Author: phil berger
Filling up vacant storefronts is mostly a good thing
Vacant storefronts are one of the worst aspects of urban blight. Aside from their shabby, defeated appearance, vacant storefronts generate no foot t [...]
Former Chicago architecture critic Lee Bey joins blogosphere
Lee Bey, erstwhile Sun-Times architecture writer, Mayoral chief of staff and presently director of media and government affairs for Skidmore Owings & [...]
Cafe society: Southport Avenue chapter
They say that there are only two seasons in Chicago: Winter and Road Construction. But really, a better gauge of the change in seasons is the sudden [...]
Another condo with interesting but flawed design and moronic name
At YoChicago, redundancy isn't our raison d'etre. But sometimes we just can't help it, as with the disturbing proliferation of condo projects with s [...]
New Rogers Park Montessori school enriches streetscape with color and geometry
Almost one hundred years after the Italian physician Maria Montessori developed her educational technique, her method remains controversial. But eve [...]
Despite idiotic name, nice design for "Juneway Jungle" condo
What is it with real estate developers and the stupid names they pick for their projects? Case in point: the Esoterica, at 1528 W Jonquil Terrace, w [...]
Retail flight on Clark Street: multi-faceted loss for Lincoln Park streetscape
Chances are good that, unless you've been a major player at a wedding or prom, you've never been inside Palazzo , and it won't particularly upset yo [...]
Where's the outrage in Wrigleyville?
You would have thought that the expanded bleachers at Wrigley Field, with high new prices and brazenly commercialized name, would have incensed fans [...]
city site zoned for horses, skyline view in Chicago
No, the picture above is not a Photoshopped montage. You can catch this bucolic tableau on the corner of Sedgwick and Evergreen, where the stars of t [...]
The economics of recycling in action
Here's a glimpse at an obscure aspect of the teardown / rehab / new construction universe: recycling bricks from demolition sites for resale.
You'v [...]
Orchard Street's burgeoning Billionaire's Row
For a lot of the last hundred years, the area north of Willow between Halsted and Larrabee has been a kind of no man's land. The modest cottage-lined [...]
Gentry achieve total victory in Paulina corridor turf war
It's official. With the demolition this week of the sky blue water towers on the 2700 block of North Paulina, the paradigm shift, as they used to say [...]
Instead of remodeling, maybe they just should have started over
In the "what-were-they-thinking" dept., somebody in charge at the Apollo Theater complex on Lincoln Avenue has managed to do what seemed impossible: [...]
Wolcott Terrace condos: a plus for the streetscape, nothing to hide
Real estate developers are not, in general, publicity-shy. You probably know that easterners began calling Chicago the Windy City not because of meteo [...]
Details, divinity and architectural terra cotta
Yes, Mies van der Rohe's proclamation that "God is in the details" has become a tired cliche. Which doesn't mean it's not so. It's just suffered fro [...]
The architectural unicorns: revisionists build homes in "old" styles that never existed
One of life's great injustices is the failure of too many people with too much money to exercise either good judgment or imagination or both when th [...]
Appreciating novelty in Chicago's new construction
You would have to be blind or unconscious not to notice the infestation of red brick behemoths wherever gentrification has steamrolled in. Let's just [...]
Signs of the times on Chicago streets
In the pantheon of urban blight, you've got to rank bad store signage at or near the top of the list. Back-lit plastic signs are the scourge of the [...]
The mod squad
Big new projects tout progressive design while low-rise looks to past
Speculative housing in Chicago hasn't offered much for architecture aficionados [...]