After the Ledge at Skydeck Chicago at the Willis Tower opened in 2009, attendance rose from 1.09 million in 2008 to a projected 1.4 million for 2011. Before you go to the Ledge at Skydeck Chicago at the Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower), you may want to get in the mood by seeing Vertigo (1958), Alfred Hitchcock’s famous thriller. Or maybe not. The thrill, panic, and fear so memorably portrayed in the film is present in real life at the Ledge. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), which designed the tower in 1973, came up with these subtle additions to
In recent years, the District of Columbia Public Library (DCPL) has embarked on a program of building architecturally noteworthy facilities in a variety of Washington neighborhoods.
The house that architect Eero Saarinen completed in 1957 for J. Irwin Miller and his family in Columbus, Indiana, easily qualifies as a paragon of residential midcentury Modernism.
Sir John Soane’s House Museum in London is in the midst of a much-needed expansion, renovation, and restoration. The legendary Sir John Soane’s Museum, at Number 13 Lincoln’s Inn Fields in London, has been undergoing an intensive expansion and restoration program that is expected to be completed in 2013. With the help of public and private funds, already one significant piece has been has been finished: In early 2008, the museum opened a restored and remodeled structure at Number 14, which Soane designed but never used — as he did Number 12, his first residence, and the more lavish Number
A Vision by Peter Greenaway at the Park Avenue Armory You had to be there. A hyperbolic production that fuses the hokey theatricality of “son et lumière” (sound and light) tourist attractions with the razzle-dazzle antics of Cirque du Soleil was on view at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City until January 6, 2011. Leonardo’s Last Supper: A Vision by Peter Greenaway, a kitschy, multimedia spectacular (kitschtacular?), is basically a photographic reconstitution of da Vinci’s famous fresco, punched up by films, lighting, music, and voice-overs. Masterminded by Greenaway, the Welsh-born impresario, filmmaker, and artist (with a strong interest
George Baird is a principal in Baird Sampson Neuert Architects and was the dean of the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto until 2009.