Hinterlands Team in Chicago Architecture Foundation Exhibition

Hinterlands Urbanism and Landscape was invited to participate in  50 Designers, 50 Ideas, 50 Wards, an exhibition celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Chicago Architecture Foundation. The Hinterlands Urbanism and Landscape team's entry, titled Wasteland and currently on display at the Chicago Architecture Foundation, proposes aligning Chicago's political boundaries with the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District's sewer basins and creating a new biosolid driven economy.

The team consisted of:

Conor O'Shea, Chris Bennett (architectural advisor), Aneesha Dharwadker (editorial advisor), and Michael O'Shea (community outreach advisor) 

From the press release:

"50 Designers, 50 Ideas, 50 Wards is a visual conversation on the role design can play in solving community challenges at both the local and citywide levels. Around the world, architects and designers are implementing ideas that address critical urban issues on everything from transit to affordable housing, environmental stewardship to job creation.

Along with CAF, the exhibition was curated by Martin Felsen and Sarah Dunn, co-founders of the Chicago-based office UrbanLab, and Reed Kroloff, CAF’s Senior Advisor for Programs and Industry Collaboration, a design educator and noted architecture commentator. The 50 Designers, 50 Ideas, 50 Wards exhibition will be on display May 26 through December 2016 in the Atrium Gallery at CAF headquarters. Tailored programming will also be developed that brings industry experts and thinkers to CAF for evening lectures, tours, teen, family, educator and adult studio events throughout the year. For more information, visit architecture.org/50-50-50."

Click here to see the online gallery.

Conor O'Shea and Collaborators in MAS Context Journal

Conor O'Shea collaborated with Luke Hegeman / MODUS Collective and Chris Bennett to author "Logistical Ecologies of the North American Operational Landscape." The essay, photo essay, and video document the transformation of North America's hinterlands into operational landscapes using Rochelle, Illinois and Alliance, Texas as case studies.

Click here for the online version of the article.

Click here to download a pdf of the print issue.

Click here for the video.

Conor O'Shea, Luke Hegeman, and Chris Bennett. "Logistical Ecologies of the North American Operational Landscape." MAS Context: Hidden. 28 (Winter 2015): 8-35.

Conor O'Shea Reviews Maggie Daley Park and Chicago Riverwalk for Topos

Conor O'Shea reviews Maggie Daley Park and Chicago Riverwalk for Topos.

Excerpt:

"In Chicago, the new Maggie Daley Park and Chicago Riverwalk exemplify the trend for cities to build high-profile works of landscape architecture to spur reinvestment in historic urban cores. In this era of decreased federal and municipal funding for such projects, private investment is increasingly called upon. As a result, and as a new range of spaces in Chicago demonstrate, the landscape architect has emerged as a mediator between commercial interests and civic responsibilities." 

Conor O'Shea. "Open City - Open Space." Topos: The International Review of Landscape Architecture and Urban Design. 94 (2016): 16-23.

Please click here for a free excerpt from the article.

Conor O'Shea featured in Architectural Record

Conor O'Shea is featured in this month's issue of Architectural Record as part of the list "Chicago's Next Generation," which showcases a group of young designers participating in the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial.

A description of the list from Architectural Record:

"The inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial (October 3, 2015 through January 3, 2016) is a global event. With over 60 firms or studios featured—representing more than 30 countries across six continents—it is also drawing attendees from all over the world. Titled The State of the Art of Architecture, the exhibition, curated by Sarah Herda and Joseph Grima, reaches beyond the national conversation to generate a larger discussion about the future of the built environment. But, given Chicago’s long tradition of innovation and innovators, from Louis Sullivan to SOM, we decided to look at some of the city’s own emerging practitioners. Here, we highlight a handful of designers in the Biennial who are, with optimism and humor, broadening the definition of the practice of architecture and what it means to be an architect, in both the Midwest and beyond."

Please click here for the article on Conor O'Shea / Hinterlands Urbanism and Landscape.

Conor O'Shea's Work as Urban Theory Lab Researcher Featured in Exhibition

Conor O'Shea's research as a member of the Urban Theory Lab at the Harvard Graduate School of Design during was featured as part of the exhibition Operational Landscapes: Towards an Alternative Cartography of World Urbanization from March 17 - 29, 2015 at the Melbourne School of Design.

The Urban Theory Lab is directed by Neil Brenner, professor of Urban Theory at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. 

According to the Urban Theory Lab:

"The exhibition asks: In what sense do we today live in an "urban age"? Frequently invoked by scholars, policy-makers, planners, designers, and architects, usually with reference to the proposition that more than 50 percent of the world's population now lives within cities, such a question provokes further questioning: Can the nature of our urban world be understood and mapped exclusively with reference to the growth of cities and their populations? 

