Ideas/ Journal

Internationally renowned full-service architecture studio Jahn announced a new visual identity and voice. The refreshed brand celebrates a commitment to collaboration that has been at the heart of Jahn’s success, which remains named for the late architect Helmut Jahn (1940-2021), who led the Chicago-based firm for 40 years.

The spectacular, and much maligned, James R. Thompson Center will be an office building reborn in a few years, if all goes according to plan. This is as it should be. The last three Illinois governors tried to send this postmodern icon to the scrap heap, citing the building’s nine-figure rehab costs while ignoring its architectural importance. But when preservationists and others started speaking up for the building in 2017, the most prominent voice was that of its architect, Helmut Jahn.

In Frankfurt, Germany, the 27-floor EDEN tower boasts an exterior “living wall system”: 186,000 plants that cover about 20 percent of the building’s facade. Chicago-based architecture firm JAHN, which spearheaded the facade concept, collaborated with local design firm Magnus Kaminiarz & Cie on EDEN tower.

Almost a year after the untimely death of Helmut Jahn, one of the architect’s final designs is coming to fruition. Jahn’s prolific legacy in Chicago and the surrounding area includes the Thompson Center, Terminal 1 at O’Hare International Airport, and the Mansueto Library at University of Chicago. Building on his penchant for engaging the public through wildly expressive designs, the Pritzker Military Archives Center in Somers, Wisconsin, is a jaunty 48,000-square-foot civic space for archiving and exhibiting military paraphernalia.

The State of Illinois has selected a buyer for the controversial Thompson Center located at 100 W Randolph Street in The Loop. The building, which opened in 1985, was designed by famed architect Helmut Jahn who designed other influential Chicago structures like Terminal 1 at O’Hare International Airport. The sale represents the end of a multi-year process which began in 2018 under the previous governor.