Virtual Burnham Initiative

FAIN: HD-50312-08

Lake Forest College (Lake Forest, IL 60045-2338)
Davis Schneiderman (Project Director: October 2007 to September 2010)

The development of the Virtual Burnham Initiative (VBI), a multimedia project that would examine the history and legacy of Daniel H. Burnham's and Edward H. Bennett's Plan of Chicago (1909).

Lake Forest Colleges seeks a $25,000 grant from the NEH to begin work on the Virtual Burnham Initiative (VBI). Combining historical research, 3-D models, curriculum development and philosophical debate, the VBI will capitalize on new technology and community networking to facilitate an open, ongoing discussion of Chicagoland's development among educational audiences at the college and high school levels. In the VBI's start-up phase, a Chicago-area coalition led by Lake Forest College will transform the flat images, maps, and text of Burnham's Plan into 3-D models, accessible through an organized project host website. The VBI will serve as a model for other humanities-based initiatives as it is a project about the community that can become part of the community offering a heretofore impossible organization of material related to the Plan with a unique application of different virtual modeling technologies to enhance collaborative humanities scholarship.