Beloit College turned a decommissioned coal plant into the award-winning Powerhouse - a stunning model of adaptive reuse and sustainable architecture. Designed by Studio Gang, the former Blackhawk Generating Station now blends historic preservation with green innovation, featuring river-powered heating and cooling, natural light, and LEED certification.

In Chicago, it’s possible to buy an old, deteriorating building for one dollar, provided you promise to save it from the wrecking ball and spend your money renovating it instead. Not only do you avoid the need to demolish and start from scratch---wasting energy and resources in the process---but you can revive a venerable old structure and make it more sustainable as well. Two LEED-certified cases in point: the Optimo Hat Co. plant and corporate headquarters in a former south

Two Roaring Twenties-era structures in the Chicago area are meeting that challenge by collecting and conserving stormwater on a grand scale. Dominican University In 2007, while hammering out the blueprints for a new science building, Parmer Hall, Dominican University in suburban River Forest, IL, discovered a perfect source of water for air-conditioning the new structure: a cistern dating back to the 1920’s buried under planks and debris in the basement of the old science bui

Three mayors ago, in the City that Works, the original Goldblatt Bros. Department Store sat empty on Chicago Avenue in the City’s bustling West Town neighborhood. A shadow of its former distinguished self, the structure was slated for demolition, to be replaced by a Del Ray Farms supermarket. Enter a group of community activists and preservationists, whose objections to the razing prompted the City to buy the vacant store in 1997 and recast it as a municipal office building.

The devil is in the details at Chicago’s Hairpin Lofts . Look carefully at the exterior of this majestic, six-story triangular structure, and you’ll see that it’s bedecked with camel insignias. Constructed in 1930, when ladies had pinned-up hairdos, the building originally housed the offices of the Hump Hair Pin company, helmed by Sol Goldberg, the Chicago millionaire and once mayoral candidate who invented the dromedary-shaped hairpin and who commissioned what locals dubbed

Guest blogger: Landon Bone Baker Architects. Landon Bone Baker Architects were the lead architects for both SRO projects. Residential hotels constructed in Chicago between 1880 and 1930 served as an indispensable component of the city’s housing stock, offering an affordable housing option in prime locations. These single-room occupancy (SRO) hotels served a critical role in housing a large segment of the city’s middle- and working-class residents, and many continue to do so

This blog post is dedicated to artist Neil Trais, who died in 2021. Neil, who for several decades designed Chicago Filmmakers’ myriad posters and announcements, loved Godzilla films and was a devoted fan of all things reptilian. If you look hard enough in Chicago, you’ll spot one of the grand old firehouses whose doors are no longer bright red, where “hook and ladders” used to be parked inside, waiting for the next fire. These abandoned firehouses have been revived by a vari

Colorful. Comfortable. Inviting. Not adjectives that describe your typical vocational school building. What was originally a nondescript brick hardware equipment factory built in 1908 on Chicago’s southwest side was gutted, cleaned up, and transformed into a modern training center. The goal of Chicago Center for Arts and Technology (CHICAT ) , which opened in 2017, is to connect technology, art, and the community. To get to class, CHICAT students – low-income adults and teena

Time is of the essence for firefighters. In old firehouses like the one at 1700 W. 95th St. on Chicago’s South Side, firemen would sleep upstairs and, at the alarm bell, zip down the fire pole, rev up the fire truck on the ground floor, and zoom out to extinguish the flames. Now that Optimo Hats , a manufacturer of luxury men’s hats, has moved their headquarters into the 1915 firehouse, things have slowed down a bit. The handful of hat craftsmen who work there can peek throu

Acrophobes and the faint of heart need not apply. All others will be delighted to discover that the alpha male of skyscrapers, the Empire State Building, has reinvented itself as a supergreen structure. A top-to-bottom, four-year renovation of the historic landmark began in 2009, with the chief goal of maximizing energy savings. Like King Kong, construction workers clambered around the storied 102-story building, barely noticed by the stream of office workers and visitors tha