Second City Outtakes

An Architectural Ditty on the City

2016 — Complete

Second City Outtakes gathers four architecture projects in Chicago that recently captured the public's attention and imagination. Each project enjoyed exposure in the limelight (sometimes with scandals included). The Outtakes do not critique or celebrate any particular project over another. Rather, they re-appropriate the contemporary stuff of the built environment as a rhetorical totem, reminding us that architecture’s greatest currency resides in conjuring surprise, wonder, and delight in the human psyche. Each project is endowed with a single unlikely renovation. Trump Tower pierces its navel; the un-built Lucas Museum sprouts fur; the tortoise-shell pavilion at the Lincoln Park Zoo blows bubbles; and the Rush University Medical Center offers a piggyback ride to a dear old friend and mentor. While these seemingly impossible quirks may be funny, the Outtakes take seriously their agenda of promoting architecture’s capacity to engage far-flung publics and build new collectives.

Published in Fresh Meat issue VIII.