Green River Redux

Coloring Easter eggs? That may be how you celebrate Spring in your wimpy burg, but this is Chicago. Stock up the speedboat with bags of Tang colored vegetable dye, dump it in the river, churn it up with the propeller and - voila (or its Gaelic equivalant) - instant St. Patrick's Day. This year, March 17th is special, because it's a Saturday, so the parade, dye-fest and over-served merriment will take place on the actual holiday.

I'm sure I'll be taking a lot more pictures, but to help get you in the mood, here's last year's photo essay on Chicago's annual rolling out of an emerald carpet for the city's architecture. (Recycling - what a concept!)

Cindy Holler, Czerniak on Olin Eisenman - late additions to March calendar

More late additions to the March calendar of Chicago architectural events.

Tonight, March 14th, Chicago Women in Planning and Development will be presenting Cindy Holler, President of Mercy Housing Lakefront, which just opened its latest facility, Near North Apartments, an SRO designed by architect Helmut Jahn.

Next Wednesday, March 21st, Julia Czerniak of CLEAR will be at IIT taking about Olin Eisenman, the collaboration between landscape architect Laurie Olin and architect Peter Eisenman whose works include the Wexner Center for the Arts, and the Berlin Holocaust Museum.

On Thursday, March 22nd, ULI Chicago will be presenting a breakfast program that will discuss bringing sustainable values to buildings constructed before that was the big thing to do. Sadhu Johnston, Commissioner of the City of Chicago's Department of Environment will moderate, and the speakers will include Robert Bagguley, President - Midwest Region, Transwestern Commercial Services and Phil Baugh, Director of Leasing, Green Exchange, Baum Realty Group.

You can see the complete, wide range of events for the balance of March here.

Dinomies Postscript: Joan Pomaranc informs us that neither Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House or the Dick Tracy Museum made it into the second round of voting for the Seven Wonders of Illinois. The White Squirrels of Olney, World's Largest Ketchup Bottle, and Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio in Oak Park remain in the hunt. You can see all the surviving contenders, and vote your favorites here.

What Garrett and Santiago had to say about the Spire at CAF

WBEZ's Edward Lifson sits through another evening of Garrett Kelleher avoiding giving specific answers so you don't have to.

The host of Hello, Beautiful, which this Sunday offered up a compelling interview with Trump Tower and Burj Dubai architect Adrian Smith (listen to it here), last night scooped all other media by posting, just hours after it took place, his report on developer Garrett Kelleher and architect Santiago Calatrava discussing their 2,000 foot high corkscrew Chicago Spire at the Chicago Architecture Foundation Monday evening.

The ever coy Mr. Kelleher said the square foot costs for the Spire's units will fall somewhere between Chicago's current highpoint of $1,200 and London's top at $9,000. While Kelleher was apparently vague about how the project is to be financed, a January 28th article in the Irish Independent indicated that the €949 million (for now) project cost was being picked up by the Anglo Irish Bank. The tower's latest design was still kept under wraps - it's currently scheduled to be unveiled at a meeting of SOAR (Streeterville Organization of Active Residents) on March 26th, at a public meeting at the Courtyards of Marriot. (Reservations required: info here.) The project is due to go before the Chicago Plan Commission on April 19th.

The far more forthcoming Mr. Calatrava discussed the project with his usual passion, including its relationship to the adjacent, still unfunded DuSable Park. You can read Lifson's excellent and extensive report, complete with several illustrations, here.

156 West Superior only Chicago rep in AIA 2007 Housing Award Winners

156 West Superior Condominiums is the only one of the 19 AIA 2007 Housing Award Winners with Chicago as a location for either the project or the architects. The 19 award winners were chosen from a field of 236 submissions. 156 West Superior was one of six winners in the Multifamily Housing category. In February, the project received a very favorable review by Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin. While its architect David Miller is an SOM alumni, his current firm is The Miller/Hull Partnership of Seattle, a city whose firms claimed five of the 19 prizes.

Mies van der Rohe devoured by Giant Dinosaur

The Astounding and Shocking details here.

Weekend Reading - Moses (Again) and Lotto Therapy

Moses Preposes - Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin takes on the current revaluation of New York superbuilder Robert Moses in his article on "How two urban Strongman got the job done" where he compares Moses to current Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley. He asks whether every city needs a strongman, and in describing the "boon" Daley's reign has supposedly created for the city, he seems to gravitate towards a qualified "Yes."

The lust for strongmen, of course, is an infantile regression back to childhood, an admission that we're too weak to actually become adults, take responsibility for our actions, and work things out among ourselves, so let's bring back Daddy to tell us exactly what to do. And, surprise, surprise, even that doesn't kill off our compulsive sibling rivalry - we curry favor with Daddy against our rivals with incessant flattery and grab what we can when we think Daddy Strongman isn't looking. And as it goes on and on, Daddy just grows increasingly curdled and contemptuous of our fawning weakness.

