Can a Boombox Activate Chicago's Orphaned Public Plazas?

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Two years ago, the administration of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel issued a Request for Proposals for the adoption of 49 underused public places owned by the city.  The parcels are all across the city, and range in size from 41,000 down to 436 square feet, with an average of 8,600.  Some, like the Nelson Algren Memorial at Polish Triangle, are long-established public squares.  Others are little more than space underneath the concrete pillars of a raised expressway.

The response was underwhelming. According to a January, 2014 update by Trib reporter John Byrne, there were only four RFP filings - two major billboard companies, Lamar Advertising and CBS Outdoor, and boutique architecture firms Latent Design and architect Carmen Vidal-Hallet's EcoVidal Design.   City officials indicated a decision on whether any of the entrants would be selected would be made within the year.

Katherine Darnstadt (left)

Instead, it wasn't until this past April that Emanuel introduced an ordinance to create the Make Way for People public plaza program, a public/private partnership to be managed by Latent Design, the firm founded by architect Katherine Darnstadt that already has a long history of public space interventions, from a Mini golf course installed in parking spots along Milwaukee Avenue, to 2013's Blah Blah Blob!, an inhabitable, brilliantly colored fabric tent that set up shop both at Union Station and a later Activate! event next to the Chicago Theater.

Under Activate! Chicago, ten locations are to be activated during the first year, which ends next summer, including at least one for each of five geographic regions into which the city was divided. Another twenty are to be activated in the final two years of the contract.  The initial budget is a measly $50,000.  To put that into perspective, the newly redeveloped Northerly Island came in at about $2.40 a square foot. Divided among the 12.4 acres of the 49 Peoples Plaza sites, that $5,000 comes out to about 9 cents a square foot.  The cost of the new Riverwalk calculates out to $1,163 per square foot.

Last Friday, Chicago First Lady Amy Rule assisted in the ribbon cutting for Boombox, the first major public plaza program installation. ("First Friday" Activate! events also took place at Jackson and Homan and at Englewood Plaza at 63rd Street.) 

The location was Wicker Park's Mautene Court.  According to a report by DNAInfo/Chicago's Alisa Hauser the plaza at 1260 North Milwaukee was created in the 1970's in what was formerly a staging area for the garment manufacturing industry that dominated the district earlier in the 20th century.  The 175 square-foot kiosk, heated and permitted for retail and food service, was constructed out of a stripped-down shipping container.


Boombox / Between Startup and Storefront from LATENT DESIGN on Vimeo.

Darnstadt said the container . . . 

. . . came from the south side of Chicago. The company we purchased it from cut down a standard 8x20 for us and removed all four sides and then shipped it to our warehouse for construction. We constructed the Boombox about 75% in a warehouse, then disassembled it to flatbed truck [it] to the site for final install. We cleared underpasses by only an inch. Literally. The Boombox weighs about 5,000 pounds and the exterior panels are the backside of good old cheap Hardie board [a cement board siding]. The pattern is the result of the dying process. 

Opening night featured a performance by dancers from the Joffrey Ballet.  Hauser reports Darnstadt herself made use of the kiosk for her own office, with the first tenant is scheduled to be a pop-up library.  Negotiations are ongoing for a retail tenant during the holiday shopping season.

Described as a "new platform for Nomadic retail", Boombox rents for $500 a week, with lease periods of two weeks to three months.  Mautene Court should prove an attractive location, nestled next to Tocco restaurant along the trendy Milwaukee retail strip that mixes empty storefronts with hip retailers, restaurants and theaters.

Read More:

McPlazas? Privatizing Chicago's Orphan Public Spaces

Enter the Blob: Activate! Union Station

Enter the Blob, Hammock on the Lawn - Activate Union Station, only through Monday

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Chicago was built by the railroads, but Union Station is the last survivor among what was once six great rail terminals still in use, and we only have half of it.  The great concourse that gave New York's Penn Station a run for its money was demolished in 1969 for the spectacularly mediocre skyscraper now known as Fifth Third Center.

Image courtesy The Chuckman Collection

The Great Hall, however, remains.  It's one of Chicago's grandest public spaces, but many consider it underused, among them The Metropolitan Planning Council, which posed the question: “How can we bring Chicago's Union Station back to life?”  The result was their Activate Union Station competition, and the two winning entries are now up at Union Station, but only through Monday, September 2nd.

TrainYARD is from a design team including participants from Krueck + Sexton, Space Architects+Planners, and IIT woodshop manager Michael Gillhouse, who talked with us for the above video.

