Conferences & Symposia

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Chicago Architecture Foundation symposia offer you an opportunity to delve into specific topics with scholars and professionals in the architecture and design fields. These day-long symposia give you a chance to hear from and meet highly-respected and sought after industry leaders.

  UPCOMING CONFERENCES & SYMPOSIA

There are no upcoming Conference and Symposia scheduled at this time. Please check back soon, and in the meantime check out our other Chicago Architecture Foundation events.

  PAST CONFERENCES & SYMPOSIA

November 15-16, 2010

Design in Action: Inspiring Solutions for People and Cities
AAO & A+DEN 2010 Conference

Join us for a two-day conference of inspiring ideas and practical solutions. We're convening a terrific network of industry leaders and visionary thinkers, including delegates from large and small architecture centers and allied organizations. Alongside our own, we'll hear from voices outside the field whose work is dissolving traditional boundaries of architecture and design and nonprofit practice.

Please visit http://www.aaonetwork.org for a detailed schedule, speaker biographies, and a wrap-up. Contact aao(at)architecture.org with any questions.

November 13, 2009

Shaping America’s Heartland: Reflections on Landscape Architecture in the Midwest
Co-sponsored by the Cultural Landscape Foundation and the Department of Landscape Architecture, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

To celebrate the publication, Shaping the American Landscape: New Profiles from the Pioneers of American Landscape Design Project, the symposium, Shaping America’s Heartland, will spotlight specific designers, projects, and trends that collectively reveal our unique and historically significant designed landscape heritage. Speakers will include leading historians, designers, and practitioners.

For more information

November 5-7, 2009

Inaugural Conference of the Association of Architecture Organizations (AAO)

Go to www.aaonetwork.org

At this conference, 150 people representing 92 organizations and 5 countries gathered together in Chicago to discuss new issues and ideas, to share with others who are engaged in the education of our youth and public about architecture and design, and to learn more about starting the public dialogue about the built environment.

This was the first gathering of the Association of Architecture Organizations (AAO), which was held in conjunction with the annual A+DEN conference. AAO, whose mission is to foster the development of an alliance of like-minded non-profit organizations who educate the public about architecture and the built environment, will serve as a forum for national and international dialogue and the sharing of best practices, materials and ideas.

May 29-30, 2009

Burnham, Chicago, and Beyond: Politics, Planning, and the Progressive Era City
Co-Sponsored by DePaul University

In 1909 Daniel Burnham published the Plan of Chicago, one of the most significant and influential documents in the history of urban planning. With the 100th anniversary of the plan, the symposium offers an opportunity to critically analyze the conditions of the urban environment that engendered the plan as well as its impact in Chicago and elsewhere. Co-organized with DePaul University, this conference addresses the important questions and conflicts raised by Burnham as well as the urban and architectural environment of the time.

November 13-November 15, 2008

The Second Wave of Modernism
Sponsored by The Cultural Landscape Foundation, Chicago Architecture Foundation and the American Society of Landscape Architects

The terms “modern” and “minimal” are casually applied to public landscapes and gardens today without any deep understanding of what makes them Modern. If the first wave of Modernism in landscape architecture began in 1929 with the design of Fletcher Steele’s revolutionary application of a bent axis at the Camden Amphitheatre in Maine, and quietly ended on the Bicentennial (July 4, 1976) with the ribbon-cutting of such projects as Lawrence Halprin’s Freeway Park in Seattle; Hideo Sasaki’s Waterfront Park in Boston; and Bob Zion’s Waterfront Park in Cincinnati. What happened in landscape architecture after that? Unlike architecture, which experienced a two-decade romance with Post Modernism, the same did not transpire within the landscape architecture profession.

This conference will explore this question by showcasing the works of leading landscape architecture and garden design professionals today to see what makes their work Modern and how it is influenced by this earlier movement. Speakers include many of the nation’s leading design voices today working within a Modernist framework: Tom Oslund (Minneapolis); Mark Rios (Los Angeles); Doug Reed (Cambridge); Martha Schwartz (Cambridge); Ken Smith (New York City); Michael Van Valkenburgh (New York); and Thomas Woltz (Charlottesville).

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