Bombs Away! Stanley Tigerman unveils Titanic 2015

Elva Rubio, Carlo Parente, Karla Sierralta, Carl Ray Miller, Stanley Tigerman, Martin Kläschen,Eva Maddox

In the late 1970's, with Mies van der Rohe dead for nearly a decade and so-called "Miesian" architecture at its greatest point of power, architect Stanley Tigerman declared war with a single photo montage . . .

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"Two of us," Tigerman recalled last Thursday at the Chicago Architecture Foundation,  "James Ingo Freed and I, were sitting one night in my office, drinking. And I made this collage.  And he gave me the backbone to do it. I really was a bit of a coward. I didn't want to do it , but it was definitely confrontational. I was an incredible admirer of Mies van der Rohe, but I always had problems with the sycophants, the acolytes after Mies's death, who ran the school into the ground. Because they didn't add to the syntax of language in the way that they should have done."

Since then, Tigerman's image has itself become iconic, a key symbol of the rise of post-modernism and the emergence of a new generation of architects with very different ways of thinking. Nearly 40 years later, with Chicago's first Architecture Biennial launched with full force, architect and designer Elva Rubio thought it might be time for an update.

Elva Rubio, Stanley Tigerman

"Elva persuaded me to do another one now," said Tigerman.  Last week's event, held around a table imprinted with the original Titanic image, included the unveiling of Tigerman's 2015 update, the architect in conversation with both Rubio and a panel of clients, and a display of office artifacts.

"If you look at the wall," explained Rubio, "basically this is Stanley's office here, that you allowed us to kind of pull out and bring to the public which is absolutely amazing, kind of a patchwork of their lives, he and Margaret, and all the different accomplishments.  You can see the range is astonishing. It's writing, it's product design, ideation, architecture, urbanism, so it's quite a prize . And it's a very small piece of what is there."

The moment came.  Titanic 2015 was unveiled . . .

Tigerman had talked repeatedly about the struggle inherent in one generation taking over from the previous.  He recalled his last evening as Co-Director of Archeworks, the alternative design school he had founded in 1994 with Eva Maddox, at an event that had been named "Passing the Baton". He strode to the podium with a briefcase, from which first pulled a conductor's baton.  That is not what he meant, he said.  Then he pulled out the kind of baton marathon runner's pass one to the next.  That is not what he meant.  Finally, he pulled out a large hunting knife.  That is what he meant, he said, just before he striding out of the building never to return.

Of course, the violence that Tigerman referred to repeatedly is less a matter of tearing flesh than an Age of Innocence kind of genteel evisceration.  Indeed, even the imagery of Titanic 2015 - a bomb falling from the sky about to obliterate both Mies's Crown Hall and Frank Gehry's Bilbao museum should be seen as a kind of a McGuffin spurring discussion about succession.

"I thought about an icon," said Tigerman, "and the problem with an icon is it becomes iconic. It's emulated, and thereby watered down . . . The problem with an icon is that people are so overwhelmed by it that they then use it as a referent to then do something . As opposed to having a tabula rasa, a clean sweep. Nothing on your drawing board. You start again anew each time."

"There are originals, and there are copies. So I have a problem with an icon. I mean, I love Frank Gehry and I certainly love Mies van der Rohe. Obviously, Bilbao has become iconic. And it's not about signature work.  Not about Frank replicating or redoing something in a similar certain way. It's about something becoming an icon. Something becomes so staggeringly important that it inhibits one from finding one's own series of icons. So that's what this is about. It's got nothing to do with bombing Crown Hall or Bilbao at all."

"It's the problem of using those referents as inspiration. Inspiration is there in the emptiness of your drawing board or your computer . . . You try to do something each time out of the barn that's new. Not to be different. But just to try your hand at it. Inevitably, there will be things on your mind. Architects always have agendas. Architects are not simply, as Frank Lloyd Wright referred to himself as Louis Sullivan's pencil. They're not the client's pencil. The client comes to you because they're hoping that you have an idea about something. And when you hold up an icon, and that becomes the referent, then the client in a way becomes diminished."

"[Mies] was not going to be held hostage to the vicissitudes of clients. He had a 20-man office. He had 20 people. He had 20 people when he died. And he didn't expand it to 21, or drop it to 19. That was his team. And he wasn't going to have somebody come in and say, oh, we're going to overturn everything to accommodate them."

Stanley Tigerman, Eva Maddox

"Mies was a role model for me. Why do you think I've lived in a Mies building for 45 years? Because he was a really terrific architect. And it was a challenge to me to wake up every morning in a really good building . They're going to drag me out horizontally. That's where I'm going to end my days. Because he was my role model. He was my Abraham."

"Architecture is optimistic. The forces are always there to diminish you.  Building commissioners, zoning administrator, often clients. to diminish the work of the architect . . . You have to have a very strong stomach, and a very strong backbone.  You have to be stunningly and optimistically inclined to cause something to be built."

