As part of a series highlighting the history and initiatives of the SOM Foundation, in this piece we look at the Chicago Institute for Architecture and Urbanism under the leadership of Janet Abrams (1991–1992).
Group lunch during "The Chicago World’s Fairs of 1893 and 1992,“ Charnley House, October 1991.
The activities of the SOM Foundation have grown and changed over the past forty years, often reflecting the interests and shifts in the profession at large. One of its most ambitious initiatives was the creation of the Chicago Institute for Architecture and Urbanism (CIAU) in 1986, which aimed to advance architecture, urbanism, engineering, and planning by supporting established and emerging scholars, hosting exhibitions, publishing special books on art and architecture, preserving archives, and other similar endeavors. The institute was based in the 1891–92 Charnley House in Chicago, designed by Louis Sullivan with assistance from his junior draftsman, Frank Lloyd Wright. After undergoing a thorough renovation, the opening of the Charnley House took place at the end of September 1987 with John Whiteman as its director.
Janet Abrams and John Hejduk.
British architectural critic and editor Janet Abrams succeeded John Whiteman and was the director of the Chicago Institute for Architecture and Urbanism between 1991 and 1992. During Abrams’s term, the CIAU developed its public programming and served a wider audience. Abrams organized and hosted three colloquia: the first, “The Chicago World’s Fairs of 1893 and 1992” (October 24–25, 1991), took place less than two months after her arrival from London. The event brought together scholars, curators, and design practitioners to discuss two Chicago World’s Fairs, which would have taken place a century apart, had they both been realized. “The Information City in Formation” (December 15–16, 1991) invited a group of theorists, critics, and practitioners such as Christine Boyer, Brian Wallis, and Michael Sorkin to consider the relationship between architecture, urban design, and information technology. Many of the papers and discussions concerned the role of visual representation in a period of rapidly evolving imaging technologies and the nature of public space at a time when the deteriorating physical infrastructure of our cities competes with increasingly seductive “virtual reality” environments. A third colloquium, “Looping the Loop: The Ups and Downs of Chicago’s Downtown” (March 6, 1992), focused on architecture, real estate, and urban values in the Loop, Chicago’s financial and commercial heart. Amid discussion of new suburban paradigms, the event questioned whether the traditional urban core might be becoming obsolete. In the spring and fall of 1992 and following the three colloquia, the Charnley House Fireside Chats invited guest speakers to CIAU to give presentations of their work, including Eva Jiricna, Mike Davis, Jean-Louis Cohen, Wes Jones, John Hejduk, Andrea Kahn, and Keller Easterling.
Jacky Grimshaw (foreground) and Janet Abrams (background). Courtesy of Janet Abrams.
Ross Miller and Robert A. M. Stern. Courtesy of Janet Abrams.
From left to right: Barbara Jakobson, Ross Miller, Diane Kirkpatrick, and Robert A.M. Stern. Courtesy of Janet Abrams.
Two exhibitions were presented at the Charnley House during this period. Between Exits 0 and 1: The Polar City (1991) featured work by UIC graduate students from the studio run by Robert Somol and Doug Garofalo. The studio called for the creation of an alternative to the “official” plan for the 1992 Chicago World’s Fair, on a site in southeast Chicago—a twenty-first century reinterpretation of the 1893 White City. The students’ projects were installed in the Charnley House Dining Room, while a three-story aerial survey map of Chicago was suspended from the skylight in the hallway, linking the site of the Charnley House to the projects’ site, and to the 1893 and 1933 World’s Fairs sites. Outside Practice: Work by John Hejduk (1992) represented the formal conclusion of John Hejduk’s CIAU Fellowship. The exhibit, displayed on purpose-built stands, included watercolors from Berlin Night, plans for the Giacometti Museum, a model of A Necropolis for Architectures, screening of a recent documentary on Hejduk by Michael Blackwood, and an edited version of an essay on Hejduk’s work by Carter Ratcliff.
Opening of Outside Practice: Work by John Hejduk at the Charnley House.
Other initiatives included Brains for Breakfast, a reading group initiated by Janet Abrams in collaboration with Greg Lynn, which met regularly in the Charnley House Dining Room for discussion of selected readings in architecture and urban theory. In 1992 the CIAU and Chicago Architectural Club jointly sponsored the Burnham Prize, a competition open to a Chicago-area architect, urban theorist, or visual artist for a project relating to the theme of Chicago: Terra Incognita. Chicago architect Joseph Barden was awarded a $5,000 stipend plus a Fellow-in-Residence status at the CIAU.
1992 Burnham Prize jury at the Charnley House balcony. From left to right: Janet Abrams, Wes Jones, Alan Armbrust, Rhona Hoffman, Victoria Lautman, and Bertrand Goldberg.
A new journal by the CIAU, VELOCITY: the Journal of Space, Time, and Architecture, addressed current urban issues in Chicago and worldwide. The pilot issue included pieces by Jean-Louis Cohen, David Dunster, Peter Hales, Peter Jukes, Robin Kinross, James Krohe Jr., Lisa Krohn, Ross Miller, Bob Thall, and James Woudhuysen but was ultimately not published due to budget cuts imposed by the Board in fall 1992. Edited by Janet Abrams, the editorial team included Christian Zapatka (Deputy Editor), Maurice Blanks, Caren Stein, and Valerie de Leonardis (Editorial Assistants). The publication was designed by Susanna Dulkinys of Dulkinys Booz & Associates. Abrams departed the CIAU in fall 1992 and the Chicago Institute for Architecture and Urbanism was forced to close in July 1994, after the economic recession of the early 1990s.
Following her term as Director of the CIAU, Abrams became Writer-at-Large at I.D. International Design Magazine in New York, where she was part of its National Magazine Award-winning editorial team. Subsequent appointments include Editor at the Netherlands Design Institute, Amsterdam; Director of the University of Minnesota Design Institute, Minneapolis (2000–2008); Associate Director for Research at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal; Special Projects Director, at Penn State University's Stuckeman School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture; and Visiting Associate Professor at University of New Mexico's School of Architecture + Planning. Her books include IF/THEN: PLAY—Design Implications of New Media (editor, 1998); ELSE/WHERE: MAPPING—New Cartographies of Networks and Territories (coeditor with Peter Hall, 2006); WWW Drawing: Architectural Drawing from Pencil to Pixel (editor, 2020); and Daddy Wouldn't Buy Me A Bauhaus: Profiles in Architecture and Design. Selected Writings of Janet Abrams (2020). She has produced numerous conferences and events (inter alia, for AIGA, CCA, Cooper Union, The Drawing Center, Parsons the New School for Design, and Netherlands Design Institute) and created new programs introducing young people to art, architecture, and design in Minnesota, New Mexico, and Ethiopia. She has been awarded residencies for visual art and nonfiction writing in the US, Canada, and Europe, and currently practices as a sculptor from her studio in Santa Fe, NM. You can see more on her work on her website janetabrams.com.
