Chicago Architecture Crash Course 12-Week Series

This 12-week “Architecture Crash Course” series explores Chicago’s most renowned feature across history. Your rental is for the entire series of recordings of our live, virtual presentations.

Topics range from grand commercial structures to humble neighborhood cottages, and from urban redevelopment to the historic preservation movement.

Watch these on-demand rentals whenever you feel like experiencing Chicago without leaving your house! Included is access to all 12 of the 30-minute-long videos for 90 days. *Bonus: Virtual Architectural Boat Tour Video (additional $15 value).

  • Architecture Crash Course Introduction to 12-Week Course

    29m

    Take a summer study session in Chicago’s most renowned feature. This weekly series of 30-minute interactive presentations illuminates the human impact of the city’s architectural history, from grand commercial structures to humble neighborhood dwellings.

  • Chicago's Earliest Buildings From Wigwams to Taverns

    32m

    The architecture of Old Chicago, before the Great Fire, is utterly unlike the city we know today. Hard as it is to imagine, temporary wigwams and humble log cabins once stood where skyscrapers now soar above the prairie. This free Historic Happy Hour, part of our on-going Chicago Architecture Cra...

  • Cruise from your couch Virtual Boat Tour

    50m

  • The Great Chicago Fire and the Gilded Age

    34m

    Join the third installment of our Architecture Crash Course series to learn about the most famous event in Chicago's history: the Great Chicago Fire. We'll recount how the conflagration destroyed the "First City" of Chicago and examine the ambitious architecture which replaced it in Gilded Age Ch...

  • The First Chicago School of Architecture

    34m

    In Part 4 of the Architecture Crash Course, Alex will discuss the architects behind Chicago's earliest skyscrapers, and define the groundbreaking style known as "the First Chicago School." Expect to hear about heavy hitters like William LeBaron Jenney, Daniel Burnham, and Louis Sullivan.

  • Urban Planning: the White City to Wacker Drive

    30m

    Chicago is a mecca for architecture, including the most macro element of architecture - urban planning. The architectural style of the the 1893 World's Fair had influence around the country for decades. Learn about how the Plan of Chicago created the layered city we have today, and the ideas behi...

  • Wright's Philosophies and the Prairie School

    36m

    Prairie School buildings smashed through traditional architectural aesthetics in the early 20th century. Part six of our Chicago Architecture Crash Course looks at this breathakingly modern style, especially the way its most famous practitioner, Frank Lloyd Wright, fused his personal philosophy i...

  • The Glamorous Art Deco Age

    34m

    Architecture is often said to represent the zeitgeist--the spirit of the age. Perhaps no style has better reflected its age than Art Deco in the Jazz Age. Part eight of our Chicago Architecture Crash Course revels in this glamorous style, explaining its aesthetic breakthroughs and highlighting be...

  • The-Human-Experience-of-Mies-&-Modernism

    37m

    The International Style of Modernism, popularized by Mies van der Rohe in Chicago, was de rigeur for corporate and civic architecture in the decades after World War II. Yet many then and now found the style cold, sterile, and institutional. Part nine of our Chicago Architecture Crash Course will ...

  • Urban Crisis: Redevelopment and Historic Preservation

    35m

    The narrative of Chicago's architectural history is often interpreted as a grand march of progress from one style to the next, each reaching a new height. Part ten of our Chicago Architecture Crash Course will look at the decades when this narrative seemed to stop dead in its tracks, during the "...

  • Bodaciously Brutalist & "Shoulder Pads" Postmodernism

    36m

    The architecture that comes after modernism tends to have only two reactions. People either utterly despise Brutalism and Postmodernism or they think there's just nothing better. Part eleven of our Chicago Architecture Crash Course will leave the judgments up to you, focusing on why architectects...

  • Chicago Homes from Workers Cottages to McMansions

    35m

    Architectural history tends to focus heavily on monumental structures, like Chicago's famed skyscrapers. We want to change the perspective in part seven of our Chicago Architecture Crash, looking at the evolution of the city's housing stock from the workers' cottages of the 1800s to the McMansion...

  • Computers and Contemporary Design

    37m

    The final installment of our Chicago Architecture Crash Course catches up to the present day and examines the boom in computer-aided contemporary design. From the heights of the Vista Tower to the newly-accessible banks of the Chicago River, we'll see how new technologies and more diverse archite...

  • Chicago Architecture Crash Course 12-Week Series

    13 videos

    This 12-week “Architecture Crash Course” series explores Chicago’s most renowned feature across history. Your rental is for the entire series of recordings of our live, virtual presentations.

    Topics range from grand commercial structures to humble neighborhood cottages, and from urban redevelopm...