A question: why are the fire hydrants so small?  
How do they find them in the snow?

The sewer covers are lovely spider-web like plates, with fish added in the park to remind you that whatever washes down there will soon be swimming with the fishes.

Chicago has TONS of great signage. Neon, neon, neon!

It’s just everywhere. And a lot of great non-neon signs, like the giant anthropomorphic hot dogs on top of Superdawg.

Chicago is also full of two other things I love: delicious food and architecture.
Marina City downtown:


Despite a sincere attempt to see all the architecture and eat all the food, we came no where near accomplishing either task.  Though I did also manage to track down the uber famous (among architects) Carson, Pirie, Scott & Co. building (no longer a department store) by Louis Sullivan. Sadly the base (one of the main points of the building) was covered with scaffolding. Oh well—the upper stories were still an impressive site, and I’ll just have to add it to the list for next time!

The rest of the trip, including a brief jaunt up to Milwaukee (Frozen custard! Pastrami! Mini-bowling!), and a stop to see Frank Lloyd Wright’s Johnson Wax Building (notable for it’s ultra-cool glass tube windows, among other things) is visible in full color over at Flickr.

Entries were judged on innovation, aesthetics and ‘wobble factor.’ I totally could have made something better than these.  Well, there’s always next year…

Last night was the longest night of the year. I celebrated with a feast at Momofuku Ssam Bar in the East Village. There are one or two other places you can read about the food, so I’ll just tell you a bit about the architecture.

I didn’t take any pictures myself last night—it was too dim inside for my little camera to see clearly and too cold outside to practice fine motor skills—but as usual, there are plenty of other people who have posted things to the web. [Edit: this just in—here are Paul's pix from last night...]

The outside is particularly funky at the moment; the skeleton of some partially-deconstructed scaffolding sketches a kind of ghost courtyard on the sidewalk out front. Inside, things are sleeker and simpler. Walls are covered with thin bars of dark stained wood arranged to flow from front to back. Tables are large slabs of similarly deep-reddish-brownish wood with wooden stools as well. Long narrow windows follow the flow as well (one is told to store one’s wrap in the nook, which is convenient though coats come out chilled at the end of the night). Oddly, the (stone I think?) tiles on the floor are square, breaking the rhythm a bit.

I especially liked the drop ceiling panels that were the same color and texture, but with gaps between for fire sprinklers to hide that added a darker accent to the wood joints.

We were a convivial group of 11 crowded around one of the big wooden tables, which was cozy and conductive to passing of plates and pork. The seating was fine on the bench side of things (though a bit spare), but I felt a bit bad for those on stools with no backs.

Overall the restaurant aims squarely at the sweet spot of luxurious minimalism, decadent austerity. And I gotta say, rich simplicity is a weakness of mine. Basic shapes with straightforward materials, but chosen and crafted to make the textures and colors glow is a very wonderful kind of design, and Momofuku Ssam Bar managed it pretty well with a warm, enveloping wood interior that’s clean enough not to clutter a narrow space, but cozy enough to let us forget the dark cold night outside while feasting with friends.

In a way this is just a spiffed-up version of the livejournal blog I started for my trip two years ago to Rome and Istanbul but left off updating a while ago. This is roomier and more customizable and just, you know, less livejournally.

In another way it’s a kind of extension of my old webzine wburg.com, which I handed off when I left for architecture school. My interests have shifted a bit since then and I’m more interested in writing and drawing and photographing now than editing, but I still feel fondly toward that site.

I have big ideas_big ideas!_for this site (I hope it will become a launch pad for all kinds of projects), but for now I’ll leave off with this:

How amazing and wonderful are the stainless steel coffee carts that caffeinate New York (and maybe other cities? I’ve never seen them elsewhere_have you?) every weekday. A tiny streamlined room of pillowed stainless steel with windows to display donuts (just point and choose), urns to store coffee, and wheels on which to roll away when the city-wide coffee break is over. All that piloted by some of the nicest New Yorkers I’ve met. And they will give you coffee and a donut for less than $2! Genius.

The only downside is that these creatures are morning-glory-like: come noon they all fold up and roll away into what I like to imagine are shiny subterranean grottos where they rest and replenish themselves for the next frantic weekday morning.

The whole thing is small enough to be pushed by hand, though usually has a hitch so it can be towed (coffee and donut road trip anyone?) Mobile architecture made of pillowed stainless steel—a miniature shiny diner you can just hose down at the end of the day. What’s not to like about that? And no, I have not yet seen the movie, but it’s in the ole Netflix queue. In the mean time I’ll just keep marvelling at these little miracles of modern architecture. If only they’d stick around into the afternoon…