Kamin almost gets it right, quoting Northwestern University urban historian Henry Binford. "I think you need strong leaders," Binford says, "but strong leaders need to be checked and balanced. The key to having a good city, in my view, is not having a strong leader, but having adequate representation for lots of different folks in the city. Then you need strong leaders to mediate and get things done."

But Kamin can't leave it there. An earlier comment demonstrates how much the aura of the Strongman is predicated on a mythology that draws its power on the ability to selectively reveal and hide basic facts, based on how much they feed or deflate the myth.

"The hole in the ground at ground zero," write Kamin, "remained a hole, for example, while Chicago converted a comparably sized hole into dazzling Millennium Park." Except that the analogy is hollow. The World Trade Center site is commercial and privately owned, Millennium Park is public and city-owned. Kamin ignores the more appropriate analogy. While Ground Zero has been vacant since September of 2001, Daley left his equivalent challenge, Block 37, an empty dirt pile for a decade and a half. Read it all here.

Lotto - Better Than Sex? - the Sunday New York Times has an article by Benedict Carley on how Lotto Makes Sense, Even for Losers, that quotes Christine Reilly, executive director of the Institute for Research on Pathological Gambling and Related Disorders “It’s not just winning the money," she explains, "but anticipating winning the money that is exciting, and the two experiences are similar neurobiologically."

"This sense of power," writes Carley, "infuses the waiting period with purpose. And the hope of a huge payoff, however remote, is itself a source of pleasure." [See, mythology, and infantile regression above] Read it here.

Chicago Streetscene - Where am I?

Natural Order Restored - The Farwell is Toast

In a a dazzling display of raw political power and overwhelming self-deception, The Society for the Protection of Wealthy Developers, formerly known as the Commission on Chicago Landmarks, voted this morning to demolish the landmark Farwell Building on North Michigan and remount the surviving elements of its facade on a new structure.
Voting in favor the motion were Chairman David Mosena, John Baird, Lori Healey, Lisa Willis, Ernest C. Wong, Phyllis Ellin, Christopher R. Reed and Ben Weese. The sole commissioner not to drink the Kool-Aid and voting no was Edward I. Torrez. The other commissioners kept repeating the mantra of "This is not a precedent. This is not a precedent" as if trying to convince themselves that it could actually be true.

More to come

Kelleher to talk about Calatrava Spire on Monday - funding details emerge

In another addition to the March calendar, Garrett Kelleher, Executive Chairman of Shelbourne Development will be speaking at a Chicago Architecture Foundation program at 5:30 P.M. this coming Monday, March 12, about the Chicago Spire, the 2,000-foot-high tower, designed by architect Santiago Calatrava. For some reason, Kelleher shares billing with his lawyer, Tom Murphy, Shelbourne's General Counsel. The cost for the program is $10,00 - free for CAF members, and $5.00 for students with a valid ID. RSVP at 312/922.3432 x224.

Details are also emerging on how Kelleher will be funding the project. A January 28th article in the Irish Independent by Kevin Murphy (free subscription required) reports of the 124-story-high project, whose cost the Independent puts at €949 million, that "Anglo Irish Bank is funding it and Kelleher will own 100 per cent of the equity." While at a January community meeting Kelleher said, “The plan is to order cassions within weeks,” the Independent mentions a summer target for groundbreaking. The story describes the 46-year old Kelleher as a "shy" father of six and a devout Catholic. and tells of how he first visited the U.S. on a tennis scholarship, returning to Chicago in 1984 to make a living painting and renovating apartments as a launching pad into real estate development. Recent local reports say Kelleher has now re-established residence in Chicago.

Greg Lynn, plus Lifson and Samuelson at Unity Temple added events on March calendar

Architect Greg Lynn, seemingly inextricably linked to CAD and the Blob, will give the inaugural annual Richard Solomon Lectureship for Young Architects and Architectural Criticism, honoring the Graham Foundation's longtime director, who died in 2005. The lecture will take place 6:00 P.M. on March 28th in Fullerton Hall, under the auspices of the Art and Design Society of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Also added, at 2:00 P.M. on Saturday, March 31st, WBEZ's Edward Lifson will join Cultural Historian Tim Samuelson at Frank Lloyd Wright's Unity Temple in Oak Part for Rock the House, an exploration of "how great buildings are like one-of-a-kind instruments."

Magic Hour Becomes Trump Tower

As Skidmore, Owings & Merrill's mega Trump International Hotel and Tower continues to grow, like Alice on mushrooms, bigger and bigger and bigger, until it seems about to devour everything around it, its humongous curtain wall evokes mixed feelings. The thing's crisp and professional, no doubt, but, truth to tell, in full sunlight, it looks a bit, well . . . tinny. Walking down State Street the other day, however, I found a moment when the Wabash facade actually looked rather beautiful.