The exhibition turns this proposition upside-down and inside-out by speculating on a radically alternative mapping of contemporary planetary urbanization. What happens to our cognitive map of the global urban condition if we focus not on the global cities or megacities of the world, but on the wide-ranging sociospatial and environmental transformations that are currently unfolding in supposedly "remote" or "wilderness" regions such as the Amazon, the Arctic, the Gobi desert steppe, the Himalayas, the Pacific Ocean, the Sahara desert, and Siberia, and even the earth's atmosphere? To what degree are such zones now being integrated within a worldwide fabric of urbanization? How are they being restructured and enclosed to support the energy, water, material, food and logistics needs of major cities? 

Through speculative cartographies of these emergent "operational landscapes," the exhibition aims to illuminate the radical transformations of land-use, infrastructure, and ecology far beyond the city limits that have made the contemporary formation of planetary urbanization possible.

Curatorial Team: Grga Basic (MDes '15), Chris Bennett (MDes '15), Mariano Gomez Luque (MArch II '13, DDes), Daniel Ibañez (MDes '12, DDes) "

Citation:

Urban Theory Lab-GSD (directed by Neil Brenner), Operational Landscapes: Towards an Alternative Cartography of World Urbanization.  Contributed research and visual materials to a multi-year collaborative research and mapping project. Displayed at Melbourne School of Design (Spring 2015); Yale School of Architecture (Fall 2015 in conjunction with exhibit on "City of 7 Billion").

Image Credit: Louise Dorignon, 2015. Source: And the Urban Exploded: Operational Landscapes, an Exhibition by Neil Brenner and the Urban Theory Lab at the Melbourne School of Design 

Hinterlands to Participate in the Chicago Architecture Biennial

Hinterlands has been selected to participate in the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial as part of the "BOLD: Alternative Scenarios for Chicago" exhibit in the Chicago Cultural Center. The contribution, "Logistical Ecologies," is a collaboration with Chris Bennett and Luke Hegeman of  MODUS Collective. 

According to the Chicago Architecture Biennial:

"Architect Iker Gil of MAS Studio is organizing the exhibition of Chicago-based architects that showcases new ideas and alternative development scenarios for Chicago. BOLD will feature speculative proposals that re-imagine the design potential of the city’s waterways, roadways, vacant lots and public space, as well as new projects that explore the present conditions of the city through film, photography and mapping."

The Chicago Architecture Biennial runs from October 3, 2015 - January 3, 2016 in Chicago, IL. 

For more information please visit:

http://chicagoarchitecturebiennial.org/

Hinterlands Featured in Exhibit "Dialogues on Urbanization: Emerging Landscapes"

"Logistical Urbanization" is featured in the exhibit "Dialogues on Urbanization: Emerging Landscapes" at IIT in Chicago. The exhibit runs from March 23rd until April 18th, 2015 in Crown Hall and is curated by IIT's MLA program.

For more information on the exhibit please click here.

Conor O'Shea Delivers Cloud Talk at IIT

Conor O'Shea delivered a lecture titled "Landscape Architecture in the Age of Planetary Urbanization" as part of the Cloud Talks lecture series in the College of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology College of Architecture.

To view a video of the talk please click here 

For more information please click here 

Conor O'Shea Appointed Visiting Assistant Professor at Illinois Institute of Technology

Conor O'Shea has been appointed Visiting Assistant Professor in the Master of Landscape Architecture program in the College of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, IL.

For more information please click here

Conor O'Shea and Team Represent Harvard at Hult Prize

Conor O'Shea, Varun Bhandari, Aparna Kamath, Krishna Matturi, and Yogeeta Manglani represent Harvard University as finalists at one of five global regional finals of the 5th annual Hult Prize in Boston. This year's competition, which challenges teams to address the threat of noncommunicable diseases in urban slums, is supported by the Clinton Global Initiative.

Conor O'Shea Gardner Museum Fellowship Finalist

Conor O'Shea named as one of five finalists in the 2014 Maeder-York Family Fellowship in Landscape Studies at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. 

"The Maeder-York Family Fellowship in Landscape Studies at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum was created in 2012 to recognize emerging design talent across disciplines dealing with landscape and support experimentation, research, and achievement in design through landscape." 

Click here for more information.

Conor O'Shea and Team Win Third Place in Burnham Prize

Conor O'Shea and collaborator Aneesha Dharwadker receive third place for their entry "BTA: Bus Transit Authority" in The Chicago Architectural Club's Burnham Prize: NEXT STOP: Designing Chicago's BRT Stations international design competition.

Click here to view project images and description. 

Conor O'Shea and Team Receive Awards for "Sixtynine Seventy The Spaces Between: An Urban Ideas Competition

Conor O'Shea, Mike Albert, Victor Perez Amado, Aneesha Dharwadker and Fadi Masoud are finalists and receive an honorable mention for their entry "Multi-Grid" in the Sixtynine Seventy The Spaces Between: An Urban Ideas Competition. 200 architects and designers from 48 countries competed in the competition.