Chicago architects OWP/P designed the Illinois Science Center with operable windows and a skylit central atrium that together promote fresh-air flow throughout the building’s interior.

Chicago Green”, the companion exhibition to “Big & Green,” presents public and private efforts to promote green architecture in Chicago. Under Mayor Richard M. Daley’s leadership, Chicago is becoming “the greenest city in America.” This exhibition features many of the demonstration projects, initiatives, and policies the City of Chicago has developed to promote green architecture. It also presents a brief environmental history of Chicago’s most famous contribution to architecture: the skyscraper.

“Chicago Green” incorporates 15 green projects in Chicago or by Chicago architects—from a new townhouse in Lincoln Park to a renovated Mies van der Rohe building at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Just as the invention of the metal structural frame and the elevator revolutionized architecture by enabling Chicago architects of the late 19th century to create the skyscraper, a new generation of Chicago architects will transform the urban landscape with design innovations made possible through the use of green technologies.