Dusk flatters Trump Tower, softening the brittle hardness of the seemingly endless expanse of steely spandrels and hard glass, making them seem something more plastic and humane, almost Labanesque.

Hyde Park Arts Center studies Burnham Plan

The Hyde Park Arts Center is offering a six week series, on Wednesdays from 6:30 to 8:00 P.M. beginning March 21st, of group examinations of Daniel Burnham's 1909 Plan of Chicago. Discussion leaders from the Great Books Foundation will guide the group, to be limited to 16 people, through reading and discussing the text of the ground-breaking plan. The series is also co-sponsored by the Hyde Park Historical Society, and will take place at the HPAC, 5020 S. Cornell Avenue. To become one of the lucky 16 for this free series, email the HPHS's Jack Spicer.

March 23rd Deadline for Submissions for Emerging Visions Award

The competition is co-sponsored by the Chicago Architectural Club and Knoll International.

"The urban environment is constantly evolving and new visions are continuously emerging. This competition seeks to provide a forum for young designers to share their visions, inventions, and ideas. One submission per entrant. Submissions may be built, unbuilt, or theoretical." Awards will be presented March 29th in the Knoll showroom at the Merchandise Mart. "Entrants must live or work in the Chicagoland area." More information on the rules for the competition, and instructions for submissions, can be found here.

The awards have proven a good predicator of major emerging talent. Past winners include current CAC co-president Michael Wilkinson in 1998, Jeanne Gang and Mark Schendel of Studio/Gang in 2000, UrbanLab's Sarah Dunn and Martin Felsen in 2003, and, in the last 2005 competition, Tristan d'Estree Sterk.

Kerwin, Lee named AIA Fellows

Thomas P. Kerwin and Frank Christopher Lee are the only two Chicagoans among the list of 76 inductees into the American Institute of Architects College of Fellows this week. For those keeping score, this compares with eight from New York and L.A., seven from San Francisco, and three from Boston, Philadelphia and Denver. Also named for Central Illinois was Ron Budzinski of PSA Dewberry in Peoria.

Kerwin, managing partner at the Chicago office of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, is one of the key leaders in Chicago's push to land the 2016 Olympics while Lee, of the firm Johnson & Lee, was recently named chief architect for the reconstruction of Adler & Sullivan's Pilgrim Baptist Church in Bronzeville, gutted in a January, 2006 fire.

Architectural Stackables - Koolhaas in Jersey

Via the AP comes word of Rem Koolhaas's latest project, a 52-story tower mixing condominiums, hotel, and artists' lofts, galleries and retail. "We are creating something slightly more memorable and slightly more energetic,'' Koolhaas is quoted as saying at the unveiling of the design. "What New Jersey lacks is some visible evidence of a new beginning.''

"Slightly" in this case is a pivot point for ironic understatement. 1111 First Street reminds me of the back of my closet, a seemingly random stacking of boxes, in the case of Koolhaas painstakingly engineered to create what looks to be three separate buildings piled perpendicular to each other, giving the visual impression of being perched so precariously that it looks like a single strong gust could topple the whole thing over.

It's a bravura expression, sure to stand out, but it makes me wonder whether Koolhaas is staking out a new uber-mannerism, based on outrageous gestures, increasingly tangential to program, and more about doing something most largely because you've just figured out how you can. Of course, in both Chicago and Seattle, Koolhaas created designs that inspired deep skepticism at their unveiling but ultimately proved enthralling - and programatically astute - when when we could finally encounter them in the flesh. We'll may have to wait for Jersey City to be built before we know whether Koolhaas is just coasting or still moving forward.

Vinoly, Herreros, Kalach, Gang, Rosa, Harboe, the 2016 Olympics and Courtyards of Weishan and much, much more on March Calendar of Architectural Event

Spring is warming up the architectural scene in Chicago, with almost 40 items on the March calendar of architecture-related events. Rafael Vinoly will talk about his sets for the Chicago Opera Theater production of Monteverdi's The Return of Ulysses, at a March 28th CAF lunchtime lecture, Jan Herreros discusses his work at IIT, and Alberto Kalach his at UIC. At another CAF lunchtime lecture, Martin Felsen and Sarah Dunn talk about their winning entry in the History Channel's City of the Future Competition. Jeanne Gang talks about Aqua for the Friends of Downtown, and bird collisions at the Chicago Center for Green Technology. Then there's the Art Institute's Joe Rosa at Archeworks, and preservation architect Gunny Harboe at APA. Patrick Ryan and SOM's Thomas Kerwin discuss Chicago's bid for the 2016 Olympics at CAF, while Vince Michael lectures on the Courtyard Houses of Weishan, China for Landmarks Illinois at the Cultural Center.

Believe it or not, that's just the tip of the iceberg. There's a ton of other great events, and I feel guilty not to mention them all here, but you can check it all out here.

