2004 Pritzker Prize-winner Zaha Hadid and and Ben van Berkel will be contributing pavilions to Millennium Park next year as part of the Burnham Plan centennial celebration next year. But possibly more exciting:

"Also educators, they and their studios will participate at Chicago architecture schools in workshops and presentations related to the pavilion projects, Hadid at Illinois Institute of Technology and van Berkel at the University of Illinois at Chicago."

Neat choices. The Zaha Hadid Blog is a good intro to her work. She's also a painter, and her work in that field is a little bit along the lines of Yes album covers. Her architecture puts me in the mind of Star Wars come to life, but reasonable people will disagree--for example, other reasonable people think her work looks like something out of Battlestar Galactica. The park, I think, will temper the effect, so hopefully it won't give me the creeps too much.

Here's a tour of van Berkel's Astrohome (sensing a theme?). Five Franklin Place reminds me of Aqua. His Mobius House made a splash awhile back.