"It takes a wonderful client to make a really good building to transpire. So it is about optimism. You have to convey that optimism to your clients and everybody in the world, who will make light of what you do. Trust me."

Chicago Architecture Biennial

Tigerman had special praise for the Chicago Architecture Biennial, "which I'm thrilled by. 120 architects from all over the world, all six continents, that [Graham Foundation's] Sarah Herda and Joe Grima, the former editor of Domus, put together with the help of a consulting group that included [Chicago Architecture Foundation's] Lynn Osmond and a number of people. But they did it. And so what you see at the Cultural Center is this thrilling youngest generation , which is thrilling because they somehow have coalesced and they're not quite as back-biting as one finds in New York.

Elva Rubio, Lynn Osmond, Stanley Tigerman, unidentified, Eva Maddox

"Not all of it is wonderful. A huge proportion is quite remarkable. . . . Not everything is happy ending stuff. They get full marks, as far as I'm concerned."

The exhibitions Currencies of Architecture and Celebrating an Icon continue at the Chicago Architecture Foundation, 224 South Michigan.  Concurrent with Celebrating an Icon is a series of panel discussions which continue next Thursday, October 29th, with a Chicago Educators evening including Penelope Dean of UIC, Vedran Mimica of IIT and Ben Nicholson of SAIC; a November 12th event with Carol Ross Barney; SOM's Brian Lee on November 19, and a closing party and auction on December 4th.  More information here.

An exhibition, Stanley Tigerman 821 Stanley Tigerman Sketches 821, is on display at Volume Gallery through December 5th.

 Read More:

The Architect as Zelig: Tigerman's Ceci n'est pas une reverie, at the Graham

Schlepping with Stanley
 

As he receives a Lifetime Achievement Award from AIA Chicago, a Stanley Tigerman Miscellany

Enquist at IIT, Rojo at UIC, Chattel at SAIC - still more for February!

Seriously, is it ever too late to be adding items to the February Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events?

The architecture schools at both IIT and UIC have announced their Spring lecture series.  IIT begins at Crown Hall this Wednesday, February 20th, with SOM planning guru Phil Enquist talking about The Century of Cities, while over at UIC on Monday the 25th, there's a lecture by Luis Rojo of Rojo/Fernandez-Shaw arquitectos of Madrid.  And over at SAIC, preservation consultant Robert Chattel talks about The Atomic Wild Wild West on Thursday, the 28th.  On Saturday, the 23rd, the Hyde Park Historical Society will award this year's Marian and Leon Depres Preservation Awards at their annual dinner, with Chicago Cultural Historian Tim Samuelson as featured speaker.

This coming week is loaded with great stuff, from Martino Gamper at the Art Institute's Fullerton Auditorium for SAIC on Monday, the 18th, and a special panel discussion: Food! - Design for Social Change at CAF the evening of Tuesday of February 19th, including but not limited to John Cary, John Edel, Robin Elmslie Osler and Fritz Haeg, who also lectures at the Graham on the 28th.

On Wednesday, the 20th, Tom Jacobs of Krueck and Sexton talks about Glass Engineering in Architecture at CAF lunchtime, while on Thursday the 21st, Gensler's Elva Rubio discusses the Ghost Facade at 618 S. Michigan for Landmarks Illinois at the Cultural Center.  Thursday evening is also the last curator's gallery talk by Karen Kice for the Art Institute's exhibition Building: Inside Studio Architects, which closes on the 24th.  Then on Saturday, the 23rd, CAF has Family Studio Saturday; Building and Testing, a National Engineers Week event for teens.

And there's a lot more.  Check out the nearly three dozen great items still to come on the February Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

Arets, Gang, Gamper, Ghost Facades, Airports, Crosstowns and Engineers Running Amuck - it's the February Calendar!

Oh, yeah, grab your Valentine (hey! - not there) - it's the February Calendar of Chicago Architecture Events.

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February starts off with Wiel Arets talking about his book Autobiographical References at the Graham on Friday the 1st, while Saturday the 2nd, Clare Lyster leads the second Archi-Salon - System Synergy at the Art Institute in conjunction with the exhibition Building: Inside Studio Gang Architects, where curator Karen Kice offers the last gallery talk on Thursday, the 21st.

February 17-23 is National Engineers Week, and CAF recognizes the work of engineers with this month's Wednesday lunchtime lectures: Joshua Freedland of Wiss, Janney Elstner talks about Engineering of the Washington Monument  on the 6th, Joseph Burns of Thornton Tomasetti provides A Look Under Chicago's Block 37 on the 13th, Tom Jacobs of Krueck and Sexton talks about Glass Engineering in Architecture on the 20th, and Terry McDonnell discusses The Revitalization of the (Sears) Willis Tower Skydeck on the 27th 

Of course, every week is Engineers Week at The Structural Engineers Association of Illinois, but this month SEAOI looks at the Wells Street Bridge Construction, Tuesday the 5th at the Parthenon (the timeless landmark, not the building in Athens) and at the Design of Low-Rise Reinforced Concrete Buildings on Thursday the 14th at UBS Tower.  It all leads up to Dr. Shankar Nair's lecture Skyscrapers-Past, Present, Future, sponsored by SEAOI at CAF on Tuesday, the 26th.

