2020 got off to a somewhat busier than expexted start, with a handful of quicker, smaller, exciting projects working their way into a schedule of slightly slower, bigger projects that were already in the works. Which is to say that there hasn't been much time to post any updates over here. Wherewithall and Superkhana International both got some nice year-end accolades, with Wherewithall being nominated as a finalist for Best Restaurant Design by Eater Chicago, and both restaurants landing on Eater Chicago's Five Most Beautiful Restaurants and Bars of 2019 list. For those keeping score, that means 100% of the restaurants that AO designed in 2019 made up 40% of that particular list.

Illinois Tech Magazine, the alumni publication of my alma mater - Illinois Institute of Technology - ran a nice feature that hightlighted these two projects as well.

Some other news would be that I started teaching part time this semester at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, in the Historic Preservation department. With Carla Bruni, we're teaching a class called Violence Against Buildings, exploring the spectrum of reasons why we tear down valued pieces of our built environment, and the various forms of trauma this imparts on ambient communities. Students will be researching and memorializing lost or threatened historic spaces and places.

Dr. Franklin Cosey-Gay discusses the origin of the 1919 Race Riots and Chicago’s historic institutionalized racism/planned segregation

Finally, Adaptive Operations ceased squatting in a dozen different locations and moved into its new office/studio space, hidden away in a secret location in Bridgeport, which it shares with two of its favorite record labels.