Klaus
in partnership with MAS Context

Welcome to Tribuneville: An Imaginary Vision of an Old Chicago That Could Have Been

June 17 – December 31, 2024

Monday–Friday: 11am–2pm / Saturday: 1–10pm

The hand-drawn animation, installed on 150 Media Stream’s giant media wall, features sixty of the most inventive building designs entered in the famed 1922 Chicago Tribune Tower architectural competition, as well as flying machines, elevated walkways, monorail tramways, and other fantastical details dreamed up by the artist.

“The iconic design and location of the 150 North Riverside Plaza is a perfect backdrop for this installation that celebrates the exuberance of Chicago architecture,” said Yuge Zhou, video artist and curator of 150 Media Stream. “I’ve been following MAS Context’s incredibly deep and provocative programs over the years and I’m excited to partner with them to present Klaus’s beautiful animation to our community. Klaus’s work is a unique and meticulous reconstruction of history with tantalizing glimpses of a wonderous Chicago. The scale and structure of the 150 Media Stream feels like an ideal platform to envelope the viewers with his worldbuilding.”

“Welcome to Tribuneville: An Imaginary Vision of an Old Chicago That Could Have Been” was first conceived during a 2022 conversation between Klaus and Iker Gil, founder and editor-in-chief of MAS Context, about the upcoming 100-year anniversary of the Chicago Tribune Tower Competition. Feeling it a shame that such a display of architectural imagination remains mostly unknown, Klaus took it upon himself to recover his favorite among these unbuilt entries and imagine a Chicago that could have been.

Back in June 1922, the Chicago Tribune launched an international architectural competition for the building that would house its new headquarters with the ambitious goal of constructing “the most beautiful office building in the world.”

“Welcome to Tribuneville,” 2024. © Klaus. Courtesy of 150 Media Stream and MAS Context.

With a $50,000, $20,000, and $10,000 prize for first, second, and third place respectively, plus a previous fee of $2,000 paid to ten firms that had been invited to submit their designs, the competition was an unquestionable success that earned it a place in the official history of architecture. As much an architectural competition as a publicity stunt for the newspaper, “The International Competition for a New Administration Building for the Chicago Tribune” was part of a massive campaign that generated worldwide press coverage, attracting 263 entries from twenty-three countries, which would then be published in a book and featured in a travelling exhibition. Beside the winning entry by John Mead Howells and Raymond M. Hood, and Eliel Saarinen’s proposal—a second place that many felt should have won—the competition attracted designs from some of the most prominent architects of the time, both within the US and from the international scene. Some of those architects submitting their tower designs included Walter Gropius, Adolf Loos, Bruno Taut, Max Taut, Jan Duiker, and Ludwig Hilberseimer.

Other than the built proposal, the proposals by Loos and Gropius and, perhaps, Saarinen’s design, most of these designs have been lost to the collective imagination.

Excerpt of the RIBAJ announcement highlighting the comments from the jury:

“Chia-Yi Chou was fascinated by ‘the way he’s brought all of them together, and more, to tell the story of a moment of architectural history—all rendered as if it’s real but which is in fact a work of complete fiction.’

Jan-Carlos Kucharek called it a ‘Soanic pasticcio in drawn form,’ to which Sarah Wigglesworth added that the piece can be understood ‘in the historical context of JM Gandy’s painterly efforts to represent the pantheon of Soane’s built and unbuilt works.’

KLAUS

Klaus is an architectural cartoonist active since the early 2000s. Focused on the critique of the architectural star system, the revision of the radical visions of the ’60s and ’70s, and the reinterpretation of the icons of architectural history, both within the discipline and the media, his cartoons have been published in magazines such as Architectural Design, Architectural Review, Arq, Arq’a, eVolo, Clog, Conditions, Domus, Harvard Design Magazine, J–A Jornal Arquitectos, MAS Context, STUDIO, The New City Reader, Volume, as well as several books. He has been a regular contributor to German magazine Uncube (“Numerus Klausus,” 2013–2016), A10: New European Architecture (“Interchange,” 2014–2016), and Arquine, where he writes and illustrates his section “ArquiNoir” since 2013. His work has been exhibited in cities such as Naples, Venice, Santiago (Chile), Mexico D.F., and Chicago, among others. In his other life he is also Luis Miguel (Koldo) Lus Arana, Associate Professor in the Theory and History of Architecture at the University of Zaragoza, where he teaches and writes about the intersections of architecture, media, and popular culture.

https://klaustoon.wordpress.com/
Klaus Toons (@klaustoon) / X

Lecture

Welcome to Tribuneville

October 10, 2024 at 6pm
Society of Architectural Historians

During this event, Luis Miguel Lus Arana will talk about the background and development of the installation and its historical framework, his scholarly research on architecture and the history of visionary urban design in popular media, and the relationship of both with his two-decade long cartooning work under the pseudonym “Klaus.”

Based on the illustration and short video ‘Welcome to Tribuneville: 100th Anniversary of the Chicago Tribune Tower Competition’ by Koldo Lus Arana (Klaus) and Andrés Jiménez-Lobera. Presented at the event ‘Chicago Tribune Tower Competition at 100’; MAS Context Fall Talks, November 21, 2022.

Concept, drawing, storyboarding and direction: Luis Miguel [Koldo] Lus-Arana aka: ‘Klaus’ (@klaustoon).

Animation, sound, and editing: David Rubioma Motion Graphics Design.

Featuring a selection of 60 entries submitted to the Chicago Tribune Tower Competition (1922) and published in The International Competition for a New Administration Building for the Chicago Tribune MCMXXII.

Marion Harris: After you’ve gone, composed by Turner Layton with lyrics by Henry Creamer. Victor Records, 1918.
Mildred Hunt: A shady Tree, composed by Walterd Donaldson, conducted by Paul Whiteman. Victor Records, 1927.

Every autumn, a miracle happens. A monarch butterfly born in Canada flies more than 3,000 miles across North America. It does so over land it has never seen, in the reverse direction of the streams of humans traveling steadily north. It’s destination: the rainforest of Mexico. It is a journey filled with peril. Many will never make it, and those that do will never return. No butterfly among them has ever made the journey before, and none will again. In the hands of artist, writer, filmmaker Leopoldo Goût, the tale of the monarch butterfly’s migration from North America to the Mexican town of Contepec gets the immersive, you-are-there treatment. Each monarch butterfly was hand-painted by Goût, then brought into 3D space in collaboration with multimedia artist Matt Bruinooge.