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A daily blog on architecture in Chicago, and other topics cultural, political and mineral.
Click on the COMMENTS link under each post to join the discussion.
Legendary novelist Norman Mailer may have left behind a mountain of prose, but he also left behind a ton of Legos: a 15,000 piece "City of the Future."The image of such a construction popping up, Rosebud-like, in a warehouse of the late author's belongings sent me back to my copy of Mailer's 1966 Cannibals and Christians, in which the following photograph, by Simeon C. Marshall, forms the frontispiece.
If we are to spare the countryside, if we are to protect the style of the small town and of the exclusive suburb, keep the organic center of the metropolis and the old neighborhoods, maintain those few remaining streets where the tradition of the nineteenth century and the muse of eighteenth century still linger on the mood in the summer cool of any evening, if we are to avoid a megalopolis five hundred miles long, a city without shape or exit, a nightmare of ranch houses, highways, suburbs and industrial sludge . . . then there is only one solution: the cities must climb, they must not spread, they must build up, not by increments, but by leaps, up and up, up to the heavens.And so Mailer, working with Eldred Mowery, Jr., created an expression of his vision in a 7 foot high model constructed out of 20,000 Legos, a "vertical city of the future more than a half mile high, near to three-quarters of a mile in length, with 15,000 apartments for 50,000 people." Far from offering up a classicist's idyll, it out-Jetsons anything Wright or Corbu ever envisioned. Mailer wondered whether "a large fraction of the population would find it reasonable to live one hundred or two hundred stories in the air." Garrett Kelleher is probably pondering that same question this very moment.
Special tax districts hit wallets but spur growth, study finds. Study says spurring growth is trade-offCrain's Chicago Business, which along its political reporter Greg Hinz has been uncovering the stink of the city's TIF slush funds, ran its own story with:
TIF programs need reform: Civic FederationThe most hallucinatory conclusion of the Civic Federation study, as reported in Crain's, is that while TIF's raise taxes on the parts of the city not in a TIF, that's not a really a problem, because "when the district expires, all property-tax revenues, including that from the new growth, return to the regular pool shared by the city, county, public schools and other local governments."
Brooklyn, however, beautiful Brooklyn, grew beneath the skyscrapers of Manhattan, so it never became a great city, merely an asphalt herbarium for talent destined to cross the river. Chicago did not have Manhattan to preempt the top branches, so it grew up from the savory of its neighborhoods to some of the best high-rise architecture in the world, and because its people were Poles and Ukrainians and Czechs as well as Irish and the rest, the city had Byzantine corners worthy of Prague or Moscow, odd tortured attractive drawbridges over the Chicago River, huge Gothic spires like the skyscraper which held the Chicago Tribune, curves and abutments and balconies in cylindrical structures thirty stories high twisting in and out of the curves of the river, and fine balustrades in its parks. Chicago had a North Side on Lake Shore Drive where the most elegant apartment buildings in the world could be found -- Sutton Place in New York betrayed the cost analyst in the eye of the architect next to these palaces of glass and charcoal colored steel. In superb back streets behind the towers on the lake were brownstones which spoke of ironies, cupidities and intricate ambition in the fists of the robber barons who commissioned them--substantiality, hard work, heavy drinking, carnal meats of pleasure, and a Midwestern sense of how to arrive at upper-class decorum, were also in the American grandeur of these few streets . . .
London | Chicago | |
Olympic size | ||
80,000 seats | 80,000 seats | |
Post-Olympic size | ||
25,000 seat stadium | 5,000 seat amphitheatre | |
Mayoral Hyperbole | ||
" . . . the best stadium ever constructed anywhere on the planet.” - Ken Livingstone | ". . . will create an urban legacy that will outlive the end of the Olympic Games" - Richard M. Daley | |
Original Cost Estimate | ||
£280,000,000 ($590,000,000) (2004) | $300,000,000 (September, 2006) | |
Latest Cost Estimate | ||
£496,000,000 ($1,044,000,000) (November, 2007) | $366,000,000 (June, 2007) | |
Initial Reaction to Revised Design | ||
"a bowl of blancmange" | still awaiting first revision |
"Because of the architectural significance of our building, the Condominium Association holds a common law copyright on the use of the Association name and building image. This means that under Federal and Illinois law, advertisers, movie makers and others cannot use the Association name or image without first obtaining express written permission from the Association . ."Bloggers such as Marina City Online have been having a field exposing the shear stupidity of the declaration, reportedly drafted by the board's long-time attorney Ellis Levin, a long way away from his days as a progressive, independent legislator.
Alexandria, VirginiaNo doubt the MTCA will soon be attempting to shake them down for royalties.
Corpus Christi, Texas
Marina del Rey, California
Oceanside, North Carolina
Beirut, Lebanon
Chennai, India
Dubai