Hampton Avery Architects

Hampton Avery Studio 309

For the first half of 2010, Hampton Avery Architects will be working with a talented team to propose realistic and compelling design solutions for urban challenges at three interlocking scales: block / building, neighborhood, and region.

The work of Hampton Avery Studio 309 will culminate in a public exhibition in Chicago’s Bridgeport neighborhood.

Stay tuned!

Entrepreneurial infrastructure

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.

Man Made Lake

No, we haven’t designed a man-made lake, but listening to this song by Calexico struck a chord with me following discussions Richard and I have been having about some missed opportunities in designing our built environment.

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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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