The Answer To Making Cities More Family-Friendly? Courtyards

New housing experiments with courtyards show that this age-old design approach can still deliver for cities struggling to provide homes for families.

The population of children under five is shrinking across the US. That group has decreased most rapidly in big cities: 14% in Los Angeles County, 18% percent in New York City and 15% percent in Cook County, Illinois, which includes Chicago.

Via Bloomberg

New Google rendering gives an early glimpse of former Thompson Center atrium's future

The rendering obtained by the Sun-Times is the first look Google has provided of its vision for the remade interior of the Helmut Jahn-designed icon.

Via Chicago Sun-Times

How an 1884 painting at Chicago's Art Institute saved Bill Murray's life

A social media clip of a 2014 video of actor Bill Murray talking about a painting that he said saved his life recently got the attention of CBS News Chicago.

I think it's called 'The Song of the Lark,' and it's a woman working in a field and there's a sunrise behind her, Murray said in the clip.

Murray said it was early on in his career and he was feeling hopeless after a performance. So CBS News Chicago's Marie Saavedra went looking for that painting.

Via CBS News

Old Master forgeries’ second lives as teaching tools

What is the afterlife of an art forgery? Numerous stories on counterfeits end once the trickery has been unmasked, the coterie corralled and the investigation closed. But in some cases, known fakes eventually move on to become something surprising: practical tools used by art and educational institutions to sharpen scholars’ connoisseurship.

Via The Art Newspaper