Saturday Retro: The Architects Speak!

For today, links to a selection of our interviews and encounters with architects down through the years.  Most of them are from a while back.  In some cases, they're from a time before a young architect's most famous buildings came into being.  In others, they show a seasoned architect at the time of the opening of a major project.  Whatever the context, each interview reveals different aspects of the thinking of some of most talented architects to work in Chicago.

Rem Koolhaas [2003] - “We're not trying to emulate the current mess.  We are just as interested in the sublime . . .”

Carol Ross Barney [2004]:  “When people comment on buildings, they're really talking about their comfort level . . . What they're really saying is ‘It's nothing I haven't seen before, so its OK with me!’”

John Ronan [2004]: “You don't see many great spaces anymore.  What's the great space that's been built in Chicago in the past 25 years?”

Tod Williams and Bille Tsien [2012] “It really stems from a very deep desire to try to make the world better, which is both naive, but also very strong in what we do, a motivator in what we do.”

Jeanne Gang [2004]: “When we make form, we're thinking about how we can make the identity fluctuate.  It doesn't have to be one thing all the time.”

Helmut Jahn [2003]: “Everything is left only as much as it needs to be . . . ”

The Reveal: Tod Williams and Billie Tsien's Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago

click images for larger view (highly recommended)

The Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts has its official opening this weekend with a Launch Logan Festival, Friday through Sunday, October 12-14, and an October 12th program Beware the Stairs are Always Moving: a conversation with Architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, 6:00 p.m. in the Logan Center's Performance Hall.  Read our profile of the building and its architects here.

 “I think in life it's generally true,” said architect Tod Williams, “everything's pushing to the more broadly based and generic, kind of universal answers.  I think that's the trend of the moment, and I think there's certain places, certain institutions, and people that go against that.  We go against that.”

He was responding to my question about architecture in the era of the supply chain, where it's all about maximizing efficiency through standardization and scale . . .

We had the opportunity to tour the this stunning new building, the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts with its architects, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien last Friday, and the result is this photo-essay.   Williams and Tsien talk to me about about how the building came about, how it works, and the challenges they faced in getting it done.  Images, in abundance.

Read:  The Reveal: Tod Williams and Billie Tsien's Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago

Farnsworth Alfresco with Schulze, Windhorst and Jacobs; Williams and Tsien on (and at) their new Logan Center for the Arts, John Van Bergen month - more for October

click images for larger view

Chicago has so many great architectural tours, we don't even try to list them in our October Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events, but there's an exceptional tour this Saturday for which, at this writing, there's still tickets available.  Farnsworth House and Docomomo Chicago Midwest is offering up Farnsworth House Alfresco this Saturday, October 6th.

And, yes, there is a picnic lunch included, but the real draw is the participation of the Franz Schulze and Edward Windhorst, co-authors of the highly anticipated New and Revised Edition of Mies van der Rohe, A Critical Biography, due out next month; plus Tom Jacobs of Krueck+Sexton, the project architect for recent restoration work on the historic home.  The $100 ticket price also includes bus transportation to and from CAF downtown, with a drive yourself ticketing also available. The actual event runs from 12:00 to 3:00 p.m, with bus pickup at CAF at 10:30 a.m., returning at 4:30 p.m.

Read our own piece recounting the history of Mies's masterwork, and the battle to save it, Glass House Struck by Gavel.

As a run-up to this years Open House Chicago, we've also added a Friday, October 12th lecture, Beware the Stairs Are Always Moving: a conversation with architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, 6:00 p.m. in the Performance Hall of the new Williams/Tsien designed Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts on the University of Chicago campus.  It's part of Logan Launch Fest, a three day festival celebrating the building's official opening, over 40 free events, from music, to film, to poetry, theater and more, showcasing the dizzying array of performance spaces incorporated in the building.

We should also mentioned a new exhibition at the Highland Park, which has declared October John van Bergen Month.  Events include an exhibition of photographs and artifacts of the work of the famed Prairie School architect at the Highland Park Historical Society, with a panel discussion on Prairie Architecture at the Highland Park Public Library on October 14th, and a house walk October 21st.

Among the over a dozen items this week, new IIT Dean of Architecture Wiel Arets lectures at Crown Hall Wednesday at 6:00 p.m., Related Companies discuss the resuscitation of the stalled Waterview Tower as 111 West Wacker, Thursday lunchtime for Friends of Downtown at the Cultural Center, the same day Commission of Chicago Landmarks fails to discuss the subject of Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital still again, Seaside Award-winning architect Scott Merrill lectures at the Driehaus Museum, and Chris Ware talks about and signs copies of his new book, Building Stories, at Unity Temple.  And if you can't make it to Farnsworth on Saturday, you can head over to the Art Institute, where Clare Lyster will be leading an "Archi-Salon" on the topic architecture’s external influences, such as transportation networks, within the exhibition space of the spectacular new show, Building:  Inside Studio Gang Architects.

