought back to life.

Reflectance Transformation Imaging

When looking at the mosaics of Early Christianity, even in person, it’s challenging to fully appreciate the visual characteristics of their “tessera” and “smalto” elements. At the time of their construction, the direction of light within a space influenced how the mosaics were observed. After hundreds of years, the design intent behind how a mosaic was built gets lost as new lighting is installed. Technically, a 1,700-year-old mosaic cannot be viewed the same way now as it was when it was originally constructed. But by using Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI), the way the light originally reflected off of a surface can be captured in ways that it couldn’t on a regular photograph. Computational photography captures the shape and color of a surface with various lighting directions, and the software makes properties visible that are invisible to the naked eye.

Impulse Response Creation

Nobody is alive to describe how it sounded inside the Church of the Transfiguration of the Savior in Thessaloniki, Greece. We can only speculate on how heavenly the sounds of hymns were within this space, despite the fact that its walls and ceiling were built to create memorable vibrations.

When Hagia Sophia was tested with Impulse Response, the frequencies were as the sound of wings. Speakers are spread out within a space to play a low-frequency sound followed by high frequencies. Microphones are then placed throughout the space to capture the sound as it reverberates, and software maps how the sound travels. In a place like Hagia Sophia, when the generic sounds are replaced with hymns and the celestial sounds bouncing off the walls are captured, we can record the experience that made ancient worshipers think of angels.

Virtual Reality

The feeling of walking into the Roman Colosseum likely varied from amusing to terrifying, depending on one’s perspective. Using virtual reality, we can appreciate the imposing form of the building at its peak. Companies such as Radical VR and Unimersiv are placing people back in time to experience historic buildings as they once were.

The Strategic Use of Technology

Putting all of these technologies together to examine historic buildings gives us the ability to study and understand these structures from new perspectives. They also give us insight into the design intent of the architects and the experiences of their ancient users. By bringing these buildings to life with modern technology and revealing the deep characteristics that make them important parts of architectural history, architects can start to apply centuries-old design strategies to contemporary structures.

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This virtual city is part of a theoretical competition in three parts that began back in 1922, when the publisher of the Chicago Tribune, Colonel Robert R. McCormick, wanted a gleaming tower to represent the ambitions of his newspaper. He used hyperbole to describe what he wanted to build, which was “the most beautiful office building in the world.” Architecture often begins with ego before an idea (and sometimes even before necessity) emerges. Clients want to project a certain image of their company or of themselves, making image both the driving force and the greatest weakness of architecture.

When the desire to produce a prestigious architectural image is handled correctly, it can be a powerful political, historical, or social statement that provokes discourse and change. However, if dealt with carelessly, the focus on image can bring scorn upon a project, producing skin-deep results or buildings that merely look like caricatures of the past. Think of some of the buildings you know that have the name of the current U.S. president affixed to them. Architecture that is solely about image is (as one architect who I worked for many years ago called it) “magazine architecture.” It looks good in a magazine and a week after opening, but come back in a year and it will probably be falling apart. Today, we have more virtual architecture than real and magazine architectures combined.

In the first Chicago Tribune Tower Competition, 260 architects from 23 countries submitted entries, encouraging people from all over the world to start thinking about architecture. Those who see the images of that 1922 competition use the competing theories and concepts in them to establish different narratives of what architecture at that time should have been like. The images created legitimate dialogues that lasted beyond the competition and reached far beyond Chicago, continuing for decades to come in architecture schools, offices, and media.

By contrast, the contemporary image of architecture suffers from overuse. Every day, countless architectural practices post thousands of photos of their projects online, but only a few of them provoke constructive discourse. Most simply add to the vapid glorification of image that resides all over the internet. The blame goes around. The “Bilboa Effect” of the early 2000s, the rise of architecture bloggers, the dissemination made possible by social media, and the photorealistic improvements made to software in the 21st century have all contributed to the spectacle of image and the decline of the critical discourse that the 1922 competition provoked.

The 1980 sequel to the competition, organized by Chicago architect Stanley Tigerman, featured entries of that year alongside the earlier 1922 entries to highlight the ways in which architecture had changed over time. It was also a comparison between postmodernism and modernism, spurring architects of the late 20^th century to rethink how they worked.

“Vertical City” revisits the first two competitions and adds in a new set of entries, going from two-dimensional drawings to three-dimensional models. Artistic Directors Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee asked some of the globe’s emerging firms to produce 16 models that exhibition-goers could stroll through. Each model questions the skyscraper typology, and, in culmination, the entries show the various ways such a structure can be used in 2017.

The exhibition is not round three in the architectural title match between one set of designers or ideologies and another, but a new fight altogether. By using architectural histories as reference points and building upon them, we gain a better understanding of how to deal with the issues that trouble contemporary cities, including density, environment, and community.

For a closer look at all the entries featured in “Vertical City,” click here.

The post Does the Chicago Architecture Biennial’s “Vertical City” Exhibit Discourse-Provoking Images? first appeared on Dornob.