Each competitor was awarded just $5,000 to carry out their vision, so volunteer time and donated materials played a big part in the installations.  In the case of TrainYARD, that mean borrowing picnic tables from Logan Square and newspapers from the Chicago Tribune to support the seating.

The idea was to create a park landscape within the monumental stoneyard that is the Great Hall.  Both times I visited, TrainYARD was a popular rest stop for beach ball, tetherball, jumping rope, rotating hoops, lounging in a hammock or getting a kick nap.

Blah Blah Blob!, the other winning entry, actually creates its own structure out of neon-colored nylon fabric.  It's a collaboration between the Kent State Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative and Latent Design, the firm of Chicago architect Katherine Darnstadt, who talked about the project for our video.
Blah Blah Blob!'s home base is on the riverside plaza of the aforementioned Fifth Third Center, where's its visible to commuters approaching the station from blocks away.

The Blob's material is water resistant, but if there are high winds it relocates to the Great Hall.  

As with TrainYard, a lot of volunteer time - at least 200 hours - went into the project.  Darnstadt says . . . 

It was a total 100% pop-up sweatshop . . . We taught people how to sew, instantly.  We did a little bit of it at the Art Institute, in the Fashion Department, because they have tons of space.  We did a couple days there and that was great to be able to cut all the patterns that we needed, ‘cause we just need space to lay it out.  And we sewed in my kitchen.  

The Blob (the name is a sly allusion to blob architecture) has to be inflated and set up afresh each day. In the controlled environment of the Great Hall, Darnstadt can do it, by herself, in 30 minutes.  Outside, she's dealing with wind, downdrafts and pedestrians.  

This morning, at 6:30 - 7:00 in morning, as I rolled this out, people are walking over it because they really have their routine and just want to walk across the plaza come hell or high water.  Tomorrow (that is, today, August 27th), we're going to be inside Union Station, actually be able to hang out with the TrainYARD folks.  It helps just to watch each other's project and how they interact with one another.

From set-up to break-down, it's a twelve-hour day.  “Married to my blob,” is how Darnstadt describes her current status.

The Blob is both an object and an inhabitable space.  When I was at Fifth Third Plaza yesterday, it was being set up for a noon-time Zumba class.  Tuesday is a 5 p.m. Fit kick, Wednesday noon-time Pound - check out the entire schedule here.  (And remember that today, Tuesday the 27th, you can both installations, side-by-side in the Great Hall

I can't really speak to how Activate Union Station will scale up to more permanent interventions, but the two competition winners are friendly twerk counterpoints to the sober, monumental architecture.  Whether your weapon of leisure is Zumba, tetherball or just lounging around, it's well worthwhile to pop into Union Station before the installations come down after Monday, September 2nd.

Blah Blah Blob on the Plaza, trainYARD in the Great Hall: Activate Union Station winners announced

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Late yesterday, the Metropolitan Planning Council announced the two winners of its 2013 Activate Union Station placemaking contest, which had solicited ideas for enlivening Chicago's grand railroad terminal.

Blah Blah Blob!, by Katherine Darnstadt's firm Latent Design, a nylon sculpture that will actually be constructed not in the Grand Hall, as shown on the rendering, but outside, along atop an artificial lawn on the riverside esplanade of the Fifth Third Center, the new name for 222 South Riverside, the mediocre skyscraper for which Union Station's great concourse was demolished.

Commuters, people watchers, newspaper readers, snack eaters, conductors, and picture takers are invited to wander inside the multi-colored blob or view it from a distance as it moves in time with those navigating its passage ways.

.  . . Under the blob will be an astro turf lawn that will invite commuters to stop and enjoy the space within a space. Lectures and special events will be hosted under the blob during the installation in partnership with the Spontaneous Intervention exhibit and other arts organizations.

The second winner, trainYARD, by a unnamed “team of Chicago-based architects” will transform the station's Great Hall into a recycled summer landscape., with synthetic grass, tetherball, picnic tables and lawn games like bocce.

We know that summer in Chicago can get hot and humid, which makes it hard to get out and enjoy the lovely parks around the city.  We are bringing the park to the people and putting it right in the middle of their daily routine.

Both winners will get $5,000 to make their visions a reality  The installations are scheduled to be on view from Saturday, August 24th through Monday, September 2nd.  During that week, Fitness Formula Clubs will also be offering free body fat testing and classes on the Fifth Third Center plaza.

The content runner-up is I Searched High and Low for You, from a “Chicago-born, Boston-base architect duo” - also unnamed - envisioned enlivening Union Station's massive Canal Street colonnade with colorful red fabric.

