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
When the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation of Evanston, Illinois, set out to build a new synagogue, they found the goal of achieving LEED Platinum certification arising naturally from the spiritual context.
"The Torah teaches us that the earth does not belong to us, that we are but stewards of God's creation," says Rabbi Brant Rosen. "Building the most sustainable facility possible was for us a religious act." — Published 2009.0415
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.
New schools are springing up across the United States with design that doesn't go "by the book." These schools for grades Kindergarten through 12 are responding to meet new community demands or simply to replace aged facilities.
Forty-five percent of the nation's elementary schools were built between 1950 and 1969, according to ZweigWhite, a market research firm. And enrollment in public K-12 schools will continue to rise through 2012, predicts the National Center for Education Statistics. — Published 2006.1213
When architects speak of "green" buildings these days, they seldom mean it literally. But for the elementary/ middle school in Lake Zurich, Illinois, Legat Architects, Inc. have justified both environmental and chromatic interpretations of the word. They designed the new school for sustainability and gave it a distinctive copper entrance that the students have dubbed "the green spaceship." Says their principal: "They keep waiting for it to blast off!" — Published 2004.0526
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
What better to welcome visitors to a working 1890s farmstead than an exhibit hall suggesting traditional forms. With an economy reminiscent of 19th-century Illinois farm life, the Chicago firm of Teng & Associates, Inc. has designed a barn-like structure for Kline Creek Farm . The new visitors center has an outward appearance appropriate for the historic farm context, but on closer inspection it reveals modern construction techniques and sensibilities. — Published 2002.0227
The BP Amoco Research Center posed several challenges to its architects. The client wanted the 40-building campus to have a new corporate identity expressed in a high-profile marker at its entrance. Three existing buildings needed to be connected through a central circulation space. And to keep costs down, the addition needed to impose minimum disruption on the existing structure. — Published 2001.1024
"It's not easy being green," is the conclusion of Flad & Associates, when they're designing for a high-tech pharmaceutical research and development company. Yet their new building for Pharmacia has demonstrated that it's possible to be "green" while still providing an attractive, safe, and professionally supportive environment for scientists. — Published 2001.0509
