It’s much more than just an attractive near-alliterative term, but you heard it here first.
Learn more about the concept of ‘entrepreneurial infrastructure‘ from The Genetically Modified Strip. We collaborated with giffin’termeer on this award-winning solution to the 2008 Flip a Strip competiton in Phoenix, AZ.
On left, conventional parking lot, on right, the same lot with permeable paving. See the difference?
Could it be that in twenty years time we will find ourselves driving our solar charged electric cars to eat at the California Pizza Kitchen, with a green roof that grows it’s own vegetables and cooks them in a solar oven, and sits in a parking lot paved with permeable concrete, in front of a day lighted & geothermally heated Target. Lord help us if that is the case.
On November 4th, Urban Habitat Chicago will be hosting The Burnham Plan of Chicago: Smackdown! at Schubas Tavern, 3159 N. Southport. To quote from the UHC website:
“This lively, fast-paced discussion, moderated by Chicago’s one-and-only Lynn Becker, will feature a panel of local practitioners who will each take on one aspect of the 1909 Plan of Chicago by Burnham and Bennett, make it relevant and accessible by bringing it up-to-date, then offer real-world solutions on how it might be implemented.”
The panel includes Samuel Assefa, Zoka Zola, Nick Petty, Mike Newman, Rashmi Ramaswamy, Lesley Roth, and (I suppose for comic relief) Richard Avery. The whole thing will be moderated by Lynn Becker.
Put it on your calendar, come with questions, and be ready to mix it up.
Humboldt Park Residence
The City of Chicago was nice enough this morning to give one of our projects a 2009 Chicago Landmark Award for Preservation Excellence. The project in question was the interior and exterior renovation with an addition, to a house in the Logan Square Boulevards Landmark District. Other award recepients this year included the restoration of the Palmer House Hilton on State Street, The West Town State Bank Building at Madison & Western, 310-318 S. Michigan Ave (the ‘beehive’ building), The Quinn Chapel, and the South Shore Cultural Center, among others. The ceremenony, which was held in the newly restored Honore Room at the Palmer house, was presided over by David Mosena, the Chairman of the Commission on Chicago Landmarks. 35th Ward Alderman Rey Colon joined the clients and myself in accepting the award.
This was a nice end to a six year long project that saw 3 contractors, a lengthy landmarks review process, a trip to the building board of appeals, and a lot of work on the part of us and the client.
Derek Ottens of Green Cross Build, the general contractor for the garage experiment project burns the rain screen cladding for it’s own good. The wood was originally flooring and is already finished & sealed on one face. The remaining faces are being charred to seal them from the elements. The wood is then installed with the charred side facing out (see image below).
I realize I am coming very late to this, but I was finally able to figure out what has been bugging me about the Friends of the Park plan “The Last Four Miles”. If you are not familiar, it is worth taking a look at the plan, here, before reading further.
To say that the disconnected parcels of park and beach at the north and south ends of the city should be tied together with more parkland is like saying oxygen is a good thing for humans. It is absolutely true and it should have been a part of the park systems capital plans and budget long ago. But, to butcher a phrase, if you want to stir people’s blood, you have to do something other than finish someone else’s old ideas.
It’s funny how jobs wind up with nicknames in an office. Usually it is just the clients name, the street name, address, etc. since those are easy and tend to avoid confusion. Sometimes though, it’s a characteristic of a job or client that gets attached. For example, on a recent job the clients were a couple who both happened to have the same avocation, teaching actors how to fight and otherwise be convincingly violent on stage. Even though they are two of the nicest and most easy going people I know, the job got the shorthand of “the violence guys”
If you have not done so, move post haste to look at the photographs by Charles Cushman archived at Indiana University. You may have seen them written about here and here. Cushman lived in Chicago in the middle of the last century and photographed voraciously. The photographs in the archive cover the globe, but it is the mid century Chicago photos I found most fascinating.
Viewing them, a thought coalesced about the city and cultural memory. Cushman’s pictures are images of a lost city. It occupies the same geographic space of present day Chicago, but there is very little that feels familiar. The city that seeps out of the pictures is unknown and unknowable. The people who knew the city left it for greener pastures and we moved into the shell. The city has a permanent case of amnesia.
Click below for information on Passive House
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Coming around the bend...
Please have patience with our site. We are currently working feverishly on a new, real, shiny one. Jess Giffin over at giffin’termeer is whipping us into shape. No timeline yet, but if you keep checking back you’ll know as soon as we do! (0)
