Douglas Garofalo

by Joseph Rosa

Published 29 September 2006
Announcing A+D (Architecture and Design), a new series from the Art Institute of Chicago, which highlights the work of important architects and designers from around the world. Innovatively designed by the New York firm 2x4, the titles are either historical in nature or investigate current critical thinking and practice in architecture and design.
This handsome book presents the oeuvre of Douglas Garofalo, principal of Garofalo Architects, internationally renowned for its innovative residential, commercial, institutional, and public building projects. With an impressive list of clients that includes the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Hyde Park Art Center, and the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago, the firm has also designed a number of private residences and played a significant role in Chicago's urban design and public planning.
Douglas Garofalo looks at the architect's work to date, drawing from the full spectrum of his built work, theoretical and visionary projects (including the Camouflage House outside Chicago ), and competition entries (including those for the Chicago Housing Authority and the Chicago Public Schools). Illustrations of and informative entries on the drawings, models, and digital media that showcase this work are featured.

This handsome book explores the recent use of figurative characteristics in the design arts. Through digital literacy and enhanced fabrication techniques, this avant-garde movement has reintroduced hybrids of methods and ideologies that were once considered too ornamental in character or too handcrafted for the twentieth-century minimalist design lexicon. Both large urban-scale architecture and the small domestic realm of design are employing this avant-garde vocabulary formally and figuratively in the terms of shapes and surfaces that evoke trees, tornadoes, parasols, photography, death, illness, food, music, and sensuality.The volume includes recent work by a wide array of international architects, designers and studios, including Herzog & de Meuron, Zaha Hadid, Jurgen Mayer H., UNStudio, and many others, and features full-page spreads devoted to illustrations of everything from tattooed and perforated surfaces to woven and sculptural forms - a rich aesthetic charting new territories in the realm of contemporary design.

Young Chicago

by Joseph Rosa

Published 31 January 2007
Since the early 20th century, Chicago has continually fostered young design talent and established itself as a pivotal arts center. This handsome book--published on the 25th anniversary of the Art Institute's Department of Architecture and Design--features twenty-five young artists from Chicago who showcase the depth and breadth of the city's design culture.
The featured artists and their firms, including UrbanLab, JNL Graphic Design, and Qua'Virarch, reflect exciting talents in industrial, furniture, and graphic design, as well as fashion and architecture--and represent the generation that is leading the city into the 21st century. The book includes an essay by Joseph Rosa that traces the evolution of design in Chicago from its origins to today and provides a fascinating and up-to-date look at contemporary architecture and design.