Orchestra Hall, Chicago, Illinois, Detail Drawings 1905 - 1910

This detailed drawing of Orchestra Hall in Chicago by D.H. Burnham & Co. isn't exactly a painting, but it’s a kind of constructed reality, laid out in lines and numbers. I can imagine someone bending over the paper, totally absorbed in the act of translating an idea into something buildable. I can almost feel the weight of those calculations, the need for precision, but also, the freedom to imagine. What were they thinking when they drew those lines, those tiny notations? Were they thinking about the music that would fill the hall, or just the nuts and bolts of keeping it all up? The materials here are just paper and ink, but the drawing is really about the heavy stuff – concrete, steel. It’s a reminder that even the most solid things start as ideas, as marks on a page. It makes me think about how we build our own worlds, one line, one decision at a time.