Skip to main content

Join the CAC and MAS Context for the world premiere of of Starship Chicago II, a film produced and directed by Nathan Eddy.

Price
Free, RSVP
Meet
Gand Lecture Hall, 111 E. Wacker Drive

Chicago’s postmodern people’s palace, the 17-floor James R. Thompson Center, has been spared the wrecking ball.

As the controversial icon is radically transformed from a public office building into Google’s downtown headquarters, some of the building’s most notable features, including the perennially controversial color scheme, will be replaced. The central atrium will remain open to the public but will cease to be a publicly owned space.

The project raises fundamental questions about the urban environment: What is the future of public space in the city? How does a change in aesthetics impact architectural integrity? To whom does the city belong?

Through interviews with the key architects, developers, city officials, and preservationists involved in this ongoing saga, an existential question emerges: What gives a building soul?

The film will be screened along with Starship Chicago, Eddy’s 2017 documentary on the James R. Thompson Center. A Q&A session will follow the screening.

This event is organized by MAS Context in collaboration with the Chicago Architecture Center.

Producer and Director: Nathan Eddy

Nathan Eddy is an award-winning American filmmaker and journalist specializing in architecture and urban planning issues. His first two films, The Absent Column and Starship Chicago, document the struggle to protect Chicago’s architectural heritage. In 2017, Eddy organized and led the successful protest movement to landmark New York City’s epochal postmodern skyscraper, Philip Johnson and John Burgee’s AT&T Building.


In collaboration with MAS Context