#mas context

“Welcome to Tribuneville.” Photo © Michael Salisbury.

A Futuristic 150-Foot Installation Imagines Chicago’s Never-Built Architecture

With its long vertical lines and neo-Gothic features, the architectural marvel that is Tribune Tower in Chicago has an unorthodox origin story. Home to the newspaper’s operations, the now-iconic building resulted from an international competition hosted in 1922 by the co-publishers. More than 260 architects from 23 countries submitted designs that would house the newspaper, with New York-based John Mead Howells and Raymond Hood ultimately winning the bid.

A project by architectural cartoonist Klaus and MAS Context brings this history to light. “Welcome to Tribuneville: An Imaginary Vision of an Old Chicago That Could Have Been” features 60 drawings of never-made buildings submitted to the contest installed at 150 Media Stream. Located in the lobby of 150 N. Riverside Plaza, the installation has featured several digital works across its 89 LED blades since 2017.

All images courtesy of 150 Media Stream and MAS Context

Detail of “Welcome to Tribuneville.”

Starship Chicago, 2017

“The film focuses on Helmut Jahn’s James R. Thompson Center, originally the State of Illinois Center, an iconic, provocative and controversial landmark architectural statement that continues to provoke, enrage and inspire despite the state of Illinois’ shameful neglect.”

This remarkable short documentary film is hosted online at MASContext.com (or you can watch it at https://vimeo.com/241413433.) Well worth 16 minutes of your time. Watch it on the biggest screen you can find--not your phone, please!

Chicago’s MAS Context announces Fall Talks series

Every year many of Chicago’s most intriguing architecture and design events and lectures are organized by MAS Context. The not-for-profit publication puts together panel discussions, lectures, and screenings, often hosted in some of the city’s most unique architectural spaces. MAS has recently announced its fall series of events with the promise of more to come as speakers commit.

“The events are…

(Wind turbines, like the one seen here in Rochelle, IL, are among the recent transformations of Illinois soybean and corn croplands. © 2015 Luke Hegeman / MODUS Collective)

From the Hidden issue of MAS Context: 

“These logistics landscapes, where third-party logistics providers, warehousing and distribution facilities for online retailers, and manufacturing plants cluster around massive inland ports, are more than the just the inverse of America’s centers of tourism and commerce: they are distinct urban environments, critical junctions in the global circuitry of twenty-first century capital.

Like the shipping container itself, these environments are hyper-engineered for efficiency and economy, and are done so in an effort to transcend existing local ecological and hydrological dynamics. Standard rail turning radii, warehousing dimensions, and road widths are deployed across the country in an effort to maintain a physical uniformity that keeps the specifics of place at bay, thereby sustaining the high standard of living across the continent that so many Americans enjoy. However, if these logistics landscapes, like the sites of reinvestment so popular with today’s designers, are categorized based upon form alone, much is overlooked. The infrastructure and development needed to deliver goods to market collides with existing local economies and ecologies to produce regionally-specific logistics landscapes.” (MAS Context)

From the latest issue of MAS Context, Hidden, the contribution of sociologist and photographer David Schalliol.

Started more than 40 years ago, the Tunnel and Reservoir Plan (TARP) is a goliath project designed to mitigate this problem by reducing the number of times when untreated sewage must be released into the area’s waterways. During periods of heavy precipitation, rain is diverted into the Deep Tunnel, a network of more than 100 miles of conduits as wide as 33 feet in diameter and deep as 350 feet below ground. The tunnels channel the effluent and rainwater into large reservoirs, which store the combined wastewater until it can be treated by the plants—and then released into the waterways.

These photographs present the three major portions of the southeastern section of the system: the Deep Tunnel, the Thornton Reservoir, and the Calumet Water Reclamation Plant. These interconnected facilities serve large portions of Chicago and its south suburban communities. (MAS Context)

On Saturday, June 4, 2016, MAS Context is organizing the third edition of MAS Context : Analog, our one-day event of talks, exhibitions, and an onsite pop-up bookstore in Chicago. The event is organized in collaboration with AIGA as part of Chicago Design Week and it will be hosted at Studio Gang Architects.

MAS Context : Analog will gather a group of emerging and established practitioners within the field of design who will discuss their work based on four proposed themes: Food, Domesticity, Exhibition, and Communication. The event will include talks by artists, curators, architects, photographers, graphic designers, industrial designers, and cartoonist.

Speakers include Lucas Daniel, José Esparza, Jeanne Gang, Martin Kastner, Norman Kelley, Klaus, Ann Lui, Noritaka Minami, Craig Reschke, Zoë Ryan, Rick Valicenti, Tricia van Eck, and Alisa Wolfson.