Chicago Seven (architects)

The Chicago Seven was a first-generation postmodern group of architects in Chicago. The original Seven were Stanley Tigerman, Larry Booth, Stuart Cohen, Ben Weese, James Ingo Freed, Tom Beeby and James L. Nagle.

Rebelling against the oppressive institutionalized predominance of the doctrine of modernism, as represented by the followers of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the Chicago Seven architects were looking for new forms, a semantic content and historical references in their buildings. Nagle commented on the state of affairs that prompted the intervention of the Chicago Seven: "It wasn't Mies that got boring. It was the copiers that got boring,... You got off an airplane in the 1970s, and you didn't know where you were."

The Seven brought their ideas to a broader audience through their teaching, exhibitions and symposia.

The nucleus of the group formed in protest against the travelling exhibition One Hundred Years of Architecture in Chicago about to be shown in 1976 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. The organisors put such an exclusive emphasis on the role played by Mies, his predecessors and followers, that it distorted the historical reality. This aroused the criticism of Tigerman, Cohen, Booth and Weese who simultaneously mounted a counter-show in the Time-Life Building which attracted nationwide attention.

Quickly dubbed the Chicago Four, with the addition of Freed, Beeby and Nagle, they soon expanded into the Chicago Seven. They embraced this name as it paid homage to the anti-Vietnam war protesters known as the Chicago Seven who stood trial in the city in 1970.

...
Wikipedia