Hampton Avery Architects

Smacked Down

About 60 people attended the Smack Down. Apparently the largest turn out ever for a UHC lecture. Thanks to all who came out and contributed to the discussion.

The discussion was great and thought provoking. While we architects (see all the people in black in the picture below) had some good things to say, the real star of the show was the moderator, Lynn Becker. In about 15 minutes he gave the most clear, astute, and informative, and insightful description of the plan I have ever heard.

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Smackdown

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.

All For One and One For All

Dave’s guest blog entry for eco-intel.com makes the case for integrated-design and -project delivery using the Coleman garage as an easy-to-grasp example.

All For One and One For All

We Got An Award!

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.

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Make No Old Plans

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.

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How far can you push materials reuse on a little garage?

Fig. 1. The existing garage being deconstructed.

Hampton Avery Architects has designed a new two-car garage with rooftop garden/deck to replace an old existing wood-framed garage on a concrete slab-on-grade. There is effectively no such thing as demolition on this project.

NEW: See the online photo gallery.

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Lost City

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.

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