City in a Snow Globe presented a series of imagined worlds where Chicago’s downtown lakefront is alive with activity in the winter months. The exhibition asked visitors to imagine the possibilities of Chicago’s beautiful public lakefront.

City in a Snow Globe consists of five individual scale models of winter scenes that visitors can peer into. They include Polar Bear Plunge accommodations, monumental snow men, winterized displays at Buckingham Fountain, plus more novel and exciting ways to inhabit the lakefront when it’s cold outside.

Accompanying the second-floor exhibition at the Chicago Architecture Center, was a display on the first floor featuring more than two dozen snow globes from local designers and architecture firms. Each participant was asked to design around the theme of embracing Chicago winters. The results were fantastical and imaginative interpretations of what it means to be in the city during the coldest months.