Chicago Tribune contest from 100 years ago comes to life

Photo: Carrie Shepherd/Axios

Visitors to a Loop office building can experience a live-action film of an alternative Chicago.

The big picture: " Welcome to Tribuneville: An Imaginary Vision of an Old Chicago That Could Have Been" is a digital, animated arts exhibition that shows what Michigan Avenue and Streeterville might look like if century-old drawings came to life.

• The illustrations are animated and projected on large vertical panels at 150 Media Stream, the public art installation at 150 N. Riverside.

Flashback: In June 1922, the Chicago Tribune launched an international architectural competition for a new headquarters, calling for "the most beautiful office building in the world."

The competition garnered more than 250 entries, and the paper's founder, Robert McCormick, selected the one that sits on Michigan Avenue today, albeit no longer as the home of a daily newspaper .

Welcome to Tribuneville at 150 N. Riverside. Photo: Courtesy of JaNae Contag.

State of play: Spanish architectural cartoonist and historian Klaus drew 60 designs to create a fantastically detailed world in various styles—Neo-Gothic, Beaux Arts, and Modernist—but also created fantasy by drawing suspended trolley cars and small flying submarines.

Klaus' original drawings. Photo courtesy of: Klaus.

What they're saying: "This competition is basically the most important architecture competition from the 20th century, and it just happens to be in Chicago, but this is a reference for everybody in the world," architect Iker Gil said at the exhibition's opening.

• Gil runs Chicago's MAS Context which co-curated the project with 150 Media Stream.

If you go: As part of Open House Chicago, "Welcome to Tribuneville" will be open to the public from 10am-5 pm this weekend.

• Electronic music artists JaNae Contag and Ryan Black will perform an experimental soundscape for the work tomorrow from 2 to 3 p.m.