Virtual City Walks: International Edition

Travel overseas this winter without your passport!  

Join six of the world’s leading architecture organizations in Copenhagen, Chicago, Boston, Prague, New York, and Los Angeles as they team up to bring you a virtual glimpse into surprising historic and contemporary icons. Tour a different city each Saturday (January 30 – February 27) and meet some of the architectural experts and local guides who know their cities best.

This six-part series is sponsored by the Association of Architecture Organizations (AAO), in collaboration with the Danish Architecture Center, Chicago Architecture Center, Boston By Foot, CAMP (Prague), AIA New York | Center for Architecture, and the Los Angeles Conservancy.

Sessions will be held via Zoom and are available for purchase as a six-session package only. All sessions meet from 12:00 pm EST – 1:00 pm EST.

**IMPORTANT CALENDAR UPDATE:

In light of recently enacted COVID-19 restrictions across Denmark, the Virtual City Walk tour of Copenhagen on January 23 must be postponed to a later date. Part of the Danish government’s support package to cultural organizations requires that all public programs be suspended until DAC can reopen to the public.

Rest assured, we have every intention of including Copenhagen in this six-city tour package. If timing works out, the Copenhagen tour will be offered on Saturday, March 6. If Denmark’s restrictions are still in place in early March, then we will work to find a suitable make-up date in the spring as a one-off tour.

So, the six-city tour package will now begin with a tour from the Chicago Architecture Center on Saturday, January 30, and will continue each Saturday through to February 27. We will notify you when the Copenhagen tour can take place, and certainly you will be getting that tour as part of this six-city package.

Thank you all for your patience and understanding.

January 30, 2021
Chicago: City of Architecture with Chicago Architecture Center

Chicago is the quintessential city of modern architecture and home to a stunning collection of skyscrapers. Take a stroll around just one block and you’ll discover a century of architectural innovation. Join the Chicago Architecture Center (CAC) for a glimpse inside their tall buildings exhibition before venturing outside for a virtual walk along the Chicago River with CAC Docent Mary Jo Hoag. We’ll visit St. Regis Tower (Studio Gang, 2020); Trump Tower (Skidmore Owings & Merrill, 2009); AMA Building, formerly IBM Building (Office of Mies van der Rohe, 1971); Marina City (Bertrand Goldberg, 1967); and the famed Tribune Tower (Howells & Hood, 1925), whose international design competition shaped the look of modern cities worldwide.

Tour hosted by CAC docent Mary Jo Hoag.

February 6, 2021
Boston: Reinvented with Boston By Foot

Boston has been changing and remaking itself, district by district, since it was founded in 1630. Join guides from Boston By Foot for this virtual tour as they uncover some of the city’s most surprising layers of architectural change. We’ll visit a lively new linear park where an elevated highway once cut through the city. Explore new commercial and residential districts that replaced maritime buildings along the waterfront. And in this city of prestigious universities, we’ll see a new collection of striking academic and research buildings. It’s a glimpse into Boston’s past, present and future in the making. Sites include Boston City Hall (Kallmann McKinnell & Knowles, 1968), John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse (Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, 1999), and the Bruce C. Bolling Municipal Building (Mecanoo and Sasaki Associates, 2015).

Tour hosted by Boston By Foot guides.

February 13, 2021
Prague: Old Meets New with Center for Architecture and Metropolitan Planning (CAMP)

In Prague, Renaissance and Baroque landmarks effortlessly shake hands with Modernist, Brutalist, and contemporary architecture. Join the Center for Architecture and Metropolitan Planning (CAMP) architecture critic Adam Gebrian for this virtual exploration into Prague’s surprising layers. We begin at Spork, an 18th century Baroque palace with two radical reconstructions (Josef Gocar, 1920s and Stanislav Fiala, 2017). We’ll visit the Federal Assembly National Museum, originally a stock exchange (Jaroslav Rössler, 1928) and later home to the communist-era parliament. Along the riverfront, explore galleries and cafes tucked inside old circular ice vaults (Petr Janda, 2019). The tour ends at CAMP’s headquarters housed in a modernist cube within the shadow of a Gothic monastery.

Tour hosted by CAMP staff member Adam Gebrian.

February 20, 2021
New York City: SoHo Cast Iron Historic District with AIA New York | Center for Architecture

New York’s SoHo neighborhood (an acronym for South of Houston Street) has a long history of inspiring New York’s creative communities. Today, the same lofts that used to house manufacturing factories in the 1950s are home to photo studios, fashion houses, and art galleries. This virtual tour focuses on breakthroughs in nineteenth-century building prefabrication, hard-fought preservation campaigns, the adaptation of manufacturing “lofts” into artists’ space, and SoHo’s current allure for luxury dwelling and retail. Tour sites include the Haughwout Building (an 1857 cast iron masterpiece by John P. Gaynor and Daniel D. Badger), the Little Singer Building (Ernest Flagg, 1904), 101 Spring Street (Donald Judd’s residence and studio, designed by Nicholas Whyte in 1870; renovation by Architecture Research Office, 2010) and XOCO 325 (DDG, 2016), a notable modern intervention approved within the landmark district. 

Tour hosted by Arthur Platt, AIA.

February 27, 2021
Los Angeles: Vintage Cool with Los Angeles Conservancy

Pink hotels and swimming pools. Convertibles and Googie diners. Palm trees and endless freeways. Citrus and celebrities. But Los Angeles’s urban fabric is much richer and more varied than the stereotypes. Throughout its history, LA has encouraged architectural innovation, creative design, and lavish development, creating stunning—if polarizing—results. Discover a different side of Tinseltown on this virtual tour led by Los Angeles Conservancy staff members Sana Ahmed, Alex Inshishian, and Bruce Scottow. We’ll explore some rebellious icons, including: the Pacific Design Center (Cesar Pelli and Norma Merrick Sklarek, 1975, 1988, 2011); Los Angeles Theatre (S. Charles Lee, S. Tilden Norton, 1931); Bradbury Building (Sumner P. Hunt and George H. Wyman, 1893); and the Westin Bonaventure Hotel & Suites (John Portman & Associates, 1976).

Tour hosted by LA Conservancy staff members Sana Ahmed, Alex Inshishian, and Bruce Scottow.

DATE TBD
Copenhagen: Scandinavian Cool with Danish Architecture Center

Join the Danish Architecture Center (DAC) as we virtually explore four of Copenhagen’s most exciting new buildings and public spaces. Often ranked high among the world’s most livable cities, we’ll discover what makes this Nordic capital so special and surprising: sustainability, biking, playgrounds, and a revitalized harborfront. With our DAC guides, we’ll visit Copenhill, a waste-to-energy power plant topped with an urban ski slope (BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group, 2018); Nørreport Station with parking for 2,500 bicycles (Cobe, 2015); Park ‘n’ Play, the playground/fitness course high atop a parking garage (JAJA Architects, 2016); and BLOX, DAC’s home along the harbor (OMA, 2018).

Tour hosted by DAC guides.

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Connect with our Program Partners!

@danisharchitecturecenter
@chiarchitecture
@camppraha
@boston_by_foot
@centerforarch
@laconservancy