This triangular staircase is located in the Arthur Rubloff building on the Campus of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. These are the main stairs down to the lower level where the sculpture workshops and dance dance hall is located. However, it's marked about as well as the broom closet. I've only been in the building a few times, but it has to be one of the most confusing to navigate. The whole experience of being in the building is quite surreal. The art students have clearly made it their home.

Why do the traffic reporters on the radio always refer to the highways by their local vanity names?  And they give the rundown so fast, that it's virtually impossible to understand.  Those listening, and stuck in traffic, have plenty of time to listen to a coherent traffic report.  Maybe if we understood what was being said, we wouldn't be stuck in traffic.  Who says driving is an expression of American freedom, I'll take the train any day.

All aboard!  Chicago is well known for the El.  This is a photo of a Brown line train taken at the State and Lake station.  Since moving to our new office, I've been taking the Red line, which runs below ground through downtown.  I liken it to the dungeon.  I much prefer riding the elevated tracks.  You get such a neat perspective of the city.

For the past three years, I've been teaching courses in structural engineering to prospective architects attending the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  The students pictured were in our first class and are now about to graduate.  Wearing shirt and tie are two of my colleagues from Thornton Tomasetti who have also been teaching with me from day one.  Today's lesson was about lateral wind resisting systems in supertall buildings.  The students were just realizing how much concrete and steel it takes to make a 100+ story building stand up.

Go Bulls! Go Sox! You'll probably recognize this building from sklyine shots of the city during playoff sports games. The building staff usually puts up large lighted signs to support the local teams in the diagonal roof face. Currently, it's called the Smurfit-Stone Building. It's one of the City's architectural icons, located right at the northwest corner of Millenium Park.

What does a multi-million dollar house in Lincoln Park look like? This is the home of the Pritzker family, one of the richest families in Chicago. The house is constructed of reinforced concrete and features maybe the longest cantilevers of any single family structure. It puts Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water to shame. To prevent long-term deflection, like that threatening Falling Water, large steel plates are embed in certain areas of the concrete walls.

Beware of underwater fires! Why does the Chicago Fire Department have a scuba team? I understand search and rescue, but shouldn't that be organized under some other agency? Are they responsible for putting out fires on the mega-yachts in Belmont Harbor? Sounds like one of the better jobs in the city.

Could you operate a jack-hammer and effectively destroy the very structure that you're standing on? Apparently the crew working on the parking garage across the street from my office doesn't have such reservations. To fix the deteriorated slab, they are selectively demolishing the roof deck of the parking garage. To the left of the photo, you can see a roughly 10' x 5' hole around one of the middle columns.!

Mind the gap. My latest project involves figuring out how this special entrance will be structurally detailed. The challenge is to provide support for the curtain wall, tie-backs for window washers to hook into, and support for a fancy 4-story piece of artwork generically called the chimes. Complicating the effort is the fact that a lot of the structure has already been built - thus limiting the design freedom. Oh yeah, and the client needs it all figured out by Friday.

The Big Dig was here! This new pavilion and park land was recently reclaimed from the highway buried under ground. It has opened a corridor between the government center and the North End. If the lines out the doors of the pastry shops in the traditionally Italian neighborhood is any indication, then the reconfiguration of the infrastructure has been a boon to local business.

Harvard Yard is the oldest part of the university, dating back to the founding in 1836. It's a pretty campus even on a cold & breezy spring day.

While walking through the campus, my wife and I debated what has more effect on the quality of education offered by an institution: the quality of faculty or the quality of students. I argue that Harvards ability to attract the very best and brightest has the most to do with its exceptional reputation. Personally, I believe the motivation and intelligence of my peers at the University of Michigan to have contributed more to my education than all those lectures that I half slept through.

Faneuil Hall was originally completed in 1742. During the revolution it served as a public forum for many advocating independence from Great Britian. Over the years, the building was rebuilt and expanded several times. Today it is part of the lively Quincy Market - a fun place to get your clam chowda' fix.

Finally a nice day in Chicago. I met some UM alums in Millenium Park for lunch. North of the park is the Prudential building. It's not the prettiest structure on the Magnificent Mile, but it does have history. It was once the tallest building in the city. Completed in 1955.

Found a great new bar on the South Side, near where I play soccer. Unfortunately, I forgot the name. The decor is quasi retro cool. The light fixtures/wall art over the booths are old pinball machine boards. The bar is neatly lit and features an old CRT screen playing old TV shows in black and white.

Also a great DJ while I was there. Did you know that the Black Crowes' "Hard to Handle" was acutally a cover of Otis Redding, which may itself be a cover.

Lost dog. If anyone has seen Watson, please call. You might recognize him from the generic shadow graphic that looks conspicuously like the Greyhoud Bus Company logo. Seriously, the owners couldn't find an actual photo of their dog. Am I the only one that thinks this is strange?

The Donald was here, at least he was seen at the ground breaking. Today, Trump tower is nearly complete. Topping out at 1,170 feet, the structure is the second tallest in the city and the country. Our news office is directly across the street. If you're ever in the hotel gym, wave to the engineers who can see you jogging on the treadmill.

The tower utilized the highest strength concrete ever used in Chicago. The project was also challenged by being directly adjacent to the Chicago river. The construction team used that to it's advantage, however, as much of the construction materials were transported by barge. The building was designed by Skidmore Owings & Merrill Architects (SOM) and their in-house engineers.

Today is Palm Sunday, the day that Christians celebrate Jesus' final arrival into Jerusalem. It's one of the most crowded masses at most Catholic churches, because the church gives away free palm leaves.

I attend St. Michael's church in Old Town. It's one of the oldest churches in Chicago, rebuilt right after the 1873 fire. The main alter (pictured) was installed in 1903. It was hand-crafted by a company in Wisconsin. Church records indicate that the cost of the alter, plus reinforcing to the floor to support the weight, was only about $12,000.

Welcome to 330 N. Wabash, formerly known as the IBM building. It was designed by legendary architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Mies emigrated to the United States in 1937 fleeing Nazi Germany. His characteristic style was modern and minimalistic, dubbed the International Style. In Chicago, he led the architecture program at the Illinois Institute of Technology and designed several prominent buildings, including the Federal Plaza buildings and 860-880 Lake Shore Drive.

He also designed his own line of furniture for the lobbies of his buildings. 330 N. Wabash currently feature replicas of his originals. However, as I discovered very uncomfortably, the cushions are actually cast in bronze.

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to design a tower out of some scrap paper, straws, and popsicle ticks that is at least 18" tall, holds a tennis ball, and stands up through hurricane force winds (applied via a 9" fan). At the IDOT construction career fair at McCormick place, over a hundred students took the challenge. Most succeeded. The tallest tower was over 30" high. The exercse illustrated the critical thinking that engineers use to design tall buildings.

Every day my first priority after leaving work is to take my dog, Roxy out for a walk. Since the weather has been nicer (and I mean that in the relative sense), I've been taking Roxy to the nearest dog park. It's not officially a dog park, but between 5:00 and 6:00, the dogs take over. There's an amazing selection of breeds in the neighborhood, from poodles to great danes.

The McCormick Place convention center in Chicago is huge! With 2.6 million square feet of exhibit space, it's the largest convention center in the nation. On Wednesday, I attended a construction industry career fair for Chicago Public School kids. Our small exhibits were dwarfed by the expansive hall. Read more about McCormick Place at http://www.mccormickplace.com