An invitation from the worlds leading architect splashed Frank Lloyd Wrights name across newspaper headlines around the globe in the summer of 1956. The Mile High Building written in bold black ink and Wrights signature Red Square dominated a full page spread hailing the public to a press conference where Wright himself would unveil the design for a supertall skyscraper in Chicago.
Read MoreStaged with bold black panels along the main wall, the Assembly Room was furnished with custom Wrightian ottomans along with long plywood tables. Throughout the room other notable projects were put on display as part of the Sixty Years of Living Architecture exhibition showcasing the vast and capable work of the accomplished architect.
Read MoreUnpacking all the inscriptions Wright included in the drawings, one will find that the project is not just the design of a building, but a history of architecture. From the Great Pyramids and Eiffel Tower to the Empire State Building, Wright was placing The Illinois in the timeline of grand monuments.
Read MoreIn addition to being one of the most innovative architects of his day, Wright also dabbled as an urban planner. He saw design of modern cities as posing a serious problem; they were dense communities overly populated with people who didn’t have enough space to live fulfilling lives. While the other modernists like Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe were masterplanning dense urban cities and cookie-cutter towers of glass and steel, Wright was envisioning a broad utopian countryside with pockets of soft density spaced out between urban forests and agricultural land.
Read MoreThe State of Illinois Center, one of America’s most debated public buildings has inspired and outraged citizens and critics since its opening in 1985. Designed by architect Helmut Jahnan, the James R. Thompson Center was completed almost only 35 years ago is in threat of being destroyed.
Read MoreRem Koolhaas’s new tower designed for Prada puts movement at its core. A panoramic glass elevator and encasing staircase cuts through the one-of-a-kind building giving visitors wide-ranging views of the compound and the city around it while cantilevering decks allow for different height floors for galleries, cafes, and restaurants. Koolhaas swaps out the standard stacked floor plan with a radical diversity within a simple volume.
Read MoreRem Koolhaas' stacked and staggered public library is an eleven story monument to public space and level transition in downtown Seattle. Celebrated for its brilliant planning, the architects solution for an urban library has more to do with exploration than it does books and records.
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