Concrete Culture situates Chicago’s concrete architecture within contemporary international dialogues by illuminating the material’s cultural significance, as well as its chemical, ecological, and tectonic capacities for shaping our urban futures.
UIC School of Architecture
UIC College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts
Alphawood Foundation
Chicago Architecture Center
Session 3:
Oct 4th, 2025
WHAT IS POSSIBLE
Panelists in this session will consider the future of concrete in architecture and urbanism through speculative ideas, emerging technologies, and inventive design.
Bob Bruegmann
Participant
Historian and critic of the built environment, received his PhD in 1976 from the University of Pennsylvania. In 1978 he joined the faculty of the University of Illinois at Chicago where he is currently Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Art History, Architecture and Urban Planning. Among his books are The Architects and the City: Holabird & Roche of Chicago 1880-1918; Sprawl: A Compact History,; The Architecture of Harry Weese; Art Deco Chicago: Designing Modern America; and a novel, Roman Ivory. His main areas of research are the history of architecture, urban planning, landscape and historic preservation.
Iker Gil
Participant
Founding partner of MAS Studio, the founder of the nonprofit MAS Context, and the Executive Director of the SOM Foundation. Gil has edited or coedited several books, including Radical Logic: On the Work of Ensamble Studio and Shanghai Transforming. He has curated multiple exhibitions, including Nocturnal Landscapes, Poured Architecture: Sergio Prego on Miguel Fisac, and BOLD: Alternative Scenarios for Chicago. He was cocurator of Exhibit Columbus 2020–2021 and associate curator of the US Pavilion for the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. Gil was the 2024 Victor A. Morgenstern Family Visiting Chair in Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) along with architect Michel Rojkind.
Thomas Leslie
Participant
FAIA, teaches building science, history, and design at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Since practicing with Norman Foster and Partners, London, he has held appointments at the University of Technology-Sydney, Australia, the Bauhaus-Universität in Weimar, Germany, the Università di Bologna, Iowa State University, and Northwestern University. Leslie is the author of Chicago Skyscrapers, 1871-1934 (2013), Beauty’s Rigor: Patterns of Production in the Work of Pier Luigi Nervi (2017), and Chicago Skyscrapers, 1934-1986 (2023), which received the 2024 Pattis Family Foundation Chicago Book Award from the Newberry Library. He was the Booth Family Rome Prize Fellow in Historic Preservation at the American Academy in Rome in 2013-2014.
Amy Slaton
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Alexander Eisenschmidt
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