Unleash the Mutant Mantises! At Maggie Daley, Michael Van Valkenburgh rethinks the Chicago Lakefront Park - Episode Two: The Lampposts Strike Back

(click images for larger view)
photograph courtesy Bob Johnson

Yesterday, we wrote about the most successful parts of Chicago's new Maggie Daley Park.   Perhaps not coincidentally, they're the most active parts of architect Michael Van Valkenburgh's design.  Van Valkenburgh does active really, really well.  Who would have guessed, then, that he had a bit of H R Giger secreted in his heart, or that he would use Maggie Daley as the opportunity to set it free.

Across the world, there have been many cases of discarded industrial infrastructure transformed into lush, green parks, but possibly never before has a new park deliberately been designed for nature to be dominated by the hardware.

These are the lightning standards of Maggie Daley Park.  There are thirteen of them, and they are monsters, perversely dominating almost every vista.

In an interview with Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin, Van Valkenburgh explained Maggie Daley's lighting design as "a concept called moon lighting; many fewer and much taller light poles.  We did this at Brooklyn Bridge Park to great affect."

This is disingenuous. The lighting standards in Brooklyn Bridge Park are 35 foot-high telephone poles.  Those at Maggie Daley are 50 foot-high tripods.  At Brooklyn Bridge Park, many of the poles are set along the back, against an expressway that forms the parks perimeter.  At Maggie Daley, the standards are omnipresent, their beady light-bulb orbs always peering over your shoulder like the eyes of a painting that follow you across the room.  They march through the park like an invading band of colossi bent on conquest - over half as tall as the actual Wonder of the Ancient World Colossus of Rhodes.  Looking up at the soaring, man-spreading height, the voice of Shelly may even seem to echo in your ear . . .

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

But, you may ask, won't the trees eventually overtake and tame the lighting standards?  You should live so long - literally.

Van Valkenburgh told Kamin it will take a decade for the trees to double in size. After 25 years, those trees will still be only "close to mature."  Van Valkenburgh's own presentation drawings show the standards rising above the mature treetops.  To put this into perspective, the previous park on the site lasted less than 40 years before it had to be destroyed to repair the parking garage below.  If the same calculus holds true for Maggie Daley, it means there may only be a decade and a half of relative balance between the lighting standards and the trees before the whole thing gets ripped out again.

Despite Van Valkenburgh's aesthetic pretensions, his design is actually both product of and perfect design expression of three imperatives of the relentless, increasingly toxic efficiencies of our Age of Supply Chain:  consolidation, upscaling and homogenization.  Instead of a traditional park's hundreds of lighting fixtures, Maggie Daley boils it down to 13.  In place of the human-scale, a looming super-sizing.  Instead of a pleasing variation in light and shade, a monotonous slather of uniform foot-candles, accompanied by a slick p.r. campaign: it's like the moon! The gigantic standards make Maggie Daley feel less like a park than a high school athletic field. 

Having said all this, I'll be the first to admit that the standards have their own fascination.  They're a visually arresting urban-techno theater, a brazen, seductive counterpoint not only to nature, but to the constructed environment of the Randolph Street and landmarked Michigan Avenue streetwalls, bent on upstaging the height of even the tallest classic skyscraper.

My bet is that, over time, Van Valkenburgh's monsters will become objects of great public affection.  Far too big to ever fade into the landscape, they'll be embraced for their sheer chutzpah weirdness.  That kind of eccentricity, however, will not be possible if they ever became common in placement.  For that reason alone, no matter what efficiencies or cost savings they may promise, Maggie Daley Park should remain the refuge beyond which the 13 light-limbed behemoths are never allowed to roam.

Next:  Mistah Burnham—He Dead - Michael Van Valkenburgh Rethinks the Chicago Lakefront Park, Part III

Previously:  Strongest at the Corners - Michael Van Valkenburgh Rethinks the Chicago Lakefront Park, Part II

Strongest at the Corners: At Maggie Daley, Michael Van Valkenburgh rethinks the Chicago Lakefront Park - Part One

The new Maggie Daley Park is both a major addition to Chicago's lakefront and a spur to questions as to what constitutes good park design.  This post, the first of four, explores the park's best features.

click images for larger view (recommended)

Maggie Daley Park had a very successful "soft" opening last December, but it didn't feel right to write about a new park while it was still frozen, brown and unblooming.  Now summer's come. It's finally a good time to take stock, and note how architect Michael Van Valkenburgh's design is both a clear break from traditional design along Chicago's downtown lakefront - and more than a little weird.