Endgame: Is the Fix in for the Farwell?

In January, to general astonishment, the Commission on Chicago Landmarks flashed a bit of backbone and voted down a Planning Department proposal to demolish the landmarked Farwell Building on north Michigan Avenue.

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

A special session has been set for 9:00 A.M. on Thursday, March 8th to reverse the January vote. Read all about how power works in this city, including the developers and architects who are cutting the big checks to the local alderman promoting the Farwell's demolition here.

The Farwell Saga - Episode Four

Scaffolding has gone up around Michigan Avenue's Farwell Building, saved last month when the Commission on Chicago Landmarks voted down a proposal that would have stripped the Farwell's facades, demolished the building, and remounted the facades on a completely new building, all under the name of landmark protection.

Is the scaffolding a ploy in a PR campaign to reverse that vote by persuading the public the building is so unsafe that demolition is the only solution?

Read about what's at stake, and how its shaking down - including project architect Lucien Lagrange's candid discussion about the real reasons behind the developer's push to demolish the Farwell - in ten easy points, here.

Young? Chicago?

What does it mean to be a Chicago architect or designer? Are there affinities and synergies that they share, or could they just as well be working in anywhere U.S.A.? A new exhibition at Chicago's Art Institute puts the work of a sweet sixteen of architects, industrial, fashion and graphics designers on display, and the museum's new curator of Architecture and Design, Joseph Rosa, tries to make sense of the mix. Read all about it, and see the pictures, here.

Ouroussoff Takes On the Freedom Tower

After a number of diversionary excursions into places like Dubai, New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff is finally engaging his new home city with a simple, brave declaration: Freedom Tower is anything but.

Year after year, the enormous optimism of the competition that arose out of public disgust with the original proposals for the World Trade Center site has been beaten down and eviscerated by the ugly realities of developer Larry Silverstein's greed, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill's David Childs' raw political maneuvering, and the fecklessness of Governor George Pataki. By the time Childs' last cowering, capitulating design was revealed, the overall response was one of fatalistic resignation.

Now Ouroussoff has come forth to state what should have obvious to anyone with two eyes.

"The Freedom Tower, with its tapered bulk and chamfered corners, evokes a gargantuan glass obelisk. Its clumsy bloated form, remade by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, vaguely recalls the worst of postmodernist historicism . . . the Freedom Tower is conceived as a barricaded fortress . . . It speaks less of resilience and tolerance than of paranoia." Read the full article here.

Although construction has already begun on foundations, Ouroussoff says its not too late to rethink the design. We can only hope.

Listomania

To mark its 150th anniversary, the American Institute of Architects has proclaimed 150 structures as America's Favorite Architecture. Laughter and ridicule ensue. Feel free to join the fun. I do my part here.

The Joy of Sax?

Just when you think it can't get any kitschier . . .

Crain's Chicago Business is reporting that the House of Blues Hotel, set up in what was the office building of Bertrand Goldberg's classic, groundbreaking Marina City complex, will soon be no more. This coming May, Gemstone Hotels and Resorts will reopen the facility as the Hotel Sax. Apparently regressing to vintage New Orleans is no longer enough. The New York design firm of McCartan will be creating, in the words of the press release, a concept that "mixes the essence of a 17th century French Salon executed with a 21st century twist. An eclectic array of furnishings from India and Europe are also used in exotic colors and finishes." Louis XIV, bowling alley attached. Lucien Lagrange, eat your heart out.

Gemstone has already vandalized what should be a landmark building with large expanses of battleship gray paint that subverts the lightness of Goldberg's original design, making it look gloomy and, yes, cheap. Buckets of money and a complete innocence of taste - what new wonders will they now bring?

Weekend Reading: Kamin on What Lies Beneath, plus End of Winter: Myth or Possibility?

In the press this weekend:

Chicago's Two Track Building Boom - Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin explores how a monopolization of attention by high profile projects like Santiago Calatrava's Chicago Spire is overshadowing the far larger number of clunky new buildings that are littering the city. For every elegant solution, from Laurence Booth's 30 West Oak (pictured), or Miller/Hull's 156 West Superior, there's at least as many skyline-scarring clunkers like DeStefano + Partners Left Bank at Kinzie Station , which evokes less the sidewalks of Paris than a kind of architectural K-ration. It's possible that over the decades we'll come to accept, if not actually love, these kind of lazy build, flip, and repeat developments at which Fifield is a master, but it's more likely that the only thing they're accomplishing is lowering the standard of mediocrity. Ultimately, they're parasitic - bringing people back to city and its neighborhoods at the same time as they eat away at the character that makes them attractive places to live in the first place. Read it here.

