Renzo Piano is known for his finely tuned designs, especially for a refined talent in dovetailing elegant new architecture with an existing context, playing on contextual strengths without duplicating the neighbors.
He has achieved this feat once again at the Art Institute of Chicago, where a light-studded new museum wing by Piano opened in May 2009. The Art Institute's new addition is laudable in its intelligent siting, sensitive scale, urban presence, and manipulation of light. — Published 2009.0805
AIA Chicago has announced the winners of its 2007 Design Excellence Awards. Chapter president Laura Fisher, FAIA, lauded the almost 300 submissions as reflective of the "versatility and creativity of Chicago's architecture and design community." Forty-six awards were given in the categories of distinguished building, sustainable design, interior architecture, and "divine detail," including 13 honor awards, the highest honor.
As a commuter train roars into a college campus in Chicago, its noise is suddenly muffled when it enters a stainless steel tunnel that sits atop the new student center. The tube and the building below it are the work of Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and his firm, the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA). The school is the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), still bearing the stamp of its mid-20th century modernist origins. — Published 2003.1119
Architecture Design and Building in Chicago, Illinois, USA
