October 2025 Issue: Chicago Architecture Biennial (Print Edition)
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A Golden Ratio
Taking the measure of Thomas Pynchon’s “Shadow Ticket”
"Lugosi’s line is the epigraph for Thomas Pynchon’s newest novel, the long-awaited 'Shadow Ticket,' a Depression-era noir set in Milwaukee, Chicago and the Hungarian hinterlands. 'Shadow Ticket,' slang (depending on who you ask) for a travel ticket made without payment or any sort of under-the-table, off-book assignment, unfolds in this same inter-war period of world-making and unmaking, of conspiracy and uncertainty, and America’s role in all of the above." (Annette LePique)
Overture to Mäkelä
An early and close-up look at the Chicago Symphony music director designate
"Leading either orchestra would be unprecedented at such an early age. (Mäkelä will be the youngest-ever music director of the CSO and second youngest-ever chief conductor of the Concertgebouw.) But to lead both the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra simultaneously is like running Chrysler and General Motors at the same time." (Dennis Polkow)
The Early Shift
Newcity takes on the Chicago Architecture Biennial 2025
Southern Exposure
A conversation with Florencia Rodriguez, the artistic director of the Chicago Architecture Biennial, and Dirk Denison, director of the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize
"It's easy, when you've lived in the best architecture city in the world as long as I have in Chicago, to think you've seen it all. But when I started visiting Brazil more than a decade ago, I found myself exploring a country where Oscar Niemeyer is revered as a national treasure, with his curvy, space-age take on modernism, and Brutalism is revered, not reviled. I came to appreciate the value of dialogue between all of the Americas." (Brian Hieggelke)
Building With Light
The unexpected video stardom of architect Stewart Hicks
"Co-founder of Design with Company, Hicks, forty-five, is also a professor of architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His YouTube videos on architecture and design have earned him more than 600,000 subscribers. The videos have gotten around ninety-million views, with each video attracting hundreds of comments." (Mary Wisniewski)
The Architecture of Logistics
Clare Lyster on mapping the systems of the city
“'I started to look at the landscape, thinking in terms of landscape urbanism as opposed to the more traditional view of "the city as an aggregate of building.’” In the academic field there was a lot of focus on water, and urban thinking about water that came from the coasts, but not the Great Lakes." (Gregory Maher)
CAB at Ten
What is the Chicago Architecture Biennial legacy?
"CAB entered as a global-facing exhibition and a platform rooted in local repair. It still is. Over five editions, it has drawn more than two-million visitors and featured hundreds of projects from around the world. Its tenth anniversary marks less a milestone than a test of whether the Biennial has matured into an institution capable of extending its influence." (Ben Schulman)
Plus thirteen projects in profile
Arts & Culture
Art: Jacqueline Surdell warms up for her solo exhibition at Secrist | Beach
Dance: Joy and sisterhood with Ayodele Drum & Dance
Design: Tiffany lamps in the limelight
+ Mood: Darkness
Lit: Gods are in the details of "American Prophets"
Music: Chicago institution Brendan Kelly answers questions
Stage: Masi Asare talks about the art of writing musicals
Reviews
First of the fall harvest
Poetry
"Concentric Architectures": A new poem by Rebecca Morgan Frank