Plaza Sweet? Miesian Illinois Center grows Curves

click images for larger view

When last we wrote about Illinois Center, we talked about the the potential of its plaza, one level up, south of Wacker and a half-block behind Michigan Avenue.  It's the public space around Illinois Center One, designed by the Office of Mies van der Rohe and completed in 1970, and Illinois Center Two, designed by the successor firm of Fujikawa, Conterato, Lohan and Associates and completed in 1972.  Both are currently owned by CommonWealth REIT.  In 2011, on the northern half of the plaza, they replaced the crumbling Miesian-grid paving with a continuous herringbone carpet.  Previously, we wrote about proposal from Hicks Architectural Group to enliven the plaza with a restaurant seating space on the riverfront part of the plaza.  That didn't happen.  But we do have this new furniture . . .

. . .black wicker that feels amazingly similar to the outdoor seating at the new Howells and Hood restaurant at Tribune Tower.  I'm told during the day there are cushions.  The furniture looks a bit lost amidst the empty sweep of the north end of the plaza . . .

. . . but along the east, the curved seating groups brings a bit of coziness to the severe grandeur of the glass towers.

Across from those towers, the plaza's eastern boundary is formed by the soaring, back-alley facades of 333 North Michigan and the Old Republic Building, which face Michigan avenue and were built in the 1920s, when the only thing behind them was the Illinois Center railyards.  Last week, the Permit Review committee of the Commission on Chicago Landmarks considered a proposal to mount louvers and decorative grills on 333's eastern elevation. We weren't able to get to the meeting, and our requests for additional information - or renderings - have been declined.

back of Old Republic (left) and 333 North Michigan (right)

Now it's the south end of the plaza's turn to be closed off behind chain-link fencing as another rehab is under way.  Again, ownership is as tight as a clam about providing information, so everything we know comes from the banner spread out on the facade.

seriously - click to see it larger

According to that banner, the project is a collaboration between Goettsch Partners - which recently completed a very handsome redesign of the Wrigley Building Plaza - and Wolff Landscape Architecture.

In 2008, the Chicago Loop Alliance had proposed a Spanish Steps transition at Water Street between Michigan Avenue and Illinois Center's upper plaza.

That didn't happen.  In fact, the gracious original stair . . .

. . . has been closed off for years.

The current rehab re-opens that stair.  As in the riverfront plaza to the north, in the reconstruction of the southern half of the plaza, the Miesian grid of the paving has been expunged, and the base of the right-angled glass boxes enveloped in curving, amoeba-like extrusions of plantings.  At least in the rendering, the monochrome of the structures is set off with bright magenta seating.

We'll have to wait until 2014 to see how it all works out in reality.  Will sacrificing Miesian purity to a looser, softer design succeed in making the place more contemporary?  Will it allow the plaza to finally achieve its potential as a vital civic gateway to the new East Side?

Read More: 

Herringbone floods and the hidden potential of an overlooked Chicago gem.

Three (Small) Chicago Fixes

Fixing Illinois Center:  Another Design Proposal

The $2 Million Bargain: the Restored Wrigley Building Plaza

Fixing Illinois Center: Another Design Proposal

click images for larger view (renderings courtesy Hicks Architectural Group)

We've written a couple times of the potential of the much-maligned Illinois Center, the assembly of Mies van der Rohe-styled skyscrapers bunkered off of the Mag Mile.

The complex includes a claustrophobic retail concourse at street level,  and a large - and underused - open plaza above.  Part of the underuse is intentional.  The plaza is set behind 333 North Michigan and the Old Republic Insurance Building, and there is no direct connection to Michigan Avenue.  The last time we looked, a southern access stair off of east South Water was still boarded up, and the staircase leading up from east Wacker continues to deteriorate.

In 2011, the plaza's original Miesian grid paving was replaced with a carpet of Chicago concrete pavers in a herringbone pattern.  (You can still see the original design on the south side of the plaza near Boulevard Towers North).  The project was initiated by the former owners of One and Two Illinois Center, Parkway Properties, to address water leakage problems into the retail spaces below.

The company that designed that fix, Hicks Architectural Group, also presented Parkway with some ideas for upgrading both the plaza and the street-level entrances, moving the present grand staircase, and shifting the Wacker Drive entrance eastward to lead directly into the concourse/pedway.

The plan also looked at creating a seasonal, 200-seat dining area on the southernmost part of the plaza, partially sheltered under the One  Illinois Center Building, with striking views of the Chicago River, Pioneer Plaza, the Wrigley Building and Tribune Tower.

When you're dealing with a Mies van der Rohe building - and One Illinois Center actually began construction while Mies was still alive, under the direction of his office - there's always concern about preserving the integrity of the design. but while a traditional Miesian arcade sets the lobby back the width of one column-to-column center; at One Illinois Center that ratio is doubled.  It looks not merely empty, but unfinished. 

