Publications by Preservation Futures
Why a Chicago Historic Preservation Plan Collapsed
Fears of gentrification doomed a long-planned effort to landmark Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood. For historic preservation advocates, that failure may be an instructive lesson...
Chicago can better protect its historic architecture with a new survey of old buildings
While the Chicago Historic Resources Survey (CHRS) was well-intentioned, giving it the nostalgic treatment in a recent article — a veneration of the days when preservationists drove around in a Chevette, unknowingly determining the fate of thousands of historic buildings — takes away from what it represents: a policy failure...
Commentary: Keep Chicago's Pedway perfectly confusing
Well-signed spaces are generally those you are supposed to move through quickly but not stay in: airports, train stations, shopping malls, tourist towns. But cities, in their rich complexity, are meant to be learned by being traversed, and engaged citizens are encouraged to be in them, not just pass through them...
Helmut Jahn's James R. Thompson Center and the Aesthetics of Postmodern Citizenship
One does not need to look very far in architectural circles to see that postmodern aesthetics—signature colors and shapes of the 1980s now deployed as jaunty retorts to the seriousness of the last decade’s computational forms—are back in style...
Chicago needs a new architectural survey to protect its modern gems
The aging Chicago Historic Resources Survey, or CHRS, is Chicago’s benchmark document for determining what the city considers historic. However, without contemporary updates, it fails to protect modern (and postmodern) architectural heritage and leaves vernacular structures regularly at risk for demolition...
Understanding Chicago's Vernacular Architecture
Simply put, vernacular architecture is architecture without architects. In Chicago, vernacular architecture is the built language of our neighborhoods. Ubiquitous but never boring, vernacular architecture establishes a strong sense of place...