Bob Thall: The New American Village

About the Exhibition

This exhibition examined and interpreted the ever-changing character of Chicago’s urban landscape, focusing on the area around O’Hare International Airport and the village of Schaumburg as examples of the new type of American suburb, the “edge city.” The work documented the rapidly changing metropolis through the inclusion of many new edge city components: corporate headquarters, townhouse developments, distribution centers, standardized retail outlets, and mandated natural resivours for open space. Through the distillation of architecture qualities and the landscape, the viewer was reminded of the difference between traditional urban fabric and the edge city. Finally, the work juxtaposes the ideas of developers, residents, and corporate owners triumphing in building exactly what they wanted and the quality of their vision.