Marina City book projects abound

7-Dec-07 – It’s been more than 20 years since anyone wrote a book about Marina City, but by the end of 2009 there should be two new books on the market.

Washington University in St. Louis has awarded a grant to a faculty member to produce a book that examines “the history and impact of Marina City.” Igor Marjanovic, assistant professor of architecture, will co-author Bertrand Goldberg’s Marina City with Dr. Katerina Ruedi Ray, director of the School of Art at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.

It is scheduled to be published in 2009 by Princeton Architectural Press. (Left) Katerina Ruedi Ray, Ph.D., who lived at Marina City from 1996 to 1999. Her chapter, “Making Marina City: Men, Money, Masquerade and Modernity,” is included in the 2005 book that she co-edited, Chicago Architecture: Histories, Revisions, Alternatives.

Meanwhile, City Within A City, written by MCO’s Steven Dahlman, should be completed by the end of 2008. Thousands of newspaper articles are providing the inspiration for a rough draft of the book, taking shape on this web site. This will be followed by interviews with people involved with the construction and history of the building, along with additional research at area libraries.

[The two projects should complement each other, given the academic backgrounds of Marjanovic and Ray, and Dahlman’s decidedly less-academic journalism background.]

Ray was a participant in the Art Institute’s Chicago Architecture: Ten Visions exhibition in 2004 that presented different views of Chicago’s future from ten internationally recognized architects. In her statement, she said the future of Chicago belongs to its children and its immigrants. “Our space brings together the rich culture of Chicago immigrants and children in an effort to document both urban enchantment and alienation through images, texts, and objects of estrangement.”

Chicago architecture writer Lynn Becker says Ray and Marjanovic are “provocative observers on how cities in general – and Chicago in particular – work.”

“Marina City arose both from idealism and hard-nosed, down and dirty politics,” says Becker, “and I’m betting Ray and Marjanovic have a good shot at capturing that uniquely Chicago story.”

Goldberg exhibit at Art Institute in 2010

The Art Institute of Chicago is planning an exhibition of architect Bertrand Goldberg’s work in October 2010. Lori Boyer, Exhibitions and Collections Manager at the Art Institute says the exhibit will open in the Modern Wing that is currently being constructed. Located on the northeast corner of the museum campus at Monroe Street and Columbus Drive, the new space will open to the public in 2009.