Completely over only four weeks, the Hicks proposal was a very preliminary study.  Reportedly Parkway liked the plan, but it wasn't  - like the plaza repair - essential to unloading the buildings, which Parkway did last year, selling both to Massachusetts-based Commonwealth REIT.

Commonwealth may have gotten itself a bargain. The $151 million it paid for One Illinois Center was far less than the $198 million price at which Parkway acquired the property in 2006, and it's reported to be 95% leased.  But with a new owner, the planning by Hicks was at an end. 

The last major renovation of the properties was in the late 1990's.  Since then, Illinois Center finds itself in a potential sweet spot between the burgeoning population of Lakeshore East and the traditional tourist flow of North Michigan Avenue.  A retrofit of Illinois Center that integrates it into the fabric of the city, both spatially and functionally, is not just a civic imperative, but a potentially renumerative investment.

Herringbone floods and the hidden potential of an overlooked Chicago gem

A couple of year's ago, Hyde Park's Sam Guard had tipped me off about an impending change at the upper-level outdoor plaza at Illinois Center. The basic plan for Illinois Center had been designed by Mies van der Rohe, as well as the first building, One Illinois Center, completed in 1970, the year after Mies' death. The paving design followed the grid of the buildings . . .

 click images for larger view

and, as you can see, it had been allowed to deteriorate over time.  Add to the mix that moisture was reported to be seeping into the level below, required a resurfacing of the plaza. At the time I was talking with Sam Guard, the new plan had already become visible in the driveways, resurfaced in a darker, simpler interlocking pattern of squares and rectangles . . .

I didn't get much a response when I asked Illinois Center about their plans in 2009.  Nothing seemed to be happening, so I moved on to other things, but a recent visit revealed that it's now the plaza's turn.  The original geometric paving is being replaced by a continuous carpet of herringbone, with lighter pavers of exposed-aggregate Chicago-style concrete . . .

It's not a tragedy, but it's certainly a disconnect from the design of the buildings.  As I've written before in regards to Buckingham Fountain, I'm not a fan of these massive undifferentiated carpets.  What might be distinctive in smaller implementations, or as a composite in a more detailed general design, becomes numbingly generic when slathered across a huge surface like ketchup on a bad burger.  It may be cheaper to maintain, but it's just plain lazy.  At the Miesian Illinois Center, the endless herringbone is like wearing sneakers with black tie. I know it's done, but that doesn't necessarily make it a good idea.

Which is too bad, because in my mind, the upper plaza at Illinois Center is one of Chicago's unrealized gems.  It's been described as cramped and windswept, but I don't find it cramped at all, nor, whenever I visit, especially windswept.  It may not be the greatest place to be on a freezing winter day, but the same could be said for just about any downtown plaza under those conditions.  On a warmer day,  and especially at night, the way you see the buildings slide past each other as you traverse the plaza is quite beautiful.

I love the way the plaza plays off the modernist towers to the east and south to a shear western wall made up of the raw backsides of the older Michigan avenue structures.  The mature landscaping is also quite attractive, small plantings, flowers.  I love especially the tall trees, delicate green leaves and brown trunks rising in counterpoint to synthetic black of the monolithic towers.

Illinois Center, of course, became the poster child for the revolt against modernism, its towers the epitome of the repetitive black box, it's concourse a low-ceiling second tier shopping mall with the charm stripped away.  It didn't help that the complex was twice removed from the rest of the city, both stuck behind older structures like the Art Deco 333 North Michigan and the neo-classical Republic Insurance Building, and its office lobby's raised up a level above Michigan Avenue.

That raised plaza, however, has now become the bridge to the massive residential development to the east.  Until you get to the sunken park of Lake Shore East, it's all on the same level of the Illinois Center plaza.

Two things are missing to make the plaza a real asset. First off, the kind of amenities that make a plaza a destination.  Changing this needn't be an ordeal  A few kiosks, and maybe a discreet dumbwaiter structure that would allow the broad expanse overlooking the Chicago river . . .

to become a dining plaza during the warmer months.

The second is a way to end Illinois Center's isolation from the Mag Mile, a link to draw up people from Michigan Avenue. In 2008, the Chicago Loop Alliance and the Urban Land Institute Chicago chapter floating a proposal for creating a Chicago equivalent of Rome's Spanish Steps to mediate between Michigan Avenue and the plaza.

Nothing came of it, and now the gracious stairway entrance off of South Water . . .

 . . . has been sealed off, as has, last time I checked,  the stair from East Wacker.  Hopefully, this is temporary, and they'll return in good condition.

To me the most intriguing possibility lies in a small gap between the buildings on Michigan Avenue . . .

It's not wide enough to create a Spanish Steps style grandeur, but, replacing the existing fire escapes, it's just wide enough to create something so visually arresting that it would pique the interests of the passersby to see just where that funky staircase led.  The Chicago Loop Alliance has been instrumental in bringing art back downtown.  Sponsorship of an architectural competition for the design of that stairway could both eliminate an unsightly scar on the Mag Mile and provide the needed bridge between Illinois Center and the rest of the city.