Lee Bey's latest WBEZ feature deals with the life and death of the Edens Theater, a modernist temple to moving pictures dubbed "the beautiful bird". Alone in its grandeur, particularly in the virgin suburban environment of early 1960s Northbrook, the theater was demolished—along with its larger neighboring offspring—to make way for a shopping mall. Surprise, surprise. Reminiscing on the 1963 theater's futuristic "hyperbolic paraboloid" design, C. William Brubaker of Perkins + Will simply states that "most theaters are big shoeboxes... but this was a true piece of architecture". Bey cobbled together a fine half-hour public broadcast made following the mid-90s demolition. Go check it out! [WBEZ]
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