Reflections of an Architecture Critic: A Conversation with Blair Kamin

During 28 years as architecture critic at the Chicago Tribune, Blair Kamin deepened civic awareness of design. Join Kamin as he revisits three decades of skyline-shaping towers, imaginative local projects and transformations of the public realm.

Kamin’s award-winning columns addressed and checked discrete projects as well as broader trends in Chicago architecture. Often contrarian and always consequential, Kamin’s observations sought to hold architects, developers and public servants to standards befitting the “city of architecture.” This special evening of free-flowing dialogue between Kamin and Reed Kroloff, dean of the College of Architecture at IIT, explores the critic’s picks and pans, Kamin’s evolution as a reporter and writer, Chicago’s recent design legacy and the state of architecture criticism going forward. Kamin and Kroloff’s conversation will also consider how architects and planners can help advance progress toward a more equitable city.