Stanley Tigerman, Instant City Model, 1966. Photo Balthazar Korab.

Stanley Tigerman will give a talk at the Graham Foundation in conjunction with the exhibition on his work, Ceci n'est pas une rêverie: The Architecture of Stanley Tigerman.

A Chicago native and principal in the architectural and design firm of Tigerman McCurry, Stanley Tigerman (b. 1930) has undertaken nearly 400 projects, resulting in more than 175 built works. Tigerman trained in some of Chicago’s top firms from 1949 until 1959 including the office of Keck & Keck, Milton Schwartz, and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Following his graduation from Yale University, where he received both his BArch (1960) and MArch (1961) under the leadership of Paul Rudolph, Tigerman established his own firm, working with several partners, before founding Tigerman McCurry Architects in 1986 with his wife Margaret McCurry. Tigerman is the author of seven books including The Chicago Tribune Tower Competition and Late Entries (1980); Versus: An American Architect’s Alternatives (1982); The California Condition: A Pregnant Architecture (1982); The Architecture of Exile (1988); Stanley Tigerman: Buildings and Projects 1966-1989 (1989); Schlepping through Ambivalence (2011); his autobiography Designing Bridges to Burn (2011), and he has edited numerous others. In addition to being chosen as was one of the architects to represent the United States at the 1976 and 1980 Venice Biennales, the work of Tigerman’s firm has been exhibited in major galleries and art museums around the world, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

In addition to his own work, Tigerman has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to advancing the discussion of architecture in Chicago for more than five decades. During this time he was a founding member of the critically engaged group The Chicago Seven; he was the director of the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago between 1985 and 1993; and he co-founded ARCHEWORKS, a school and “socially oriented design laboratory” with Eva Maddox in 1994. Most recently, Tigerman co-curated the Graham funded exhibition Design on the Edge: Chicago Architects Reimagine Neighborhoods at the Chicago Architecture Foundation, featuring transit projects commissioned by the city’s top young design talent, and dedicated to the city’s new mayor Rahm Emanuel.

For more information on the exhibition, Ceci nʻest pas une rêverie: The Architecture of Stanley Tigerman, click here.