 On a Saturday morning earlier this month, the 26-acre, $60 million park had it's official dedication, with Mayor Rahm Emanuel, former Mayor Richard M. Daley, his daughter Nora and other luminaries in attendance.  500 young voices drawn from the Chicago Childrens and After School Matters choirs, all clad in bright yellow shirts, joined the Third Coast Percussion Ensemble in performances that concluded with the world premiere performance  of a new work by Augusta Read Thomas honoring the legacy of the park's dedicatee, former Chicago First Lady, the late Maggie Daley.

There are many good things to say about Maggie Daley Park.  Primary among these is that it's not a museum building.  Richard M. Daley had worked with his usual arrogant swagger to force a new structure for the Chicago Children's Museum into Maggie Daley Park's predecessor, Daley Bi-Centennial Plaza, a serene, classically-styled 1970's park dating constructed atop a multi-level parking garage.  Daley and his minions sneered at the park dedicated to his late father as a "nowhere."  In fact, it had finally evolved into a quite lovely, serene, classically-styled refuge to the the hyperactivity of Millennium Park, the instant icon opened across Columbus Drive to the west in 2004.

Major water leaks into the underground garage forced the park to be completely stripped away to make repairs.  Daley saw that as a grand opportunity to cater to the monument-building ambitions of a Pritzker family heiress by giving a public park over to a private museum.  The ensuing battle was ugly and prolonged, with Daley smearing construction opponents as racist child-haters.  The coalition in favor of keeping the park, "Open, Free and Clear", however, was both broad and deep.  The opposition poisoned the well for the museum's already anemic fund-raising skills and - combined with  a major economic crash - ultimately persuaded the Children's Museum to stay at Navy Pier and improve its facilities there.

Maggie Daley Park under construction
photography courtesy Bob Johnson

Enter Michael van Valkenburgh, whose firm, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, may be the most prominent landscape architects at work in the United States today.

This June was a double-dip for Van Valkenburgh in Chicago. Just a week before the official dedication at Maggie Daley, there was the official opening of The 606 Bloomingdale Trail, an abandoned rail line converted into a nearly 3 mile long park, for which Van Valkenburgh was lead designer.

(seriously dude, click for larger view)

By design, the most successful sections of Maggie Daley Park are its most active, at opposing corners of the 26-acre site.   To the southeast, just north of Monroe is the three-and-a-half acre "Play Garden", a hilly sequence of family-friendly spaces dominated by the Tower Bridge, a bright-orange. 30-foot high suspension bridge set within a "Slide Crater" with a kid-friendly soft surface and a seating area for parents to relax while keeping an eye on their offspring.

There's also a boat to climb on . . .

. . . a half-buried whale . . .

. . . and even a lighthouse . .  .

Also now open is the "Enchanted Forest" with dead tree trunks planted upside-down to form arches.  A subversive homage to the nearly 900 trees ripped out when the old park was destroyed?

At the opposite, northwest corner of the park, along Randolph, is what, in the winter, is the skating ribbon, wrapping around two 40-foot climbing walls.

The geometrically irregular structures are covered in an explosion of multi-colored footholds, and at their end point rear up like the prow of a ship.

The 27,000 square-foot ribbon offers over 60% more area than a standard NFL hockey rink, stretched out to a nearly quarter-mile length that can accommodate 700 skaters at a time.  Using the ribbon is free, and skates can be rented for a modest fee.

Its first season was so successful it attracted 70,000 skaters and raked in nearly $600,000 in equipment rentals.

Brightly illuminated at night, the ribbon and climbing  walls are almost like a second sun, inserting a saucer of light at the feet of the black cat dark facades of the soaring skyscrapers that form the park's backdrop.

But now the ice is melted, not by the bright lights but by the warmth of summer.  The ribbon has become a running track and host to other warm-weather activities.

These are the high places of Maggie Daley Park.  But what of the valleys that lie between?  And, seriously, what's the deal with these?

Next:  Unleash the Mutant Mantises - At Maggie Daley Park, Michael Van Valkenburgh rethinks the Chicago lakefront park, Part Two.

Sea of Foam at Maggie Daley; Matt Urbanski explains it at the Art Institute Tonight

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When it's finished, sometime next spring, Maggie Daley Park will be something.  Everything from open meadow, to a climbing wall and skating ribbon.  You can find out all about it tonight, Monday, May 12th, at 6:30 p.m. in Fullerton Hall at the Art Institute, as Matthew Urbanski of the park's designer, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, talks about Chicago Parks: Landscape, Imagination, and the Livable City.

