A daily blog on architecture in Chicago, and other topics cultural, political and mineral.
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Architects? We've got Diana Balmori Tuesday at AIC, Ben van Berkel Thursday at Crown Hall, and later, in the month, Herman Hertzberger at IIT, Emmanuel Petit at UIC . . .
John Vinci on Restoring the Auditorium Building . . .
and then, again at Crown Hall, MVRDV's Winy Maas . .
Elements?
There's water, both an Archeworks Chicago Expander session at AIA Chicago, and a Great Lakes Symposium - Designing for Lifealong the Water's Edge at the Chicago Architecture Foundation. SEAOI has an Anchorage to Concrete symposium, and Nate Lielasus takes on The Spotted Stone, Quarried in Chicago, at AIA Chicago.
Tim Samuelson leads a curator's talk of his don't-miss exhibition, Mecca Flat Blues, at the Cultural Center. You may take in the Chicago Design Exchange's Critical Pitches at the Graham, where the Chicago Architectural Club will announce the winners of its 2014 Emerging Visions competition. You can also learn about the 1893 World's Columbia Exposition's Garden in the Phoenix in Jackson Park from Robert Karr Jr. in a Friends of the Parks lecture, and help honor John A Terlato, Joe Antunovich and Theaster Gates as Legendary Landmarks at Landmarks Illinois annual gala at the Four Seasons.
Emily A. Remus discusses Consumer's Metropolis: The Loop in the Age of Daniel Burnham, at the Driehaus, while Wednesdays lunchtime at CAF, Joe Valerio will present his Earl Shapiro Hall,Don J. McKay of Nagle Hartray talks about their Fountaindale Public Library, and JGMA's Juan Gabriel Moreno's discusses their Northeastern Illinois University - El Centro Campus.
March 27th brings Mies Pieces, the Mies van der Rohe Society's
celebration of what would have been the architects 128th birthday, at
Crown Hall.
Just this week, Tuesday to Saturday, there are no fewer than 18 events. Tuesday is logjam day, with Balmori, Luftwerk's Petra Bachmaier and Sean Gallero, Pecha Kucha Chicago Volume #30 and SEAOI's rescheduled dinner meeting on Hurricane Sandy and Coastline Rebuilding Efforts. Wednesday lunchtime at CAF, there's Jerry Johnson of Perkins+Will talking about Cedar Ridge High, and Susan Vreeland discussing the “girls” of Louis Tiffany's studio, and the Grant Park Advisory Council providing updates on such projects as Maggie Daley Park and the South Grant Park Skate Park. Thursday, Yue Zhang discussed her book The Fragmented Politics of Urban Preservation: Beijing, Chicago and Paris at the Great Cities Institute, and Anthony Rubano talks about Postwar Suburban Housing at the Oak Park Public Library.
Glascow-based sculptor Andy Scott has been working on the project since at least 2008, two nearly 100-foot-high horse head sculptures, mosaics of interconnected plates of steel designed to resist corrosion, to be erected by the River Carron in Scotland to become the visual icons of a new 740 acre park called The Helix being created on underused land between Falkirk and Grangemouth. Below, from Scott's website, is the artist with two of his models.
The Kelpies, as the sculpture is called, refers to the mythical beast said to haunt Scottish waterways, shifting between spirit and flesh, luring children to ride on the adhesive-like surface of its back, only to then plunge to the bottom of the river to drown them and eat their hearts and livers. Not exactly a tourist-magnet tale, especially when you consider that one story says the Kelpies came into existence to avenge man's desecration of the land. Falkirk was a heavy-duty manufacturing center during the Industrial Revolution, and the River Carron, itself, was the site of a major oil spill in 2009. A 2007 film, The Water Horse, made the tale more family-friendly, but the pic pretty much did to Columbia Pictures what The Kelpies were said to do small children, drowning the studio's investment in anemic box office.
Kelpies were also said to sometime take the form of beautiful women, luring artists into another excuse to paint naked babes and call it high culture.
The Kelpies are to be erected near the 115 feet in diameter Falkirk Wheel, a spectacular boat lift completed in 2002 to replace a series of 11 separate locks that connected two waterways nearly 80 feet apart in level. At one point it was mentioned that The Kelpies would actually move back and forth as if they were raising or lowering the wheel, but I'm not sure if the animation has survived the final cut.
Andy Scott first realized The Kelpies as 10-foot-high maquettes that were placed first at the Falkirk Wheel, and later Edinburgh airport.
You can view a great video of Scott fabricating the maquettes and listing what went into them (954 meters of flatbar, 240 meters of rebar, 2 ten millimeter thick steel plates . . . 9,000 cuts on the guillotine, 186 cups of tea . . . ) here.
On Thursday, it was announced that Nicol Russell Studios have won a global competition to design the £41 million Helix Project (£25 to come from the British Lottery's "Living Landmarks" fund), including a visitors centre and public spaces within the massive horse heads. Visitors will be able to go up to a viewing platform that will allow them to look through the horse's eyes out over the Forth valley. Unless it drags them off to drown them in the canal first.
Which brings us to the question: Why doesn't Chicago have any supersized animals? (The Picasso excepted.) What would be the most appropriate manifestation of our culture and character? A giant bunny? A coyote returned from the wild? A massive squirrel with a Thomas Heatherwick tail? A 1,000xlife-size pigeon pooping colorful disinfectant blobs into Bubbly Creek twice every hour?
Back in 2005, for the Stanley Tigerman project Visionary Chicago Architecture, Joe Valerio proposed a Musee de L'eau, positioned at a replacement set of locks where the Chicago River meets the lake.
If not a Musee, could we have Richard Hunt create a pair of giant Asian Carp to stand at the Chicago river locks? If the locks are closed, as has been proposed, could we animate the carp sculptures to devour any vessel reckless enough to try to enter now hermetically sealed Lake Michigan?
The no-nonsense, less-is-more character of Chicago architectural history would appear to argue against anthropomorphism in construction, but are we denying ourselves? Would Chicago ever had become Chicago without the horse? Or, more to the point, the hog? Animals continue to hold a elemental power over us, representing the Dionysic power of our primeval selves. Is it time to bring that animal out into the open, into Chicago's built environment?
Crain's Chicago Business reported today that Oxford Capital, which owns the Felix Hotel right next door, has taken over the construction loan for Staybridge, the uncompleted Valerio Dewalt Train hotel at Lasalle and Huron that's been kept under wraps - literally - for over three years. Oxford is battling for control of the property with Corporex, which bought up the general contractor's lien last year. Virgin's Richard Branson is almost reported to be in the hunt.
Let's hope they all don't just cancel each other out. Chicago's hotel market is apparently heating up, increasing prospects that someone will take Staybridge to completion. That would be good news for Valerio's striking design, but the kiss of death for the ghost skyscraper of River North.
See what Staybridge will look like when finished, and read about its innovative staggered truss frame in our piece from 2008, here.
