Chicago Design Milestones

Chicago Design Milestones was a new media public installation that brought to life the evolution of Chicago design by examining and showcasing the historic characteristics of design works from the 1920s to the present. Project material was researched and culled from the Chicago Design Archive (CDA), which holds over 3,200 works. Members of CDA, the UIC School of Design & Electronic Visualization Laboratory, and Columbia College Chicago collaborated on this project, as their underlying quest is to spotlight the role of Chicago as a major national design center through the use of innovative technologies.

A significant challenge was finding how to represent the thousands of works from the past 100 years. This was done by scouring every image, over countless hours, and selecting representative works for each decade. Another challenge was finding how to best employ the distinctive installation structure of 150 MediaStream, comprised of 89 LED vertical blades reaching 22 feet high and spanning 150 feet wide—a vertical pattern combined with massive horizontality—interesting but opposing dynamics.

Chicago design history is not commonly brought to the attention of the general public. The project offered it outside of the confines and prompting of a book or classroom, and it was instead framed in the context of an immersive technological experience. The aim was to engage onlookers and inspire them with the city’s creative history. Perhaps they felt a sense of nostalgia, a feeling of pride for the city, or gained a stronger appreciation for Chicago history and design.