Sunday, May 04, 2008

Renzo Piano Art Institute Bridge Begins to Take Flight

Courtesy of Bob Johnson, we offer you these photos of the current state of the work on the Nichols Bridgeway, the Renzo Piano designed, 615-long incline designed to suck visitors from Millennium Park up into the Art Institute of Chicago's new Modern Wing, scheduled to open, along with the bridge, early next year. Piano may have missed a prime opportunity. Judging from these pictures, his structure, bent to the west, would have made a great water slide, depositing delighted passengers directly on the shallow sea of Jaume Plensa's Crown Fountain.

We'll have a photoessay with lots of our own pictures of both the Modern Wing and the Nichols Bridgeway soon, but for now here's a couple of samples.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

How much more junk can we put in the park? There must be 1000 acres in there!

Seriously - Grant Park isnt a park. Its landscaped landfill between streets. The Park needs to become a real Park. A place to go besides controlled, formal events.

Anonymous said...

Grant Park is not going to become Central Park, especially with LSD, Columbus, etc.

Anonymous said...

Okay, so I'm sure the engineers put those roof slats through plenty of testing, but doesn't anyone else think that placing a few thousand wing-shapped elements on top of a roof might be a bad thing in the windy city?