Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies

While some buildings receive more media attention, few are as powerfully effective on so many levels as the new home of Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies, opened at the end of 2007. Built in modest scale befitting its place on the historic southern stretch of Michigan Avenue across from Grant Park, this shimmering, multifaceted glass-walled ten-story building commands the attention of a building ten times its size. From a distance, on the east side of the park on the lakefront path, its glass wall, constructed of 726 windows in 556 different shapes, looks like water, a liquid building, in harmony with the flows of Buckingham Fountain. Up close, the building invites visitors into its galleries and libraries in a manner that its more fortress-like predecessor never did. And once inside! The open glass atriums, the dramatic views and that glass wall, now seen from the other side as it bends light in infinite ways, together create one of the city’s great interior spaces. To the architects, Krueck & Sexton Architects, and to the Institute itself, we say mazel tov!

610 S. Michigan
(312)322-1700
spertus.edu

Audience choice
Trump International Hotel 
401 N. Wabash
(877)458-7867

Best of Chicago 2008

Mies van der Rohe’s Lake Shore Drive apartments

Louis Sullivan’s cast-iron filigree adorning Carson’s was at the top of the list until it was boarded up again once Carson’s vacated. Mies, though, never fails to impress. Following on the heels of the successful Crown Hall restoration, Krueck & Sexton Architects and Gunny Harboe were asked to do it again. The Lake Shore Drive apartments have so far been treated with a shiny coat of black paint and windows have been returned to their perfection of shiny transparency. The master of minimalist severity rises again.

Best of Chicago 2007