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Archiving project information was once merely a matter of collecting, organizing, and filing away paper drawings, each one created anew as design progressed. Chicago, Illlinois based architect Kristine Fallon, president of Kristine Fallon Associates, heads the project, which involves a team of architects, academics, museum curators, and technology experts who are reviewing the challenges of maintaining digital archives and will ultimately provide recommendations for best practices. To combat obsolescence of archival documents, a proposed global registry could alert architects to digital file types that are in danger of disappearing and provide a way for architects to reformat their files.

Perhaps no other American city's identity is so entwined with the profession of architecture as buildings of Chicago, Illinois. On April 4, the Art Institute unveiled a hypothetical skyline for the Windy City, one recorded in pixels and on paper rather than in concrete, glass, or steel. Chicago architect Dan Wheeler, of the firm Wheeler Kearns, drew from the Institute's collection of more than 130,000 architectural objects to showcase some 90 drawings, renderings, and models of never-built projects dating from 1880 to the present. The show reveals Chicago's long history as fertile ground for design ingenuity at all scales. The theoretical work Expanding Skyscraper by Reginald Malcomson, a tower to which cantilevered floor plates could be added over time, is an intriguing attempt to weigh the fluctuating demands of the city against the immutable nature of completed buildings.

For the Biennial, you've brought in architects and designers to work with community groups on the projects you are highlighting. Brown spoke to record editor in chief Cathleen McGuigan about the Biennial and his ongoing work in this arena. Reimagining the City VOICES The fourth edition of the Chicago Architecture Biennial, opening September 17, will be a radical shift away from a central exhibition venue and will invite visitors instead to explore vacant sites in various Chicago neighborhoods that have been catalyzed by experiments in urban design, generated between community groups and selected architects and designers. [Extracted from the article]

The article reports that as the site for the residential and hotel condominium complex dubbed Trump International Hotel & Tower was cleared during the winter months in Chicago, Illinois, the project's evolving design became a comic soap opera featuring Donald Trump and the city's powerful mayor, Richard M. Daley. The last publicly released drawings indicate an asymmetrically stepped, polished steel-and glass tower of 90 stories with a thin mast atop the roof. Trump declared in early February that the mast had been removed from the design. By the end of February, Trump was again considering the spire and contemplating the use of its height to claim the city's height title.

Optical reciprocities between ball and bleachers overwhelmingly determine the design of sports buildings. Architects typically derive the diagram for arenas from wrapping walls around optimal lines of sight to generate a box of a bowl. At Soldier Field in Chicago, Illinois however, Boston architect Benjamin Wood, Carlos Zapata working with Lohan Caprile Goettsch as the master planner, recently broke free of convention, scoring an end run into new precedent. When architects Wood and Zapata received the commission to update Soldier Field as a $385 million state-of-the-art venue for the Chicago Bears football team, the architects faced the challenge of fitting a new, 62,000-seat bowl within the old one.

Features the interior architecture of the Blackbird restaurant in Chicago, Illinois, designed by Thomas Schlesser. Clean and lean scheme for renovating a small brick building; Structure and materials.

The article reviews renovations and additions of major museums worldwide, including the Amsterdam, the Netherlands satellite location of the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia by Merkx + Girod Architects, an addition to the Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada by Shim-Sutcliffe Architects, and the Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois by architect Renzo Piano.

The article announces several architecture conferences and exhibitions to be held in May 2008, including the Chicago Architecture Foundation River Cruise, opening May 3, in Chicago, Illinois; the Common Boston 2008 Community & Architecture Festival, running May 9-11, in Boston, Massachusetts; and the Newhouse Program and Architecture Competition Exhibition, running May 22-June 6, in Chicago, Illinois.

The article presents information on several products introduced at the 38th annual NeoCon trade show for contract interiors, held June 2006 in Chicago, Illinois. Skyline Design's products made cameos in several showrooms at NeoCon where they were integrated into new office furniture systems. Allsteel has developed the Clerk mobile storage stand. The Parallel Lines collection is a group of three wall coverings from KnollTextiles designed by architecture and design firm Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis.

Interviews Chicago, Illinois's Mayoral Deputy Chief of Staff for Planning and Design Lee Bey on his career. Influence of Bey on urban planning policies of Mayor Richard M. Daley; Trends in public housing in Chicago, Illinois; Difference in the role played by Bey as a critic and as an advisor to the mayor.