Chicagoisms: The City as Catalyst for Architectural Speculation

Chicago has long captured the global imagination as a place of tall, shining buildings rising from the fog, the playground for many of architecture’s greats—from Mies van der Rohe to Frank Lloyd Wright—and a surprising epicenter for modern construction and building techniques. In this beautifully illustrated volume, Alexander Eisenschmidt and Jonathan Mekinda have brought together a diverse pool of curators, artists, architects, historians, critics, and theorists to produce a multifarious portrait of the Second City.

Looking at events as far back as the 1933 exhibition “Early Modern Architecture in Chicago,” Chicago Visions is remarkable for the breadth of its topics and the depth of its essays. From more abstract ventures like tracking the boom-and-bust cycle of Chicago’s commitment to architecture and the influence of the Chicago grid system of Mies van der Rohe, to more straightforward studies of the “Americanization” of Berlin, the editors have chosen essays that convey the complex and varied history and culture of Chicago’s architecture. More than simply an architectural biography of the city, Chicago Visions shows Chicago to have an important role as a catalyst for international development and pinpoints its remarkable influence around the world. The contributors explore topics as diverse as Daniel Burnham’s vision and OMA’s  student center for the Illinois Institute of Technology, and show them to all be indelibly products of Chicago. This volume is published to coincide with the exhibition Chicago Visions: A City as Catalyst for Urban Evolution opening at the Art Institute of Chicago, opening in June 2013.

Alexander Eisenschmidt teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s School of Architecture.

Jonathan Mekinda is an architectural historian and visiting assistant professor in the Department of Art History at the University of Illinois at Chicago.