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To satisfy law, landmark panel to redo its rejection of saving old Prentice hospital

The old Prentice Hospital building in Chicago that preservationists want to save photographed Thursday Sept. 27, 2012.

The saga of old Prentice Women's Hospital, considered an icon of modern architecture, has taken an unexpected U-turn. The fate of the Streeterville building, previously weighed by the Commission on Chicago Landmarks and a Cook County Circuit Court judge, is now headed back to the commission.

Old Prentice, designed by famed Chicago architect Bertrand Goldberg, has been the subject of a bitter,...

Judge rescinds protection for Prentice, but gives preservationists 30 days

A judge today lifted his court order protecting the old Prentice Women's Hospital from demolition, dismissing a lawsuit by preservationists but giving them 30 days to amend their complaint.

Judge Neil Cohen had issued the order in November barring demolition while he considered whether the process by which the building was denied landmark status was properly carried out.

While giving...

Architecture writer Ada Louise Huxtable, awarded first Pulitzer for criticism, dead at 91

Ada Louise Huxtable in 1986. The pioneering architecture critic and Pulitzer Prize-winner died Monday.

Ada Louise Huxtable, the architecture critic who was awarded the first Pulitzer Prize for criticism, has died. She was 91.

Huxtable, who was the architecture critic for the New York Times from 1963 to 1982 and, later, the Wall Street Journal, died Monday at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, the Journal reported.

Huxtable was a firm believer in the power of tall buildings to...

Blair Kamin: Ada Louise Huxtable, the gold standard

Preservationists unveil 4 new ways to save Prentice

The latest pitch by preservationists to save seemingly doomed old Prentice Women's Hospital includes reams of statistics, architectural renderings and perhaps a bit of hyperbole — a claim that the structure's survival is "integral to the revitalization of Streeterville."

Bounded by luxury high-rises along Lake Shore Drive and the upscale hotels and boutiques of Michigan Avenue,...

Burberry building review: Plaid bad on Michigan Avenue

Exterior photos of the Burberry Building on Michigan Avenue in Chicago.

It's a decorated shed. That's what authors of the seminal book, “Learning From Las Vegas,” would call the new Burberry at North Michigan Avenue and Ontario Street. It fits. What does it mean? The book's architect authors, Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour, might put it better, but it boils down to this: A decorated shed is a building where structure and message are...

On The Town: 10 things to do this weekend

New Art Institute exhibit focuses on works of architect Jeanne Gang

Jeanne Gang of Studio Gang Architects, stands on a railway next to the former Hawthorne Works factory complex earlier this year. The land is the type of former factory property in Cicero that exists in other area that she would like to develop into a new form of low-cost housing.

Architecture is an optimistic discipline: Nobody builds without believing in the future. In the new show "Building: Inside Studio Gang Architects" at the Art Institute of Chicago, architect Jeanne Gang and her crew take hope to a whole new level.

Each of the dozen projects in the show demonstrates the firm's willingness to address the most challenging problems of our day, pressing against...

Prentice Hospital debate goes deeper than surface appearance

The old Prentice Women's Hospital in Streeterville was completed in 1975. It was designed by Bertrand Goldberg so that patients' rooms were within sight of nurses' stations and fathers could be present at childbirth. Preservation groups are fighting to get the building landmark status.

Northwestern to launch design contest for Prentice successor

If the city allows demolition of the old Prentice Women's Hospital, Northwestern University will launch an international design competition in 2013 to build a biomedical research facility worthy of replacing architect Bertrand Goldberg's masterpiece, university officials said Monday.

Meanwhile, the National Trust for Historic Preservation added two prominent architects to its opposition team Monday...

The 'parklet' wave is about to hit Chicago

In San Francisco, they’re called “parklets.” In Chicago, the name is “people spots.”

Whatever term you use, these miniature parks and plazas are about to get a trial run here. The concept, backed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, is being tried out in the North Side Andersonville neighborhood at 5228 N. Clark St. Workers were putting the finishing touches on Chicago’s first...

Andersonville's new parklet on Clark Street

Dutch architect and educator is IIT's next architecture dean

The Illinois Institute of Technology announced Tuesday that it has named Dutch architect and educator Wiel Aretsas the new dean of its architecture school. Arets, currently a professor of building, planning and design at the BerlinUniversity for the Arts, replaces Donna Robertson. The news release from the university follows on the jump:

Chicago August 7, 2012 - Illinois Institute of Technology...

Time can be an ally for preservationists

Time is the enemy of old buildings, breaking them down just as it breaks people down. But time can save them as well as provide the attractive patina of age.

Time — or, more accurately, the passage of time — can upend the economic assumptions on which real estate deals are built. It can allow historic preservationists to drum up popular support. And over time, architectural attitudes...