For now, however, the site is something completely different, but just as a remarkable. Looking out from the viewing platform that Frank Gehry's closed-off BP Bridge has become, you now encounter, as far as the eye can sea, a vast ocean of white, pillow-like dominoes.  These are the legos that will form the foundation for Maggie Daley's varied landscape.

They're made of of “Foam-Control EPS Geofoam” a lightweight polysystrene that will form the foundation for the varying-level landscaping.

According to a story by Tina Sfondeles in the Chicago Sun-Times, the material has already been used at Soldier Field and Daley Plaza, and it never dematerializes.  It's claimed to be waterproof, which is a big deal, as the previous park on the site Daley Bi-Centennial, including beautiful mature trees was torn up and thrown away because was water was leaking into the garage on which the park was built, necessitating everything being removed for a new sealing to be installed.

This will be the last time you can see them, the great waves of dominoes surging across the site, awaiting careful placement before they disappear before the earth.

The sea even has its own serpent coursing through it, in the person of the winding contours of the BP Bridge.

It's one of the great shows of the summer.  Enjoy it while you can.

Read More:

Valkenburgh on Daley Bi, North Grant Park (with video)

Reinventing Daley Bi

Goodbye Daley Bi; Hello Maggie Daley Park  - stripping North Grant Park bare

(Better) Performing Seals fine new home at Maggie Daley Park

(Better) Performing Seals find new home at Maggie Daley Park

click images for larger view

It all ties into one of Richard M. Daley's patented 99-year privitization deals. In 2006, a consortium led by Morgan Stanley paid Chicago $563 million for a 99 year lease of the four parking garages along the city's lakefront.  $208 million went to paying off the bonds for Millennium Park, and $65 million  was earmarked for rebuilding the East Monroe Street garage.

The East Monroe Street garage is important because it's beneath what was Daley Bicentennial plaza, completed in 1976, a 20-acre park south of Randolph and east of Columbus constructed over former Illinois Central railyards.   The rebuilding of garage included fixing leaks that threatened to inundate the parked cars with water.  The reported cause of those leaks was the deterioration of the old membrane that separated Daley Bi from the roof the garage beneath.  The only solution?  Tearing out the park - removing every flower, ever lawn, every tree, every last inch of earth in order to be able to replace the membrane. 

That event was seen by Richard M. Daley as the perfect opportunity to jam a new building for the Chicago Children's Museum onto the site.  After that effort collapsed, the city turned to noted designer Michael Van Valkenburgh to come up with a new design for the replacement park, now renamed to honor the late Maggie Daley.

We're at the midpoint of that project.  Right now, the new membrane is being put down over the concrete roof of the garage, and it's expected it will result in longer-lasting, better performing seals.  According to Grant Park Conservancy's Bob O'Neill . .  .

The new waterproofing is a hot applied monolithic membrane system that has a series of protection layers and drainage layers above it.  The benefit of this system is that it has minimal seams because of its hot-applied installation.  There are several drainage measures in place to convey water off of the roof before it even comes in contact with the membrane itself.  As a result, a much longer lifespan is anticipated from this system than the previous installation.

rendering: Michael Van Valkenburgh

Which would be really good, because it would be a scandalous loss to have to rip out Van Valkenburgh's new park after only a few decades. 

Maggie Daley Park is now scheduled to open in October of next year.  The Tribune recently reported that the city was about to award a $42.5 million contract to Walsh Construction to construct the park, which now has an estimated cost of $55 million.  That compares to the roughly $35 million Chicago Park District Director of Development Gia Biagi said was available from the lease proceeds. Biagi talked about private funding making up the difference.

The Park District has given Maggie Daley Park its own website.  It includes regular updates, and two cool webcams that give wide-angle views of the site, letting you follow the progress of construction in real time.

Read More:

Maggie Daley Park (official website)

Forever Open Clear and Free (except when it comes to me) -The Battle Against Building a new Chicago Children's Museum in Grant Park

A Portrait of Mayor Daley's "Nowhere"

Goodbye Daley Bi: Hello Maggie Daley Park - stripping North Grant Park bare

BP Gehry Now Actually Bridge to Nowhere (Temporarily)

Reinventing Daley Bi

Van Valkenburgh on Daley Bi, North Grant Park

Privatization and the Public Interest (a report from Illinois PIRG)

The Chicago Parking Garage Leases (Civic Federation Report)

Sour Disposition Friday: Vue53 and The 606

OK, I apologize in advance, but I just have to get it out of my system . . .

