EP 3: Immodest Proposals for Chicago's Lakefront

02/16/16 • 51 min

Chicago's most valuable natural asset is its lakefront, forever free, public, and protected by law. This lakefront is so valuable, argues the architects at Port Urbanism, that we need more of it to pay off the city's massive debts. Or (if you ask the designers at UrbanLab) newly built islands in the lake must be drafted into relieving pressure from an overstressed storm drain system by filtering and cleaning the city's water. Featured at the 2015 Chicago Architecture Biennial, Port Urbanism and UrbanLab's lakefront proposals offer infrastructural fixes to some of Chicago's most dire emergencies. They also colonize a near-sacred urban vista with varying degrees of public and private space; not the type of thing you can do without getting through some pretty contentious community town hall meetings. Hosted by Zach Mortice and Newcity Design Editor Ben Schulman, with guests Andrew Moddrell of Port Urbanism and Martin Felsen of UrbanLab. Special thanks to recording studio engineer Tim Joyce.

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EP 2: Cabrini-Green Dreams and Nightmares

Depending on who's telling the tale, the Cabrini-Green housing projects on Chicago's Near North Side are either patient-zero for urban dysfunction and decay, or a humble high-rise utopia, Corbusier's Radiant City with soul. But at the end of the day it was home to 15,000 people. Cabrini-Green was mostly demolished by 2011, but its legacy both haunts, or enriches, the city, depending on who you ask. Co-hosts Zach Mortice and Newcity Design Editor Ben Schulman asked two Chicagoans: Chicago filmmaker Ronit Bezalel, whose film "70 Acres in Chicago" spent 20 years tracing the decline of of this community; and artist, designer, and educator Andres Hernandez, whose exhibit "Vacancy: Urban Interruption and (Re)Generation" at the Glass Curtain Gallery explored how the ghosts of Cabrini-Green still settle over our pop-culture landscape. Special thanks to recording studio engineer Tim Joyce.

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EP 4: Architecture is Hilarious

Architecture requires massive amounts of money, time, and effort to come together. It's serious business. Most of the time. But here in Chicago there are a handful of designers that work humor into their architecture whenever they can, as a way to satirize the practice of architecture and the cultures that surround it, or as a way to invite new people into the conversation. For A Lot You Got to Holler's fourth episode, we're joined by Stewart Hicks and Allison Newmeyer of Design with Company, as well as Ania Jaworska and artist/musician/designer Beverly Fresh. Free with each download: Design with Company's theme park ride of Midwestern folkways, Ania Jaworska's peerless knowledge of Polish interior design folk tales, and Beverly Fresh's proposal for the Graham Foundation bookstore that's truly, truly ahead of its time. Special thanks to recording studio engineer Tim Joyce and Nick Cage's pores.