Winter - It Will Actually End? - With subzero cold leaving the Chicago River covered in ice in the first time in years, and our East coast compatriots buried in up to ten feet of snow, it's enough to make you momentarily doubt global warming, or even wonder if Spring will ever come. A hopeful answer came this week, not from a groundhog, but from the Sunday New York Times, which is carrying a full page ad announcing this summer's schedule for the Tanglewood Festival, for which tickets go on sale today. Ravinia's former long-time Music Director James Levine will lead performances of The Damnation of Faust, Bluebeard's Castle, and the full, four-act version of Don Carlos with Patricia Racette, Johan Botha and Samuel Ramey, as well as a sequence of fully-staged performances of Cosi Fan Tutte. It tends to be a little pricey, though - top tickets going for just a buck less than $100.00, versus a typical $50.00 top at last year at Ravinia, although Tanglewood wins out for the lowest priced seats - $18.00 versus Ravinia's $20.00. See the full schedule here.

CSO Still Top Ten - Meanwhile, Financial Times Music Critic Andrew Clark writes how, despite an increasing roster of quality orchestras worldwide, the list of the best of the best is pretty much the same as it was fifty - or even a hundred - years ago. According to Clark, while an exceptionally inspiring conductor like Mariss Jansons or Simon Rattle can make an ensemble like the Oslo Philharmonic or City of Birmingham Symphony appear world class, the quality of play seldom endures after their departure, and we're left with the usual suspects, which in America means the inevitable "Top Five" - New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Cleveland and Boston. In Clark's own current global top ten, James Levine's Met Orchestra replaces Maazel's New York Philharmonic, Eschenbach's troubled Philadelphia doesn't make the cut, and the Chicago Symphony is grudgingly included, despite its "over-dominant brass" making it the embodiment of "pure American beefcake," which is pretty funny, when you consider that it's largely the product of two Hungarians named Reiner and Solti. Read it here.

Urbanlab Wins City of the Future

The History Channel announced this morning that the Chicago firm Urbanlab has won the $10,000 first prize in the The City of the Future Competition for their vision of Chicago in 2106. The firm had already won $10,000 for winning the Chicago leg of competition, and now wins an additional $10,000 for beating out entries from similar competitions in New York and Los Angeles. The winner was selected by the public via the City of the Future website.

The award was announced by architect Daniel Libeskind, who served as "national competition juror." "UrbanLab is thrilled to have been named the National Winner of the City of the Future competition," said the firm's Martin Felsen, "especially considering the high caliber of ideas and proposals generated by the competition participants. We’d like to thank The History Channel for providing such an important forum, at a pivotal time, for an open discussion of future design directions of our cities.”

Read my take on the competition, and see the pictures here.

Bruce Mau Heads South - Chicago's New Burnham?

Via Archnewsnow - and as tipped by Edward Lifson last November - the Toronto Star's Martin Knelman is reporting that graphics designer and futurist Bruce Mau will be opening a Chicago office by the end of June. And while a spokesperson for Bruce Mau Design says a personal move is not finalized, Knelman says Mau has told friends he's been shopping for a Chicago house and checking out schools for his three children.

Why Chicago? An increasing amount of Mau's business is in the United States, and Knelman reports a number of those clients don't like having to cross the border to meet with him in Toronto, an annoyance that will only increase now that the U.S. State Department is requiring passports even for trips to and from Canada.

The other major reason stated is that Chicago, from the mayor on down, "embraced" Mau's manifesto exhibition, Massive Change, when it ran at the Museum of Contemporary Art last fall, while, according to Knelman, the response to show in Mau's home town was more reserved. If Mau is expecting the type of fawning he received here to continue in perpetuity, he'll be in for rude awakening. Chicago, ultimately, is a tough town, with an allergy for puffery no matter how well intentioned. Massive Change was Mau's Chicago romantic courtship. Moving here will be the marriage, when you find, usually through a painful period of adjustment, that your spouse is not just a reflection of yourself, but a separate person with his or her own obstinate and not always subservient traits, habits and opinions.

Still, Chicago was built by people who grew tired of where they came from and fell in love with the city, in all its contradictions. Think Sullivan, Mies, Daniel Burnham. If Mau can disenthrall himself from the flatterers - sycophancy is one of Chicago's baser failings - and really engage the city, warts and all, he could be the next name in that line.

Last Three Days to Vote for your City of The Future

This Saturday, February 3rd, is the last day to vote in the History Channel's The City of the Future Competition, which asked participants to imagine the city of 2106, a century hence. If you follow the link, you can see info on all three finalists, and well as the path to casting your own vote for who should get the $10,000 first prize.

The more I look at this, the more I think the entry of Chicago's UrbanLab is truly the best of the bunch. And while I may be accused of local boosterism (Go Bears!), I'm thinking that after you examine all three, you'll come to the same conclusion. Read all about it, and see the pictures here.

Wither SOM? and American Architectural Education Looks the Other Way - Two Great Reads

Wither SOM?

