IN CHICAGO

The Midwest and Chicago have made unparalleled contributions to the 20th Century - the steel frame, Earnest Hemingway, Frank Lloyd Wright, etc. Is this simply a coincidence or a consequence of regional conditions? A semi-autobiographical narrative of one man’s relation to Chicago as an architect and a former resident, in an effort to expose characteristics which permeate the works of critical Midwest thinkers. Beginning with a discussion of the building boom of the late 1880’s, then the love affair with the grid, the rise of the Freshwater School of Economics, the work and life of David Foster Wallace, and culminating with a simplistic genealogy of the global practice Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Dixit’s lecture will examine methods specifically born of regional conditions that are paradoxically global in their application.  “IN Chicago” will be a subjective search for a region's ideology.

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