Customer Reviews

Masterpieces of Chicago Architecture

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If you are visiting Chicago an el ride around the Loop will transport you through 100 years of architectural history in about 20 minutes. Chicago is a living architecture museum always in flux; new buildings are added to the skyline, old ones re-imagined and re-used, whole neighborhoods rising from decades of urban decay. Daniel Burnham, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Mies Van der Rohe all left their imprint on the city and contemporary masters such as Helmut Jahn, Frank Geary, and Rem Koolhaas, are shaping the Chicago of today.

For those attracted to architecture Masterpieces of Chicago Architecture is another tour de force from Rizzoli. Masterpieces of Chicago Architecture presents the first 100 vibrant years of built and un-built projects by the masters and their disciples. Generously illustrated with more than 200 photos, illustrations, models, and plans, from the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. The authors and curators of Architecture at the Art Institute of Chicago add thoughtful commentary and unique insights on the city to bring the past, present and future together in one glorious package. Chicago is the leading force in American building trends and to understand where Chicago is going is to understand something about the future.

As a survey of many of the best-known examples of Chicago school architecture, replete with handsomely large reproduction of photos and (the real treat) often dazzling architectural drawings (Walter Burley Griffin's for a tract development in Iowa is especially lovely), there's a lot to admire about this book, and it deserves a place on many coffee tables.

Still, the title says "Chicago school architecture," which means that architecture that belongs in the club of well-known Chicago architects is in, and architecture that stands out of that group is not. The result is that there's an awful lot of post-1950 glass and steel office buildings toward the end, few of which evidence any reason to love them (only Marina Towers, perhaps); while art deco gets short shrift (where's the beautifully detailed Powhatan in Hyde Park? Where's the Civic Opera? Where's the Chicago Motor Club?) and semi-obscure one-shots-- Louis Bourgeois' contemplative Bahai Temple in Wilmette, the stunning Arts and Crafts-era Carl Schurz High School on the northwest side-- get no attention. Indeed, apart from the occasional McDonald's, there's little sense that architecture means anything other than skyscrapers-- few retail buildings or restaurants, no factories, few churches, only one recent school, few private homes (although if you want that, you might as well go straight to the book on David Adler). By the last pages, it seems a collection of the buildings that architects keep trying to convince us we should like, and we won't, any more than we'll all go around humming Schoenberg. Buy it for the first half, and for the beguilingly beautiful draftsmanship of early 20th century renderings above all.

I bought this huge, beautifully bound and photographed volume of chicago architecture for my uncle, a transplanted native of chicago. He misses his city greatly- and loved this. It was perfect.

This beautifully made book is full of stunning photos of Chicago buildings. This was a gift for a young architecture student overseas. He was delighted with it.