Valerio Dewalt Train does good work.  I've recently posted on their Earl Shapiro Hall, at the U of C Lab Schools, and I'm quite fond of EnV, across Wells from the Merchandise Mart.

click images for larger view

However, with apologies to the Infinite Monkey Theorem, I'm thinking that if you combined a roomful of architects with a roomful of community activists and let them loose on 3D rendering software for an infinite amount of time, the result would look something like this . . .

rendering:  Valerio Dewalt Train

This is Vue53, the end product of a lot of iterations and consultations with the Hyde Park community.  It replaces a Mobil gas station and car wash at 53rd, between Kenwood and Kimbark.  As you can see in this presentation, Vue53 meets all kinds of desirable metrics on affordable housing, minority participation, transit-oriented development and the avoidance of TIF funding.  Everyone appears to agree it's a wonderful thing.

Am I the only who finds this design, especially compared to the new construction in and around Harper Court, numbingly banal?  It looks like the alley end of a big-box store, spit up into the sky. 

rendering: Valerio Dewalt Train

My bet is this is the kind of building that, only a few decades from now, will keep a new generation of community activists very busy trying to figure out a way to get it torn down.

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Meanwhile, on the near northwest side, another hardy group of community activists is about to see their decade-long dream realized.  Work has begun on The Bloomingdale Trail, the conversion of an abandoned 2.7 stretch of rail line into a raised public park modeled after the wildly successful High Line that's revitalized New York City's meatpacking district.  A design team led by ARUP and including Ross Barney Architects, ARUP and Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, has created a striking vision . . .

It will be a great thing.  Even the name - roll it around on your tongue: Bloooooooomingdale.  Just that long vowel sound carries the promise of something wonderful.  The very word - Blooming - evokes images of all the wonderful landscaping, “Dale” the way it flows through the neighborhoods like a valley on a viaduct, and “Trail” the spirit of adventure that invites you to explore it.

Well, we can't have that, can we?

Members of the project's advisory board emitted the bureaucrat's native cry, “Bring on the consultants!” and a consultant appeared, charged with creating a new name for the project,  encompassing both the reconstructed viaduct and the five parks to be aligned with it.

And what was the  product of all their labors?  (Wait for it):

No, I'm not making this up.  It was unveiled this past June, and far more interesting than the name itself is the enterprise with which various participants began spinning, spinning, spinning the Emperor's New Clothes to convince themselves this wasn't a nakedly bone-headed idea.

“When it was first presented, we all sort of went, ‘huh?’ one participant told The Huffington Post. “And then when it’s explained to you, it makes an enormous amount of sense.” New Rule: If you need a personal briefing to even begin to figure out what a name means, it's probably not a good name.

The consultants said people didn't understand what the Bloomingdale Trail referred to.  And when we say “people”, we mean out-of-town donors.  Apparently it was felt it will be easier to raise money for “The 606”.  (Which, in case you haven't guessed, refers to the three-digit prefix of the zip codes used, not just in the vicinity of the Bloomingdale Trail, but across every last one of Chicago's 234 square miles.)

The new name is the work of the usually highly capable Branding Agency Landor Associates, which somehow didn't seem to notice the tenuous relationship between “The 606” and the firm's own Eight Principles of Naming.

1.  Make it memorable.
“The 606” is about as memorable as the serial number on the ticket you get from the dispenser at the deli counter.
2.  Fill it with meaning.  
“The 606” - Is it a highway designation? An area code?  A sign of demonic possession that lost its nerve?
3.  Say it out loud.
Watch people stare and wait for the men with the big nets to take you away.
4.  Don't wait to fall in love.
Fast forward right to the loathing
5.  Listen to your fear.
“I wrote a big fat check for this?’
6.  Stand out in a crowd
Right next to The 202, The 64, The 8 1/2 x ll, and The “You are number six . . .”

7.  Too much is never enough.
And “The 606” is the day you went home early because you didn't want to miss Jersey Shore.
8.  Expect its story to evolve.
Some day, Timmy, you could become The 606-A!

“The 606”,  devoid of meaning and belligerently generic, will stand with “We are Beatrice,” in the Pantheon of stupid naming tricks.

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OK.  That's done.  I'm going to go lie down now.