In A New Order, appearing in the February issue of Chicago Magazine, Jay Pridmore creates a compelling portrait of megafirm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill at a point in its history when new blood like David Childs' protege Ross Wimer is being brought in from New York even as long-time mainstay Adrian Smith leads a group of architects out the door to form his own new firm, Adrian Smith+Gordin Gill Architecture.

Was this the right way to treat a guy who brought SOM back from dead in the 1980's? Are the recent changes a matter of Childs colonizing the Chicago office? Which Ross Wimer are we getting - the architect of the twistfest that is the soaring Infinity Tower in Dubai, or the designer of the - at least in its earliest stages - insipid proposal for a huge Olympic Village along Chicago's lakefront? Pridmore addresses all these questions - and more, in a lot more balanced way than my own leading questions.

His concise yet evocative overview of the firm's 70-year history reminds us that conflict among partners is in SOM's bones, from the original antipathy between Skidmore and Owings, to the legendary battles between Bruce Graham and Walter Netsch, and beyond, and it doesn't seem to have hurt the work, but often strengthened it. Read it here.

American Architectural Education Looks the Other Way

In the middle of the 20th century, architects fleeing Hitler came to America and changed the focus of American education from the Beaux Arts to the Bauhaus, first with Gropius at Harvard, and then with Mies van der Rohe, recharting the course of U.S. architecture from his perch as head of the school of architecture at IIT in Chicago.

It was a process portrayed as a descent of vampires in Tom Wolfe's 80's screed, From Bauhaus to Our House, but now it's the influence of Europe that is being threatened with being pitched into the dumpster, and not in a way from which Manhattan's greatest surviving dandy will necessarily draw comfort.

Don Lee of the Los Angeles Times has a great article on the USC School of Architecture's new dean, Chinese architect Qingyun Ma, whose own firm, MADA s.p.a.m., headquartered in Shanghai, is making waves both on the mainland and internationally, with work that touches on both the great cities and distant farming villages. And Ma is not alone - Japan's Hitoshi Abe will become head of UCLA's department of architecture beginning this spring.

"American education has cultivated strengths in your own reasoning process." Lee quotes Ma as saying, "If you come up with a hypothetical and you develop your own operation rationale, and the end product can fulfill that line of reasoning, then it's judged to be good. In China, the judgment is oftentimes poetic, literature and all those intuitive things rather than rational processes." Frank Lloyd Wright and Frank Gehry: secretly Chinese? Read it here.

Catch a Thief - Do You Know This Man?

Is there anything lower - and more pathetic - than a dour young man who lifts what he thinks is a valuable newel post from one of Chicago's greatest landmark buildings and walks away with it stuffed into his backpack? Below is pictured just such a man:

Do you know who he is? And if do, could you let us know? On the afternoon of January 12th, this guy was caught on surveillance cameras walking into the 1890's Monadnock Building and nonchalantly stealing the newel post from the staircase. See all of the surveillance pictures and read the rest of the story here.

Moses is Risen?

Robin Pogrebin, the always reliable New York Times architectural writer, has a fine article this week, Rehabilitating Robert Moses on three upcoming exhibitions - at the Museum of the City of New York, the Queens Museum of Art, and Columbia Unversity - that seek to provide a fresh look at the work of Robert Moses, the master builder of New York whose increasingly unchecked reign ran for almost four decades. (The article is accompanied by a good short video, produced by Erik Olsen.) As described by Pogrebin, the exhibitions seek to reverse the ultimately harsh judgement of writers such as Jane Jacobs, and, most decisively, Robert Caro, whose massive 1974 biography of Moses, The Power Broker, remains one of the great books of the 20th Century. The organizers of the new exhibitions apparently seek to expunge Caro's shadow on Moses's reputation, to the point of making the author a nonperson. According to Pogrebin, Caro was not invited to even one of the symposiums organized in connection with the shows.

We seem to have now reached the point where Moses has been dead long enough for people to lust after his ability to get things done, without being inconvenienced by any personal memories of the often dire results.

While Moses's life is an epic, and his personality complex and often contradictory, the trajectory of his career is simplicity himself. Moses was in his prime when he worked for master politicians like Al Smith and Fiorello Laguardia, who were the clout behind his great achievements like the the stunning neighborhood swimming pools, the hundreds of playgrounds, and Jones Beach. When Moses came up with a bonehead idea like a Brooklyn Battery Bridge that would have turned much of lower Manhattan into an the underside of an overpass, they - along with FDR - had the power to stop him. It was only afterwards, when Moses had cunningly gathered up more power than any mayor or governor, and insulated himself from all accountability, that he became essentially a rogue agent, working largely for himself. The meglomania that had previously made him so effective now turned against the city, with the mass destruction of neighborhoods for highways and megaprojects that sickened rather than healed.

