This year is the centennial of Daniel Burnham's Plan of Chicago, a blueprint for restructuring and improving the city. To celebrate the anniversary, the city and various local institutions have commissioned a few things...
First, in Millennium Park, are a pair of temporary pavilions, intended to echo the audacity of the 1909 Burnham Plan,.
The first one is by Ben van Berkel:
The other is by Zaha Hadid, and unfortunately has not yet been completed. The metal skeleton is done, but apparently there have been some construction difficulties with the covering that goes over the shell:
Also in the same park, something which has absolutely nothing to do with the centennial, but was slightly unusual. It's pretty common to see wedding parties posing for photos in front of a fountain. This is the first time I've ever seen one posing in a fountain:
Just the one picture. The bride is getting a last minute touchup to her face/hair, while the groom waits at the water's edge.
Now, back to Burnham. In addition to the city building the pavilions, the Chicago Architecture Foundation commissioned a ~20 foot long model of the city, made by taking aerial photographs, building a computer model, and feeding that to a 3-dimensional printer. It's a pretty impressive bit of model building:
-dms