Though Emanuel is no shrinking violet—he’s famous for dropping f-bombs and once mailed a dead fish to a pollster who ticked him off—the mayor at first neither wowed nor wooed the city’s architects. He kicked two of them—even the venerable Ben Weese—off the city’s landmarks commission and installed a celebrity chef and the obstetrician who delivered Barack Obama’s daughters. Huh? While there were some early good moves, such as installing protected bike lanes, architecture and urban design didn’t seem to be high on Emanuel’s agenda.
They are now. The mayor isn’t just presiding over the inaugural Chicago Architectural Biennial, which runs from October 3 to January 3 and is billed as North America’s largest survey of contemporary architecture. He is backing the exhibition enthusiastically. If nothing else, it offers relief from a drumbeat of bad news, from rising homicides to underfunded pensions. The biennial, he told me in a recent interview, aims to brand Chicago as “the place, as it always has been, of modern architecture.” With people around the world flocking to cities, he explained, there’s fresh urgency to making them livable and sustainable: “I think the conference is going to be an important part of that conversation, and I want Chicago dead center in the middle of it.”
You have 0 complimentary articles remaining.
Unlimited access + premium benefits for as low as $1.99/month.