New Role

Been to Chi only twice through out my entire undergrad life and I just visited it twice this month! First visit was for the Chicago Open House 2016, which happened right after our midterm review. Second visit was for the S.O.F.A Exhibition at Navy Pier. Here are some of the pictures for both events!

Chicago Open House 2016

Catching up with the Barcelona gang is always enjoyable! It's nice to see where everyone's at and have some deep talks about the aftermath. After all, who can make an architecture field trip better than these guys! 

I do not own any of the work. The model pictures above are from Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture.

We visited the River City. It's a concrete Utopian Brutalist architecture by Bertrand Goldberg, who also designed the Marina City in Chicago. The building shares a lot of similarities with other Utopian mixed use housing projects built around the same era. One thing that surprised me the most was the inner city street. That's something we didn't see in Le Corbusier's Unite d' Habitation. The mixed of concrete Brutalism along with organic floor plan was also something exciting to see.   

Inner City Street

S.O.F.A Exhibition

S.O.F.A stands for Sculpture Objects Functional Art and Design. It's an prestigious art exhibition at Navy Pier, Chicago. We were invited for its competition to compete against 5 other schools. It's a great opportunity to meet with other schools' students and see their projects. Purdue ultimately won the award. 

Final preping at the Architecture Annex

1. Pratt Institute's project 2. UC-Davis' project 3. Purdue's project 4. Purdue's project

Our installation was a huge success with lots of guests visiting. It attracted guests from all ages. Some of them were taking selfie or snapchat on the installation. Some parents put their babies in the ping pong pool to interact with the design, which was something we did not expect! 

Photo by Ana Rodas

And finally, we took it back home and installed it in Temple Buell Hall at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. If you're around the area feel free to come visit the installation!

'til next time!