A reflection on Milwaukee architecture
Milwaukee has a striking tapestry of architectural styles—from the warm hues of historic Cream City brick to the sleek silhouettes of modern design. Each building tells a story, a narrative woven into the city’s cultural and structural fabric.
It’s this story that artists and architects David Freeland and Brennan Buck set out to capture when commissioned for the We Energies Foundation Art Collection. As trained architects, they were drawn not only to the iconic facades but to the ingenuity and craftsmanship found within.
Focusing on three of Milwaukee’s landmark buildings with unique styles—City Hall, the Chapel of Mary Immaculate at Alverno College and the Milwaukee Art Museum—the duo, known collectively as FreelandBuck, reimagined them into a single work titled Alive and Coarse and Strong. The piece is both homage and exploration, celebrating the enduring spirit of Milwaukee’s built environment.
“The name of the piece is taken from a poem by Carl Sandburg,” Buck said. “The poem was written about Chicago but also seems to apply to Milwaukee and the physicality and tactility of the city and all the labor that went into making it. The piece is trying to get at some of those qualities through the architecture of the city.”
FreelandBuck has been collaborating since their days as graduate students at UCLA, where they first became intrigued by the ways digital technology was reshaping the process of design and fabrication.
For their commission with the Wisconsin Center District, the duo began by traveling to Milwaukee to visit the buildings they planned to feature. Using photographs captured during that visit, they constructed a digital collage that brought the structures together into a single, cohesive image.
Next came the physical transformation. They assembled a custom composite of wood and No. 8 stainless steel—a material known for its mirror-like reflectivity—to capture some of the reflections found in the buildings they discovered. Once the collage was finalized, the image was printed directly onto the composite surface, blending digital and tactile craftsmanship.
The result is a multi-layered work that reflects not just the city’s architecture, but its surroundings—literally. Thanks to the reflective steel, a fourth structure—the neighboring UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena—enters the piece depending on the viewer’s perspective.
“One thing people might notice about the artwork is the pattern of pixels that makes up the image,” said David Freeland. “There are gaps between them where you can see the wood and steel behind them. That was a way to give us another layer of detail and interest to the piece at a more closeup level and also suggest the kind of digital process involved in the making of it with the pixels themselves. We wanted to blur the layering that exists between the digital and physical realm to create a mixed reality.”
Though strangers to Milwaukee living on opposite coasts from each other, FreelandBuck wanted the piece to capture and convey both the past, present and future of the city. They do this by giving a nod to Milwaukee’s high-tech future by using precision manufacturing to evoke the cutting-edge fabrication common in Milwaukee today.
They saw that as a fitting message for the expanded and modernized Baird Center.
“One thing that drew us to this project was Milwaukee’s many authors, architects, designers and craftspeople and the many styles they used to build the city,” Buck said. “That’s one thing the artwork is trying to capture: the differences and the eclectic fabric of the city.”
Alive and Coarse and Strong is part of the We Energies Foundation Art Collection located at Baird Center. You can discover more about the artists and their works at https://bairdcenter.com/art-collection/