It's a story straight out of Lord Acton. We still can't resist looking for the man on horseback, who will rescue us from our myriad weaknesses. But for such a man to attain full force, the rest of us must become helpless and dependent. Inevitably, he will come to despise us for it, and then, because he now believes he, himself, creates reality, he will follow his whims heedless to their consequence.

2007 Chicago Prize, Seattle Olympic Sculpture Garden's Marion Weiss at Art Institute Tonight

A reminder that this evening, Thursday, January 25th brings the announcement of the winner of the Chicago Architectural Club's 2007 Chicago Prize competition, Crossing the Drive, for the proposal to span Lake Shore Drive at Queen's Crossing, just east of Buckingham Fountain, which the city arbitrarily shut down without notice a little more than a year ago.

Beginning at 5:30 P.M. over 80 entries will be on display in the Louis Sullivan Trading Room on the Columbus Drive side of the Art Institute. If the results are anything like the CAC's previous competition on the re-use of the city's water tanks, we're probably in for a rich range of proposals from firms all across the world.

The jury is to be chaired by Marion Weiss of Weiss/Manfredi Architects, whose spectacular, just-opened Olympic Sculpture Garden has created its own crossing over railroad tracks and a highway to bridge downtown Seattle to the Puget Sound waterfront. The Seattle Art Museum project has drawn international raves. Billionaire Bill Gates was among the throng of opening day visitors, with the Post Intelligencer reporting he proclaimed the park's vista "impressive." Immediately afterwards, an agitated Steve Ballmer was seen repeatedly jumping up and down - causing the Calder Eagle to momentarily teeter on its moorings - while shouting above the roar of traffic that future vistas would never take anywhere near as much time to complete.

Around 6:30 P.M. in the Rubloff Auditorium, Weiss will present the CAC competitions two runners-up and finally the first prize winner, who will receive $5,000. Weiss will then deliver the evening's keynote lecture.

The Chicago Olympics - A Rude Question

On Tuesday, the City of Chicago unveiled more details of its bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics, releasing a number of architectural renderings, including this rather handsome one of a temporary 80,000 seat stadium proposed for Washington Park, whose estimated cost, despite a reduction in seating from 95,000, is already up $60,000,000 - 20% - from an earlier estimate just a couple of months ago.

Exciting stuff, but I still have to wonder: In a city with limited capital and huge infrastructure needs - estimated at nearly $6 billion for the CTA alone - isn't there something obscene about spending $300,000,000 on a stadium that will be demolished just weeks after its opening?

AECOM Going Public

AECOM Technology, the engineering/consulting powerhouse whose massive expansion since its 1990 founding included a 1996 merger with Chicago firm McClier and who now employs nearly 30,000 people worldwide, Wednesday announced that it will be going public with an initial stock offering later this year.

Doing a 460 on the Mag Mile

The Terra Museum on Chicago's North Michigan may be long gone and its building headed for the scrap heap, with a new 40-story mini-tower by Lucien Lagrange for Ritz-Carlton on the way, but not before a few last spasms of showcase. Last October, the space turned crimson as a "pop-up" store selling the Motorola Red Slvr cellphones that kicked back a portion of each sale to "Project Red", Bono's inititive to combat AIDS in the third world, becoming the site of a media frenzy as the Irish rocker joined Oprah in a photo op trek to the store.

Now, beginning February 1st for a two week period, the space is again being transformed, this time as a Lexus 460 Degrees Gallery, promoting the car of the same name. The centerpiece will be an architectural installation by the Belgium designer Arne Quinze, whose Frame hard-foam furniture has a prominent place in Rem Koolhaas's new Seattle Public Library. (The illustration here is from Quinze's October install in Los Angeles). The installation will also include video art from Pascual Sisto and photography by Miranda Lichtenstein. After an invitation-only opening reception on February 1st, the "Light and Speed Exhibition" will be open to the public 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. February 2 through 15th, with test drives on the 2nd through 6th, and 8th and 9th. And Garrett's, Chicago's best pop, cheese and karmelcorn, right next door. Wipe your hands before you touch the car.

Great Moments in Marketing

From the Sunday New York Times Magazine.

You or me, we get a unit that's renovated, but if you're really special (and really rich) you get one that's remastered. And you're not just buying the unit, you're engaging in The Exchange of Power. Which is a lot tonier way of saying here's a 1902 lux office building that's going through the mill now for a second time, having been converted to apartments in 1997 and renamed The Exchange, and where in 2006 - I guess this is the exchange of power part - the residents found that none of their leases we're being renewed so the building could be recycled again, this time as high-end condo's in the renamed 25 Broad Street. (669 square-foot 1 bedroom just $797,000) Could this be where Donald Trump learned to convert friends and associates who were early purchasors of units in his new Chicago tower, jump-starting pre-sales, into patsies from whom he invoked an obscure clause in their contracts to yank back the units and keep all the profits for himself?

