Well, it’s been forever since I’ve spent anytime shooting much of anything around Chicago. Today I had about a 30 minute window to squeeze in some shots before picking my kids up from school, so I headed over to the Clark Park Boathouse designed by my favorite Chicago architectural firm, Studio Gang Architects. You might remember a past post about the building Aqua, which was also designed by this team of visionaries. As well as that really amazing pavilion in Lincoln Park.
I drive by these boathouses no less than 5 times a week, as they’re quite close to my house and right on the way to the kids gymnastics and soccer. Needless to say, they’ve been on my list to photograph since they were completed last year; it’s taken far too long to actually get around to accomplishing this. Even though today was cold and ridiculously windy, especially by the river, I needed to get out and create something. We had some sunshine, sadly unusual this past week, and I’ve been cooped up in the house for nearly a week with one sick kid. I desperately  needed to do something to break out of the rut and it’s killing me that I’ve hardly photographed Chicago this year. Today’s sunshine and slightly warmer temps pushed me to find a way to fit in some shots.
While I only spent about 30 minutes photographing the boathouse, I certainly could have spent much more time. The roof line in particular is so interesting. I love how Studio Gang incorporated the rhythmic rowing motion here, especially since this is the home of the Chicago Rowing Foundation. I’d love to get aerial shots or be up on a crane of some sort to be eye level with the roof line to really show off how amazing this is. One can keep wishing….for now here are some shots from the ground.
One last note, these first three shots really remind me of Louis Kahn’s Salk Institute in San Diego, which I photographed earlier this year. Maybe it’s just me or the way in which I photographed both designs but you can decide for yourself, here and here, if you’d like.

While all these images are from the outside, I did make a couple inside as well. If you’d like to see those and the color versions of most of these above you can see all the images in the Flickr set here.