IMI Illinois

Chicago’s newest neighborhood, “The 78,” is being built from the ground up in front of our very eyes!

From my perch on the Roosevelt Road bridge I can see McDonald’s Park, the new soccer stadium for the Chicago Fire, taking shape. The brick stadium will anchor the site, occupying about 10 of the 62 acres and setting a trend for decades of future construction in the neighborhood.

The stadium’s foundations and piles are in place, the concrete superstructure is in progress, and you can already begin to read the shape of the seating bowl. No surprise here, but in a nod to Chicago’s rich tradition of post-fire noncombustible masonry, the stadium will be clad in brick by union contractors and craftworkers.

The construction team is Pepper Construction, GMA Construction Group and A.L.L. Construction, working from the design by Gensler featuring Norman brick, corbels, and other details sure to elevate the stadium's appearance. The 22,000-seat stadium is targeted to open in spring 2028.

Chicago-area commercial construction, real estate, and design professionals can get the full story on this transformative project by attending Build it Better: Chicago Commercial Construction Forum on September 26 at the Obama Presidential Center. More information at https://info.imiweb.org/build-it-better-chicago-forum

Before stainless steel anchors and engineered wall ties, masonry had a beautifully simple solution built right into the system: the brick header.

In traditional brick construction, headers (those bricks laid perpendicular to the wall) weren’t just a pattern choice. They were structural. Each header physically tied the outer wythe to the backing wythes, creating a unified wall that worked together to resist loads, movement, and time itself.

The world’s oldest building material, masonry, is about more than just materials. It’s about methods refined over centuries. The knowledge of how to bond, tie, and distribute forces was embedded in the craft, executed by skilled masons who understood that durability starts with connection.

Today’s assemblies may be more advanced, but the principle remains the same: a wall is only as strong as how well it’s tied together.

Architecture students laying brick… 30 years of hands-on field trips!

We had an amazing turnout this week as we transformed the Bricklayers’ training center in suburban Chicago into a laboratory for architecture students to learn about masonry, tile, and terrazzo, and to develop an appreciation for these crafts.

About 100 students and 7 professors from the second year studio at Illinois Institute of Technology immersed themselves in masonry at the annual field trip organized by International Masonry Institute and executed by apprentice instructors at the BAC District Council Training Center.

IMI has been hosting these field trips for IIT architecture students for the past 30 years, going back to 1997.

The aspiring architects rotated through four hands-on stations dedicated to traditional bricklaying, masonry arches, terrazzo & large format ceramic tile, and rainscreen design & construction. The students will soon embark on their semester-long studio project in which they will apply a form of masonry they learned about on this field trip.

There’s no better place for emerging architects to learn about masonry than shoulder-to-shoulder with journeyman craftworkers. Programs like these help the students understand the complexities of the trade and the skills, dedication, and pride that BAC craftworkers bring to the job.

Hope you all can join us at McCormick Place next week.