(Chicago, January 14, 2005) The Design Excellence Program of the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) has been changing the image of government with an innovative process for the selection of architects and their designs for new federal buildings throughout the last decade. From U.S. courthouses to border stations, federal buildings are being designed with stunning results by some of America’s best-known architects under this program.

The Chicago Architecture Foundation (CAF) collaborated with the General Services Administration to showcase 15 Design Excellence Program projects that illustrate the government’s goal: to commission inspiring, contemporary civic architecture that reflects and promotes America’s values and ideals. Opening January 27 and running through May 2, 2005, New Federal Architecture: The Face of a Nation will present models, photographs, and renderings of a wide range of building types drawn from locations throughout the United States.

Today, the Design Excellence Program is united with GSA’s Art in Architecture Program through the Center for Design Excellence and the Arts in the Office of the Chief Architect. “We thought it appropriate to include Chicago’s Federal Center by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe as a representative local project that was a harbinger of future achievement in the collaboration of architecture and art,” says Ned Cramer, curator at the Chicago Architecture Foundation. “It is a federal project, built over decades beginning in the 1950s, that epitomizes the architectural excellence that GSA’s Design Excellence Program is about and includes Alexander Calder’s Flamingo stabile commissioned by the Art in Architecture Program and installed in the plaza in 1974.”

In conjunction with the exhibition, the CAF will present public programs focusing on topics about art and architecture, the design process, curator gallery tour and talks, and talks by notable architects, including Edward Feiner, chief architect for the U.S. General Services Administration on February 21. The annual Hem C. Gupta Lecture on Thursday, February 17, will feature the world-renown Los Angeles architect Thom Mayne of Morphosis who will talk about his new major works for the GSA.

Free to the public on Wednesdays, the Eric R. Multhauf Lunchtime Lectures will present programs about design, art, and the process by the director of design for Perkins & Will and GSA’s art program managers. For adults interested in continuing education, CAF is offering “A New Look at the New Deal: WPA Architecture and Art in Chicago” over three sessions on Tuesdays in February. For information on these programs, the public may visit www.architecture.org.
Admission to the exhibition, New Federal Architecture: The Face of a Nation, is free and open to the public January 27 - May 2, 2005.