The Olympics won't take place won't take place until 2016, and the winning bidder has yet to be announced, but to clear the way for an athletes' village, the City of Chicago is rushing to grind
into dust one of the city's richest collections of Bauhaus-inspired architecture, even as a young scholar reveals new information about the role of legendary architect Walter Gropius in the design of the Michael Reese Hospital campus.Any way you look at it—environmental, architectural, historical, or planning—the city’s push to obliterate Michael Reese is about as far from sound and sustainable as you can get. Read about it, in all its aspects - and see all the photographs - here.
It seems really ironic that, in order to attract world wide event of games and cultural exchange, Chicago finds it necessary to destroy part of its architectural heritage. Part of the Olympics spirit has to be introduction of our city to the world. We should be presenting our culture, our historic, our architectural and engineering feats, our achievements, not destroying them.
ReplyDeleteThose buildings are so FUGLY even if Mies himself came down and blessed them we would be better off without them. If Gropius took a dump on your front lawn would you save it?
ReplyDeleteas should be readily apparent by the photographs - or a personal visit - the best of the Reese buildings are anything but "FUGLY", no matter who the credited architect is. This is exactly the kind of snap judgement that condemned so many Louis Sullivan's buildings in the 1950's and 1960's, and once they're gone, you can't go back and say, "Oh, now I see it."
ReplyDeleteExcellent article. These are clearly buildings that need to be saved. Renovating them would make for a much better Olympic Village. Thanks for the article.
ReplyDeleteI don't think people will ever have the same emotions about these structures that people do about classical structures that have been demolished.
ReplyDeleteThese are very plain but appropriate for their time.
Now, I don't think they should all be demolished but at the same time, I'd much rather preserve one of Chicago's classic beauties than these WWII reactionary buildings.
They don't really have an aesthetic quality.
But that is the point, it is extremely plain because it was designed in an era trying to break from the past.
The ONLY reason I think the general public would want to keep some of these would be to preserve a style.
Now, that foam sculpture thing, I would move that to a museum but I wouldn't be horribly tempted to preserve it at its location.
This is exactly the perspective of "fugly" that destroyed the the Huntington Hartford Museum by Edward Durrell Stone on Columbus Circle in NYC- just a year ago. The replacement is a MAJOR piece of architectural GARBAGE of the most common variety....... it all happened because the most uneducated, unaware, esthetically challenged power players just didn't get it!!! Lynn, your comment " oh, now I see it" is so right on! In the case of the HHM it actually had a graphically understandable facade, classically oriented BUT instead it was replaced with a banal abstract facade that is permanently asleep.
ReplyDeleteAre we looking at the same buildings? Only an architecture geek could consider these sterile, cheap-looking easily replicable structures as worthy of preservation. Buildings of that style have been around for half a century or more - calling them ugly - a view which I would suspect is the consensus of those who are not architecture geeks - is hardly a snap judgment. My sense is that Louis Sullivan's buildings were not destroyed because the public "didn't get it," but rather because developers could make money by tearing them down and couldn't care less about aesthetic merit. I was in New York when Penn Station was replaced by Madison Square Garden, and the sense of loss was palpable. Wasn't there a similar reaction when the Stock Exchange building was demolished. I can't imagine that many people would care if Gropius' work were obliterated from the face of the earth.
ReplyDeleteTypical nihilist sophistry. Now that the buildings of Sullivan are safely demolished, we can admit how good they are. Too bad they're gone; sob, sob, crocodile tears. Everything you actually have a chance of saving, of course, is crap, and we should get rid of it as quickly as possible, before anyone has a chance to notice the loss. I defy anyone who actually tours the campus, as a large group did today, and see the buildings among the beautiful Hideo Sasaki landscaping, also to be obliterated in the city's clueless grubby plan, to be so cavalier.
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