A week in Chicago with superb tourist weather – moderate temperatures and blue skies, but a wind that blew around 30 mph off the Lake the whole time we were there (enough to give Greta pause about visiting in the winter). The Grand Bargain was achieved – the correct balance between looking at science and animals in museums (the Field Museum, Museum of Science and Industry, the Shedd Aquarium) and architecture (snuck in mainly while walking to museums). The last afternoon we went our separate ways, with Greta in the Aquarium, and me Mies-ing out at IIT.

The Field has a great NW collection. This house pole was owned by Charles Edenshaw, who was Boas’s informant in the Haida cutlture.

As the building size has increased, the importance of the early skyscrapers, such as the Gage group by Sullivan and Holabird & Roche, is sometimes overlooked.

Staying in a corner room in a Mies apartment building on Lake Shore Drive, the teenager will pull all the blinds so she can look at an iPad.

The view from the Mies building on Lake Shore Drive, as the setting sun casts building shadows on the Lake.

If Minneapolis had the stadium-as-kaiju, Chicago has the Helmut-Jahn-building-as-Death-Star-under-construction..

The Death Star from the exterior. It’s a crazy, anti-urban building in some ways, but it’s probably my favorite Helmut Jahn building. At least it’s fun.

Our only question is where is the El that Batman has to destroy before it plows into Wayne Enterprises?

Greta waves to her cousin Audrey, who had to get ready for a meeting, and so couldn’t come out to play. The life of a management consultant.
Love the Seattle model, looks just like it, kind of….
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it was closer to reality than the model of Chicago!
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