The 2024 Chicago Sukkah Design Festival—this year’s AIA Chicago Honor Award recipient of the Robert Feldman Architecture for Social Justice Award—returns this Sunday, Oct. 6 to the James Stone Freedom Square in Chicago’s North Lawndale neighborhood. For 20 days, the third annual festival will activate the public plaza with custom-built sukkahs, designed by five teams who reimagined the outdoor pavilion…
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Island oasis
Landscape, as a design practice and as a research field, is a rich and complex discipline with the powerful potential to influence the human experience and its relationship with the surrounding environment. It can serve as a catalyst, inspiring innovative strategies and solutions to address social, economic, environmental, and health issues, where landscapes—urban, rural, coastal, wooded, and agrarian—are brought to…
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The boardwalk connection
“I look at design as a creation of how humans interpret the natural world. I think there is this connection between the natural world and the built environment, and it is up to us—those in the design field—to interpret what that is, and to create our own values on how we intersect the natural world and the built environment,” said…
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Inland Seas
Containing approximately 90 percent of the United States’ freshwater supply, and about 20 percent of the world’s freshwater supply, the Great Lakes—Superior, Huron, Michigan, Erie, and Ontario—are a vital natural resource. Aside from providing many Americans and Canadians with clean drinking water, the Great Lakes also contribute to the region’s economy through the creation of jobs, goods, and services. Since…
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Midcentury epilogue
The resilient prominence of midcentury styles in the residential design sphere can be credited, in-part, to the appreciatively clean forms of their vernacular and an inclination for melding indoor and outdoor space—something even more appreciated these days as open-air spaces skyrocket in general value. In the ample fresh airs on Lake Winnebago’s eastern frontage in Wisconsin, principles of midcentury design…
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Sunspace sunrooms
There is comfort and versatility in the modern sunroom. It is purposeful in its ability to minimize sensory distance between users and the outdoors, and in sheltering those within from the elements of winter snow storms, spring rains, and late summer heat. It is also complementary, as its form and style often has to blend with existing residential or commercial…
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Screen solutions
As a small family-owned distributor of Phantom Screens in Michigan and Indiana, Retractable Solutions, Inc., has provided the Midwest with the comprehensive Phantom Screen product line for more than 20 years. Retractable Solutions has partnered with Phantom Screens since 1992 and both firms strive to develop product lines and installation techniques satisfying a variety of customer needs. One of the…
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The seasonal garden
By: R.Collins As autumn continues to envelop Michigan landscapes, the time has come to prepare for the winter months and the blooms to come after the snow thaws. Sarah Sella, landscape designer at Alfresco Landscapes LLC in Grand Rapids, Michigan, said introducing seasonal plants to the garden in the fall when the rainfall is cool and steady and the hot…
