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.