Concrete Map Chicago edited by Iker Gil
Blue Crow Media, 2018
Double-sided, 16.54 x 23.39 inches

Think "Chicago architecture" and most likely concrete doesn't spring to mind. Brick, as in the Prairie houses of Frank Lloyd Wright, for sure. And steel, of course, in the towers of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and his followers. But think deeper: Frank Lloyd Wright designed the masterful Unity Temple in Oak Park, which left its concrete frame exposed. And before his influential 860-880 Lake Shore Drive apartment towers, Mies built the Promontory Apartments in Hyde Park, which likewise exposed its concrete structure. Although these two concrete buildings are not included in Concrete Chicago Map, they signal that the material was not completely alien to the Windy City. It would take architects working in the 1960s and later ? those looking to move beyond the restrictions of these two, ever-present giants ? to fully explore concrete's potential across Chicago and its suburbs.
The indefatigable Iker Gil ? architect at MAS Studio, editor-in-chief at MAS Context, and associate curator of this year's US Pavilion at the Venice Biennale ? edited the Concrete Chicago Map, which consists of a map on one side and an alphabetical list of its 52 buildings with photos of 20 of them on the other side. The latter is accompanied by Gil's short introduction, which calls out two other architects (not Wright and Mies) whose work stands out in the second half of the 20th century: Be...