Chicago Humanities Festival

Next year, as you may have heard by now, marks the hundredth anniversary of Daniel Burnham's legendary plan for the city of Chicago—the first comprehensive plan for the controlled growth of any American city, and the foundation of much of what is great about our splendid metropolis to this day. And indeed, part of the citywide observances in 2009 will focus on the question of what it might be like to think about the future of our current city with anything approaching Burnham's panache and vision. The Great Man's motto, of course, was, "Make no little plans" (why bother?); the only prospects he felt worth envisioning being the grand and the mighty. So here at the Festival we began to think: as a prelude to next year's centennial celebrations, why not consider ambition as such—the glory (and sometimes folly) occasioned by the human pursuit of the grand gesture, the great scheme, the Big Idea, the world-transformative moment, that generative, human predilection for thinking at scale. So here we have the 2008 Festival, Thinking Big. We realize that such a theme evolves quite naturally out of last year’s Festival focus on The Climate of Concern. Several of our programs this year will limn ways in which the concerns evinced by global warming and environmental degradation call out for Big Thinking and, indeed, Big Doing. www.chfestival.org Five architecture-related programs you shouldn't miss (the number in parentheses is the program number in the festival): Antony Wood: Tall, Taller, Tallest …! (401). 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m., Nov. 2 at the Chicago Architecture Foundation, 224 S. Michigan Ave.; $5. The executive director of the Chicago-based Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat looks at today’s worldwide spate of skyscraper construction and the even taller visions for tomorrow. Bruce Mau and Elva Rubio: Designing Chicago’s Next Century (703). Noon-1 p.m., Nov. 9 at DePaul University’s Merle Reskin Theatre , 60 E. Balbo Dr.; $5 . The team from Chicago’s Bruce Mau (at left) Design offers their radical vision for the city’s built environment, prepared in collaboration with students from the School of the Art Institute and the University of Illinois at Chicago. It’s a preview of the Chicago Pavilion at the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai. Burnham 2.0 Judges Panel (710). 3:30-5 p.m., Nov. 9 at the Chicago History Museum, 1601 N. Clark St.; $5 . A jury of architects and designers including Stanley Allen, dean of Princeton University’s architecture school, announces the winner of the Chicago Architectural Club’s ideas competition for a high-speed rail rub in Chicago. They’ll also critique other entries. Constructing Community in Public Housing (406). 1:30-3 p.m., Nov. 2 at the Chicago Architecture Foundation, 224 S. Michigan Ave.; $5 . A panel of activists and scholars examines the tensions—social, cultural and political—as public housing is remade in Chicago and around the nation. Roosevelt University’s Brad Hunt, author of “The Unraveling of Public Housing in Chicago,” moderates. Mary Beard: The Parthenon (311). 1-2 p.m. at First United Methodist Church at the Chicago Temple, 77 W. Washington St.; $5 . A professor of classics at Cambridge University and classics editor of the Times Literary Supplement digs into the past of this classical masterpiece and explains why it continues to inspire us today.