The Chicago Architecture Center (CAC), 111 E. Wacker Dr., has opened its first, major limited-run exhibit, "Helmut Jahn: Life + Architecture," the career retrospective of Helmut Jahn's innovative architectural designs.
Jahn's designs can be found in virtually every major metropolisfrom his adopted home of Chicago to Bangkok to Berlin to New York to Shanghai to Tokyo.
"Helmut Jahn: Life + Architecture" includes personal and professional items loaned by Jahn's family and firm. Visitors to CAC's Skyscraper Gallery can now see scale models of some of Jahn's most recent designs, including 1000M (Chicago) and Pritzker Military Archives (Somers, Wisconsin), both currently under construction. According to ENR.com, The architecture firm, JAHN, whose namesake principal recently died, reduced the building's height by 27 feet, and changed it to 738 apartments rather than the 521 condominiums it was originally planned to have. Under the new design, the building would still be Jahn's tallest in Chicago, at 805 feet.
Visitors can now also see scale models of buildings designed at key points in Jahn's career, including Post Tower (Bonn, 2002), Sony Center (Berlin, 2000) and the James R. Thompson Center (Chicago, 1985).
The exhibit was curated by Zurich Esposito in close collaboration with the CAC exhibits team: Michael Wood, Nicole Kowrach, Lynn Osmond and Ian Spula. The exhibit was designed by Jeannine Colaco and Studio J9.
Jahn passed away at age 81 on May 8, 2021, after a bicycle accident near his home in St. Charles, Illinois.
Visit architecture.org or call 312-922-8687 for tickets/information.