About

The west face of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra building. (Matthew Messner)
The west face of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra building. (Matthew Messner)


I founded The Operable Window in 2008 as a means of sharing and discussing design culture. For over four years the blog was maintained (with a brief hiatus while I was deployed to Afghanistan in 2009), and enjoyed a dedicated following of readers and contributors.

In 2010 I began contributing to a regular blog on Archinect.com, one of the most popular architecture websites in the world. That blog, The Shape of Cool, documented my time at the University of Illinois School of Architecture, while I worked towards a Masters of Architecture (M.Arch) and a Masters of Art in Design Criticism (MAD-Crit). 

In 2015 I became the Midwest Editor for The Architect's Newspaper, a nationally circulated print publication. During the following two years, I would write over 450 stories for print and web, which reached tens of thousands of readers. 

In the beginning of 2018 I stepped down from the editorial role at the Architect's Newspaper in order to focus on growing my own architecture practice, Messner Architecture. This blog will be part of that journey. While the content will be more focused than the earlier iteration of the blog, the tone will be the same. Each week, new original content will be posted along with links to the most interesting design and architecture stories from around the web.

Follow along, comment, share, and enjoy.

Matthew Messner