Copyright Chicago Tribune
In architecture circles, there’s a commonly used phrase: The built environment. That sounds straightforward enough on the surface, but it also suggests a concept that’s far more opaque and complicated than simply, well, buildings. “It means the world we live in, in a spatial sense,” says architecture critic Kate Wagner. “So it can include everything from gentrification to the ICE raids that are happening right now, where, in a very basic sense, the question is: What is the street and who can be there? “I was at a conference recently where someone made the comment that they hate the phrase ‘the built environment’ because it has this arrogance of architecture as a totality of everyday life, and I kind of agree with that, actually,” Wagner says. “But colloquially speaking, we use it as a catchall for architecture, urbanism and spatial politics.” Chicago’s built environment will be the focus of a forthcoming magazine called the Chicago Review of Architecture, slated to come out sometime next year with Wagner and fellow local architecture critics Anjulie Rao and Zach Mortice serving as editorial advisers. An offshoot of the New York Review of Architecture, the Chicago magazine plans to have just a single issue for now that will feature “erudite, humorous and hyperlocal writing on the built (and unbuilt) environment,” according to a recent announcement from the parent publication. The inclusion of “humorous” as a descriptor jumps out, because when you think of architecture criticism, that typically isn’t a word that comes to mind. “There’s a history of architecture critics taking themselves far too seriously,” Rao says, but “NYRA itself as a publication is cheeky. Most of the headlines for their newsletter are puns. They invite this attitude that lightens so much of the history and personalities that have, in the past, given the impression that this had to be super-serious. I often reference a Texas Monthly essay from 1976 called ‘Space City Odyssey’ by the critic Ada Louise Huxtable, which is quirky and funny and fantastical in the way that she discusses Houston presenting itself as this futuristic, almost Epcot-like place.” Though it’s still in the early planning stages, the trio will soon put out a call for submissions, and they already have some general ideas about the kinds of stories they’d like to tackle. “We want new perspectives on the region from people from the region,” says Rao, and that includes at least two big projects that are still works in progress. One project is the revamp of the Thompson Center, which is being dramatically remade from a downtown landmark that housed state offices to the site of Google’s Chicago headquarters. The Obama Presidential Center is another. Since its announcement, it has been the subject of controversies — from the appropriation of parkland to rising rents and the displacement affecting longtime area residents. But Wagner says there are also avenues to explore. “Maybe we should question the idea of a presidential library to begin with, considering the fraught situation of presidents at the moment,” she says. “But also, what is the point of this temple to a liberalism that feels archaic and has not responded to the moment? How do we feel about architecture that rarifies institutions that are maybe not meant to handle the political situation we’re in right now?” Another potentially ripe topic: The fate of professional sports stadiums in Chicago and the teams, including the Bears and the White Sox, that want to build new venues. “Being a sports person, this is a very hot topic on my radar,” Wagner says. “Where are the football heads? I need someone to write about this. The sports fan — and the people who work there, who get to see the innards of the stadium — interact with a stadium in a very different way than an architecture critic.” Mortice hopes to have stories that explore different aspects of Chicago’s history of architecture. As an example, he mentioned the public schools in Chicago that were built a hundred years ago. “This was when the city was the fastest growing in the country, and one of the most well-known designers of schools was an architect named Dwight Perkins, who hung out with Frank Lloyd Wright,” he says. “Over a period of about five years, he designed, like, 40 schools. The city was growing massively and they’re beautiful, almost proto-modern schools. “The big innovation was that he thought of schools as a place for the entire community, not just for students,” Mortice says. “A place where you could maybe have a neighborhood meeting to throw out your terrible alderman and get one that represents your interests. They were spaces of communal solidarity that were designed to be open to the community and articulate political demands to improve the quality of people’s lives.” Chicago’s past and present as a segregated city is another topic that will likely come up. “My hope is that by introducing younger, more critical voices, we can reopen some of these debates that feel kind of open-and-shut in the discourse,” Wagner says. “Like, yeah, we say Chicago is a segregated city, but what does that mean exactly in terms of the social factor in architecture?” Rao says they’re interested in featuring new voices, meaning “people who might not see themselves as being an architecture critic or a built environment journalist, but have been thinking about these issues for a long time.” She also has an idea that may or may not come to fruition, but it sounds interesting nevertheless. “I have a fantasy of a tour component,” Rao says. “Like, if someone writes about alleys in Chicago, they would give their own tour of alleys near their home or their office — wherever they feel like there are significant alleys to them — and talk about what they know about it. Maybe they did hours and hours of research on the history of the area and who used to live there. Or maybe they want to read a poem about the alley outside their house. I would love to be able to bring people together, physically, through this.” There’s a proven interest for things of that nature in the city, whether it’s the annual Open House Chicago festival (which took place last month), the ongoing Chicago Architectural Biennial or the architectural boat tours. But Rao has a different vision. “On the boat tours, you’re hearing from an expert who’s been trained rigorously in architectural history,” she says. “I used to work at the Chicago Architecture Foundation a decade ago, which is now the Chicago Architecture Center, and the docents, especially the boat tour docents, go through an insane, long training. “And my idea is, what if we gave that responsibility and that privilege to everyday people who do also have a wealth of information about their own interactions with the built environments,” Rao says. “What if, for example, we gave the community of Englewood the opportunity to give tours of their area before the Obama Center opens? There is knowledge that people have of their own communities that I’m hoping bubbles up in this process.” In a sense, architecture becomes a door through which we can have conversations about our lives. “You can’t really talk to a building,” Mortice says, “but social histories attached to architecture are where you’ll find the most compelling stories.”