Kamin uncovers latest design for Calatrava's Chicago Spire

Less than a week after it was withheld from a packed public meeting, Santiago Calatrava's latest design for the 2,000-foot-high Chicago Spire is unveiled by Chicago Tribune Architecture critic Blair Kamin. Read all about it - and see the pictures - here.

Essential Reading: Greg Hinz on the CTA's meltdown

When the Chicago Transit Authority announced its latest and greatest outrage - slowdowns on the Red, Brown and Purple lines that will double the commute times of homebound riders for a two and a half year period - the general reaction was that of Chicago Magazine business correspondent David Greising on a week ago Chicago Week in Review on WTTW: shrug your shoulders and predict the response of CTA riders will be to do nothing, because "What choice do they have?"

Now, a brilliant analysis by the indispensable Greg Hinz in Crain's Chicago Business lays out in compelling detail how the current meltdown in CTA service is a matter not just of aging infrastructure and chronic underfunding, but of a willful incompetence on the part of President Frank Kreusi and CTA management that consistently neglected basic maintenance in favor of splashy, expensive and often questionable mega-projects like a $130,000,000 station under Block 37 for an express service to the city's airports that does not exist.

In Kreusi's typically cynical fashion, the service cutbacks that will decimate the number of trains and make the P.M. commute for hundreds of thousands of riders a living hell have been put off until April. Kreusi is no doubt remembering how, after a massive 1979 snowstorm, the breakdown of the CTA and decision to run trains express, bypassing blacks waiting on the platforms of inner city stations, ended with the stunning and unprecedented defeat of machine Democratic mayor Michael Bilandic. 2007 is also an election year, and Kreusi's scheduling protects this year's incumbents - mayoral and alderman - from being held accountable when the full force of his failed management hits the fan.

Greg Hinz's intensive research and cogent analysis means it won't be quite so easy to sweep it all under the rug. Read it here.

We're Number 13!

I'm sure it's a fine accomplishment and that it seemed a good idea at the time, but I think we'll all be excused if we're left short of hyperventilating over the School of Architecture at IIT's announcement that it's been ranked as the "13th best program in the nation" by DesignIntelligence, the newsletter of the Design Futures Council, in their 2007 America's Best Architecture and Design Schools survey.

IIT has certainly come a long way from when, little more than a decade ago, it was down to 3,000 students and another survey named it America's "least beautiful" campus. Under the direction of IIT President Lew Collins and Dean of Architecture Donna Robertson, the student population has exploded (collectively rather than individually), and the physical campus reinvigorated with stunning new buildings by Rem Koolhaas and Helmut Jahn, and a glorious restoration of Mies van der Rohe's iconic Crown Hall. And the best all this gets you is 13th?

If you're ready to fork over $29.95, you can download the entire list on-line (Number 5: Clemson!!!!), or, for $39.95, order the print version of "more than 100 perfect-bound color pages of charts, graphs, data, and analysis of design programs across the nation that no student, prospective student, school counselor, or hiring manager should be without." Belonging to none of these categories, I think I can safely take a pass. Unless there's recipes. Congratulations all the same.

Preservation Chicago unveils Chicago 7 2007

Preservation Chicago today announced its 2007 list of "Chicago's Seven Most Endangered Buildings" at a noon-time press conference at City Hall. The grass roots group cited The Farwell Building, which earlier this month received a momentary reprieve when the Commission on Chicago Landmarks voted down a proposal to strip its facade, demolish the building, and remount the facade on another building.

Also on the list are the Rosenwald Apartments on South Michigan, the Archer Avenue District in Bridgeport, the Wicker Park Commercial District along Milwaukee Avenue, the Julia C. Lathrop Homes at Clybourn and Diversey, the North Avenue footbridge over Lake Shore Drive, and Pilgrim Baptist Church, the Adler & Sullivan designed landmark that burned to the bare walls in January of 2006. At a press conference earlier this week, Mayor Daley announced he has agreed to chair the fund-raising effort to reconstruct the church, and the Chicago firm of Johnson and Lee Architects, in conjunction with Quinn Evans Architects, were named architects of record.

Preservation Chicago's 2007 Most Endangered List can be viewed here, with links to PDF's, including photos, on each of the listings.

Dr. King and Liberty Baptist

Calatrava Spire Shrouded in Irish Fog

Donald Trump step aside. Garrett Kelleher may be the most confident developer on the face of the earth. Monday night - January 15th - the man behind the proposed Chicago Spire, the twisting 2,000-foot-high tower from superstar architect Santiago Calatrava - flew in from Ireland to present his project to a meeting sponsored by the Grant Park Advisory Council. But in patiently – mostly - taking on questions from an overwhelmingly enthusiastic crowd that braved snow, ice and cold to pack Daley Bicentennial Plaza fieldhouse just east of Millennium Park, he raised as many questions as he answered. Read all about it - and see the pictures - here.