Chicago from Lake Michigan

After seeing the glass and steel architecture up close on the Chicago River, our tour boat pulled out into Lake Michigan to provide sightseers the opportunity to snap views of the skyline. Click on any of the pictures below to see them all bigger.

Glass

We went on a touristy architectural boat tour of Chicago focused mostly on the big glass and steel towers of downtown. I think because glass reflects its surroundings, it’s an easy way for an architect to say their building fits in its environment. Click on any of the images below to see them all enlarged.

Architecture

N Wabash Ave, Chicago

On an initial walk downtown, I was on the lookout for backgrounds for my Word project among Chicago’s skyscrapers. I found quite a few candidates, if no winners. Click any picture below to see them all full sized (if viewing in email you may need to click the post title above first to go to the web site).

A first stroll, Antwerp

Meir, a long, broad shopping street puts Fifth Avenue to shame. All of the global luxury and high fashion brands were featured here and, as we moved further West, some less upscale brands like Primark and the ubiquitous MacDonalds. Needless to say, it was chock-a-block with tourists and shoppers. Click any picture to see them all bigger (if seeing this in email you may need to click the post title, above, first).

At the Shard

The Shard, London

One of the iconic new-ish buildings on the London skyline (the Shard is the tall one on the left), we found ourselves outside it catching a bus at London Bridge Station about 3 or 4 weeks ago.

Joie de Vivre

Cedar St and Broadway, New York

Artist: Mark Di Suvero
Title: Joie De Vivre
Year unveiled: 1998
Location: Zuccotti Park, Financial District, Manhattan near 115 Broadway, New York, NY 10006

Skyline

Central Park, New York

Excuse the obscenity, but it’s hard to think of these obscene new erections as anything but pencil-dick buildings, leveraging hideous loopholes in NY real estate law to enrich developers and allow Russian and other kleptocratic regimes’ oligarchs to hide and protect their ill-gotten wealth in empty pieds à terre, through layers of shell corporations, whilst blighting Central Park’s skyline.