Chicago: architecture & lights

Chicago’s architecture is fascinating. From the high rises in the city, each with its own history and goss, to the beautiful houses in suburbia, there is something for everybody.

We did an Architectural River Cruise where we not only saw all those beautiful and magnificent buildings, but our tour guide was an architecture student from the local university who was very passionate about his study and his predecesors, so we learned a lot about how various establishments came to be.

We stayed late to see some of this buildings illuminated and also the very busy traffic on Chicago River. The Merchandise Mart building (which is the largest privately owned commercial building in USA) had the Art on the Mart light show on which was very colourful and different. There was a bit of a show on the water too, leavers on different types of vessels, kayaks, some without light, and Russia with love drifting towards them.

Frank Lloyd Wright was a Chicago native and the first house that he lived and created in, located in Oak Park, is still there so we took the opportunity to visit it. The whole neighbourhood of Oak Park is very nice – big houses with nice, big gardens, lots of trees, flowers, squirrels, it is very quiet and peaceful with plenty of Mexican gardeners labouring away. It is very impressive how they restored Wright’s house and also how passionate and knowledgeable our guide was. We learned quite a bit about Wright’s style and ideas – about bringing light into the house, in many cases choosing beauty / looks over practicality (covering radiators, having a nook around the fireplace), privacy – he bricked some windows after neighbours built a house too close-, having nature “into” the house with part of the house built around what used to be a tree, admiration for Japanese style, simplicity and architecture.

We walked around the neighbourhood as well to see some of the houses that he designed – not all in his famous prairie style but unconventional compared to the contemporary Queen Anne style that most houses were built in at the time.

Some other houses and gardens around Oak Park.

We then walked to see Unity temple, a Unitarian temple that Frank Lloyd Wright designed and which is also located in Oark Park, about 10 min walk from his house.