One of the great pleasures of my 28-year run as the Chicago Tribune's architecture critic was seeing how wrong the artist of Millennium Park's Crown Fountain got it. The artist,...
On Saturday, the day before the Bank of America Chicago Marathon, I'll join thousands of other runners on a moving tour of Chicago's built topography: the cliff of historical high-rises...
Even after my mother died in July, nearly six years after my father passed away, their house was still there — a two-story, white-columned Colonial, with a Century House medallion...
When I became the Tribune's architecture critic in 1992, there was no Millennium Park, no Museum Campus and no downtown Riverwalk. Hulking public housing high-rises stood at Cabrini-Green. Sears Tower...
The rebirth of old Cook County Hospital, which once had a near-death experience, would have been worth celebrating in any year. But it took on special meaning in 2020, as...
Writing an architecture and urban design preview for 2021 is an exercise in guesswork. With vaccine distribution in its initial stages and city centers still largely shut down, firm opening...
Chicago isn't just an architectural capital because of its great buildings. It's a vital forum of ideas about what makes architecture great. A case in point: this year's crop of...
Ten days after the Great Chicago Fire destroyed 18,000 buildings and left about 90,000 people homeless, architect John M. Van Osdel set up shop in the Nixon Block, a downtown...
Even as COVID-19 upended, and ended, lives, architecture raised our sights and spirits. Here are the year's best projects from Chicago. 1. The St. Regis Chicago, the city's third tallest...