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In June, a large-scale installation by MAS Context, a nonprofit focused on urban design and the built environment, and architectural cartoonist Luis Miguel Lus Arana, known as “Klaus,” opened at 150 Media Stream, a 150-by-22-foot series of 89 LED panels in the lobby of 150 North Riverside Plaza in Chicago. Titled Welcome to Tribuneville, the hand-drawn animated film imagines an alternate history of Chicago, where 60 of the 263 entries to the 1922 Chicago Tribune Tower competition have been built, in addition to elevated walkways, monorail tramways, flying machines, and other fantastical interventions dreamed up by the artist.

A process photo from the hand-drawn animation. Photo © Klaus, courtesy 150 Media Stream and MAS Context

Photo © Michael Salisbury, courtesy 150 Media Stream and MAS Context

The work was first conceived in 2021 as a drawing, and then produced as a short film for MAS Context’s 2022 event honoring the 100th anniversary of the competition. Running through December 30, the drastically expanded animation on view at 150 Media Stream includes Eliel Saarinen’s second-place proposal as well as entries from Bruno Taut, Adolf Loos, Walter Gropius, and others among the era’s leading architects. “My original idea was to make the film somewhat narrative,” says Lus Arana, who is also a faculty member at the Universidad de Zaragoza in Spain. “However, because of the screen’s sheer size and fragmentary shape, the narrative element steps back, and the installation has a fishbowl effect, where the viewer has the feeling of looking into another world through a gigantic barred window.”