Check out all seventy-plus great items on the October Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

Some views of the new Logan Center for the Arts - architects Williams & Tsien at Art Institute Panel Thursday

click images for larger view

Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, architects of the new Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, will be part of a panel discussion on University of Chicago Architecture taking place this Thursday, May 24th, from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. at Rubloff Auditorium at the Art Institute of Chicago.  Also participating will be architects James Carpenter and Ana Beha.  The event, sponsored by the Art Institute's Architecture and Design Society, will be moderated by Steven Wiesenthal, FAIA.  Tickets are $15.00 for the general public; $10.00 for members, $5.00 for students.  Information and registration here.

There are still nearly a dozen items still to come to check out on the May Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

Bloomingdale Trail, Cramer, Goldberger and Bey ponder Does Modernism Still Have Meaning?, Navy Pier, Kingscote, Williams and Tsien: May calendar blooms

We continue to add to the May 2012 Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

This week starts out today, Tuesday, May 8th, with a discussion of The Bloomingdale Trail at AIA Chicago at noon, and Archeworks Final Presentation + Review at Access Living at 6:00.  At 7:30 SUNY's Jack Quinan talks about Frank Lloyd Wright's Darwin D. Martin house at Unity Temple in Oak Park.

On Wednesday, the 9th, lunchtime at CAF, the Park District's Gia Biagi and Paul Seck and Matt Urbanski from Michael van Valkenburgh Associates talk about the plans for the renovation of North Grant Park.  At 6:00 p.m., at the Driehaus Museum, a/k/a Nickerson Mansion, Caitlin Emery talks about Stanford White's Kingscote Dining Room. (a repeat version of this lecture on Thursday is already full.)

And Thursday is logjam day, with Critic's Challenge: Does Modernism Still Have Meaning, a panel of Architect Magazine editor Ned Cramer, Lee Bey, and Vanity Fair architecture critic Paul Goldberger at Harry's Weese's Seventeenth Church of Christ Scientist going up against another great Chaddick Institute panel with  Larry Booth, Reuben Hedlund, Rick Fawell, John Schmidt and Jerry Butler offering up a Beyond Burnham Roundtable Discussion: Re-Envisioning Navy Pier, at CAF.

Over at the Merchandise Mart, there's this year's A-can-emy Awards Gala and Cocktail Party benefiting the Greater Chicago Food Depository.  Our indefatigable correspondent Bob Johnson has already scoped out the entries, and provides us the photograph of Mr. Peanut seen here.

Friday is Friends of the Parks 202 Parks Ball 23rd Annual Gala; Saturday the Second Annual Clarke House Museum History Symposium.  And that's just some of the events this coming week.

Coming up later in the month is Stanley Tigerman talking about Architecture and Education at AIA Chicago, Larry Shure on the Typography of Courtyard Apartments in Rogers Park for Landmarks Illinois at the Cultural Center, Tony Smith on TIFs at APA Chicago, and Michael Marshall of StructureCraft Buildings talking about bravura heavy timber construction of the new Arena Stage in DC and other structures making innovative use of wood.   

Ted Wolff talks about the Landscape Renovation at Graceland Cemetery for CAF on the 30th, and on the 24th Tod Williams and Billie Tsien will be part of a panel at the Art Institute to talk about their new Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts at the U of C.

It's a safe bet there'll be still more, but even now there are over three dozen great items still to come on the May Calendar  of Chicago Architectural Events.

Chicago Under Construction: The Logan Arts Center at the University of Chicago

click images for larger view

It's about midpoint along towards its scheduled completion next Spring, but the basic contours of the Tod Williams Billie Tsien designed Reva and David Logan Center for Creative and Performing Arts at 60th and Drexel are already becoming apparent.  The tower is reaching its full, 155-foot height.  (According to Emporis, a stipulation in the original plans for the Rockefeller Memorial Chapel down the street mandated that no structure on the campus ever exceed its 207 foot height.)

Currently clad in bright yellow gypsum sheathing, the long, lower expanse of the 170,000 square-foot project stretching almost down to 61st looks like the beginnings of a Walmart superstore, but the two-story space behind it will eventually host a wide range of functions from studios, classrooms, shop, a gallery, and no less than three auditoriums, including a 450-seat performance hall at the southeast end of the building.

Landscaped courtyards will buffer the structure from the landmark Lorado Taft home and studio, just to the east, with another lawn, even larger than the performance hall's footprint, separating that auditorium from the Ingleside Avenue.  Huge blocks of feta cheese are being assembled for further soundproofing.

The 11-story tower, itself, amidst numerous classrooms and practice rooms, will host even more auditoria: a screening room, performance spaces - one for dance, one for theater - and what promises to be a spectacular "performance penthouse" at the top, with the building cracking open to the northwest like a giant-yoked, rectangular egg to create a rooftop terrace.

Schuler Shook  are the theatre consultants; with Kirkegaard (the audio people, not the philosopher - at the U of C, you can never be sure) handling the acoustics.  Severud Associates are the structural engineers, Hargreaves Associates the landscape architect, Holabird and Root the local associate.

When it's all done, it should look something like this.

You can find a lot more information about the project, including a video of Tsien and Williams discussing their design,  and a live webcam,  at the U of C's  Logan Center website, here.