Tuesday · August · 11 · 2026
DST“The grey-ey'd morn smiles on the frowning night.”
— William Shakespeare
Sun & daylight
The sun rises at 05:55 and sets at 19:58 in Chicago today, giving 14h 2m of daylight. Solar noon is at 12:57.
05:55
Sunrise
12:57
Noon
19:58
Sunset
Midnight
00:57
Sunrise
05:55
Solar noon
12:57
Sunset
19:58
Solar midnight
00:57
Daylight
14h 2m
Daylight runs about 15h 13m around the June solstice and 9h 7m around the December solstice.
Daylight saving time
Chicago observes daylight saving time. In 2026, clocks move forward to UTC−5 on March 8 and move back to UTC−6 on November 1. Chicago is currently on daylight saving time.
Mar 8
Forward · UTC−5
Nov 1
Back · UTC−6
Aug 11
Today
The shaded band marks the daylight saving period.
Public holidays
United States has no public holidays in August 2026.
Architecture
Chicago rebuilt itself after the fire by working out the steel frame, and it has been arguing about what to hang on that frame ever since. Structure here is something to show rather than cover.
Completed 2009
Renzo Piano
An addition to the Art Institute facing Millennium Park. Renzo Piano floated a white aluminium sunscreen above the whole roof, tuned so the top galleries take north light without direct sun. A steel bridge crosses Monroe Street to the park, which turns the museum's back into a second front. The galleries below are plain rooms, and the roof does the work.
Completed 2009
Studio Gang
A residential and hotel tower beside Lakeshore East. Jeanne Gang varied the shape of every concrete balcony slab, so the stack reads as a rippling surface instead of a pile of identical floors. The contours follow views, sun and wind rather than a pattern. A tower of ordinary plans becomes topography through the one element that was going to be there anyway.
Completed 1969
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
A mixed-use tower on North Michigan Avenue. Fazlur Rahman Khan and Bruce Graham braced it with an exterior diagonal frame, so the tapering shaft carries wind through its skin rather than through a core alone. The X braces are left exposed, and the black anodised aluminium makes them the elevation. Stacking apartments above offices was unusual, and the structure is what made the height affordable.
Completed 1956
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
The architecture school at Illinois Institute of Technology. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe hung the roof from four steel plate girders sitting above it, which leaves the main floor as one room with no interior columns. Partitions stop short of the ceiling so the volume stays legible from any corner. It is his universal space built at teaching scale, where what happens inside can change without the building changing.
Completed 1910
Frank Lloyd Wright
A house in Hyde Park built for a bicycle manufacturer. Frank Lloyd Wright pushed the roofs so far past the walls that the eaves shade the glass with no visible support at the corners. The plan runs as two long volumes sliding past each other around a central chimney. It is the clearest built statement of the Prairie house before Wright left for Europe.