cover image Chicago Architecture and Design

Chicago Architecture and Design

George A. Larson. ABRAMS, $49.5 (256pp) ISBN 978-0-8109-3192-3

This lavish, strikingly designed survey focuses on more than 70 Chicago buildings, with an emphasis on their interiors. The book traces the advent of Chicago modernism in the aftermath of the Great Fire of 1871, which gave a clean slate to architects Louis Sullivan and John Wellborn Root. Sullivan's disciple, Frank Lloyd Wright, dissolved the boundaries between interior and exterior space in suburban houses that transformed the idea of the single-family home. Mies van der Rohe, George and William Keck and Cesar Pelli, each in different ways, preserved the Chicago School's values of economy, natural light and simplicity. The 243 plates (108 in color) range from H. H. Richardson's 1887 Glessner House, modeled on a medieval English abbey, to Helmut Jahn's gleaming Xerox Centre, and spotlight such landmarks as the Marshall Field store, Marina City, the Railway Exchange, the Auditorium opera house and Eliel and Eero Saarinen's lyrical Crow Island School in the suburb of Winnetka. Larson is a Chicago architect, Pridmore a contributor to the Chicago Tribune. (Nov.)