Read more:

Skate/Pinball/Astroturf/Text/Balloon/Blob/High Five Union Station - Activate Union Station entries

Behind the Black Curtain:  Union Station's Elegant and Forgotten Dining Hall.

Broken Windows at Polish Triangle, Anne Mallek on English Arts and Crafts - more events added as July calendar heats up

OK, the 4th on a Wednesday has somehow morphed into a holiday weekend, so there's not much going on until next Tuesday, and after that, things heat up with new addition to the July Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

This coming Tuesday, July 9th, taking place at 6:00 p.m. at Polish Triangle on Milwaukee,  Division, and Ashland and Broken Windows: Writers Examine the Human Element in Urban Design, with stories from Paul Durica, Maribel Mares and Sara Ross and an open mic (sign-up begins at 5:30 p.m.)  Earlier (3:00 to 5:00 p.m., to be exact) in the same location Katherine Darnstadt  of Latent Design will lead a Broken Windows Place Making Workshop.  No actual windows will be harmed in either event.

On Thursday, the 25th, Anne Mallek, curator at Greene and Greene's Gamble House in Pasadena, will be at the Pritzker Auditorium in the Monroe Building to lecture on “Good Houses and Good Books”: The English Arts and Crafts Movement in America.  Among the major players in the movement were English designer Charles Robert Ashbee, and, in America, Frank Lloyd Wright, whose son took the picture of Ashbee you see here.

Getting back to this coming week, the Chicago Center on Green Technology has a Wednesday session on Accelerating Sustainability in Chicago's 77 Community Areas,  while lunchtime on Thursday the 11th John Eifler talks about (Frank Lloyd) Wright's Search for Innovation in Design at Fourth Presbyterian's Gratz Center.

On Thursday evening, the Chicago Architecture Foundation sponsors A River Runs Through It: Developing and Designing Chicago's Second Shoreline, a panel discussion with Benet Haller, John Quail, Tom D'Arcy, Doug Farr and moderator Josh Ellis.  Same evening, CCGT offers a preview of this year's GreenBuilt Home Tour, and at the Music Institute of Chicago (in Evanston, ironically enough) there's another panel discussion/book signing for the just published Evanston: 150 Years, 150 Places, with Stuart Cohen, Jack Weiss, Heidi Hoppe, Kris Hartzell and Laura Saviano.

Event-wise, July is really just getting started, so check out the three dozen great items to come on the July Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

Yes, Virginia, there will be a 2013 - the January Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events: Gang, Kearns, Guen, Vivian Maier and more!

Yes, we survived 2012 and now live to tell the tale of the January 2013 Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

The year starts out this Thursday, with Friends of Downtown asking What Do You Love or Hate About Downtown Chicago?, at the Cultural Center.  Then things really start getting in gear the following week, with Michael Williams and Richard Cahan, publishers of Vivian Maier: Out of the Shadows at the MCA on Tuesday the 8th, and a discussion of Historic Preservation lunchtime Wednesday the 9th at CAF.

As part of the one of largest preservation projects currently underway, Randolph (Steuben Club) Tower Terra Cotta Restoration will be discussed at a Landmarks Illinois lunchtime lecture at the Cultural Center, Thursday, the 17th.

The don't-miss exhibition Building: Inside Studio Gang Architects continues at the Art Institute, where curator Karen Kice will be offering a gallery talk lunchtime on Tuesday the 15th, and Jeanne Gang, herself, talking about her firm's recent projects in Fullerton Hall on Thursday, the 17th.

Several organizations demonstrate that the holiday party refuses to go gentle into the new year, with Architecture for Humanity/Chicago offering up its Holiday Hangover 2013 party at the DIRTT Showroom on Friday the 11th, while lunchtime Wednesday the 23rd at CAF, Co-Director Katherine Darnstadt talks about AFH/Chicago's local projects.

AIA Chicago offers Larry Kearns and Neil Sheehan talk about the Facebook Data Center and Inspiration Kitchen on Tuesday the 15th, and CAF offers Terry Guen lunchtime on Wednesday the 16th.  At it's January 24th breakfast panel, the Urban Land Institute Chicago considers Chicago: The Next Technology Hub?  As of this writing, there are still tickets available for CAF's Sunday, January 27th behind-the-scenes tour of Rafael Viñoly Architects new Center for Care and Discovery at the University of Chicago.

But wait: there's more!  And I'm sure we'll be adding as hangovers subside and people start firing up the mimeographs again - we're still waiting for the Plan and Community Development Commissions to post their meeting schedule for the New Year.  Already, however, there are already nearly three dozen great items, so check it all out on the January 2013 Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.