Elsewhere, Gensler's Elva Rubio discusses Ghost Façade: 618 S. Michiganfor Landmarks Illinois at the Cultural Center on Thursday, the 21st in the afternoon, while that evening Susan King of Harley Ellis Devereaux talks about the Living Building Challengeat the Chicago Center for Green Technology

Over at Fullerton Hall at the Art Institute, the School of the Art Institute is sponsoring lectures by landscape architect Martha Schwartz on Tuesday the 5th, and Martino Gamper on Monday, the 18th, while the people from the indispensable website Forgotten Chicago mark their 10th anniversary with a lecture at the Cultural Center for Friends of Downtown on Thursday, the 7th.

Remember the Crosstown, the proposal to cut a new superhighway all long the west side?  David Spatz does, and he'll be talking about Crosstown Expressway Politics and the Limits of Urban Power in Metropolitan Chicago at the Chicago History Museum on the 7th, and if you can't afford a car, Christopher Ziemann will be discussing Bus Rapid Transit in Chicago atAPA Chicago on Tuesday, the 26th

The Urban Land Institute Chicago has seminars on Airports, Infrastructure Investment and the Built Environment at the Ridgemoor Country Club on the 8th, and the Chicago Hotel Market in 2013 and Beyond at the Union League on the 28th. Dr. Chris Luebkeman of Arup discusses Designing for the New Normal in the Next Decade on the 13th at AIA/Chicago, which is also sponsoring a February 28th panel with Dan Wheeler, Susan Conger-Austin, Odile Compagnon and others on Architects Balancing Practice and Academic Work.

Architect Stuart Cohen does double duty,  discussing Incremental Architecture, with Julie Hacker, at AIA/Chicago on the 7th, and on the 27th, lectures on The Architecture of Howard Van Doren Shaw for the Institute of Classical Architecture and Art at the Driehaus Museum (a/k/a Nickerson Mansion.)

And finally, early morning on the 29th at the Central Music Hall, Dr. Vladimir Fragile will discuss  This is NOT a Leap Year (You All Need to Go Home Now.)

I'm sure we'll be adding even more, but for now, check out the nearly 50 great items on the February Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

I've Got You (1913) Under My Skin - Virtual Restoration at 618 South Michigan

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We last wrote in October about plans for 618 South Michigan, home to the Spertus Institute until that institution moved into the stunning new home next door,  designed Krueck and Sexton.

618 South Michigan, just this past June

618 originally had the standard Burnhamesque terra cotta facade.  You can see it here in a vintage photo from John D. Cramer's HPRES-ist blog.  It was designed by Zimmerman, Saxe and McBride and after its 1913 completion, it went through a series of name:  The Petroleum Building, the Dennehy Building (afters its developer), the Barnheisel (after Frederick R. Barnheisel, President of H.H. Kohlsaat, the company that claimed to have invented the lunch counter) and The Arcade Building.

618 South Michigan, 1950's curtail wall rehab

That facade was replaced in the 1950's when IBM took over the building, with a tight grid of a glass and steel curtain wall that better fit in with it's tenant's ultra-modern branding. 

624 South Michigan Chicago Musical College, 1908, C.A. Eckstrom, architect

Columbia also owns 624 South next door, perhaps best known for the huge, ovoid Torco sign that long stood at its crown. 624 South, acquired by Columbia for $8 million in 1990,  was built in 1908 as the home of the Chicago Musical College for the schools' founder, Florenz Ziegfield, Sr.   The original design included an 800-seat theater, the Ziegfield Picture Palace, which was destroyed when A.S. Alschuler added seven stories to the structure in 1922 for H.H. Blum's expansion of "Blum's Smart Shop." 

Alschuler replaced the remarkably open and graceful first and second floor terra cotta facade with a less porous and far more ponderous stone cladding.  Splices are seldom happy affairs, but Eckstrom's original, for all its fussy detail, actually seems a lot more amiable - and modern.

After 76,000 square-foot 618 was acquired by Columbia under the direction of former Chicago planning director Alica Berg, now Columbia's VP of Campus Environment, the 1950's curtain wall was found to be crumbling.  Gensler was called upon to come up with the replacement, and under Regional Design Leader Elva Rubio the idea was hatched to make the few facade a mediation between Krueck and Sexton's cutting-edge sculpted steel and glass to the north and Eckstrom and Alschuler's classically-styled masonry cladding to the south.

While Gensler's new curtain wall is as structure-spare and glassily sleek as the Spertus, it's also  been designed with a "ghost image" of the building's original terra cotta facade, digitally printed as a ceramic frit placed between the dual pane glass, which Berg, in an interview with the Columbia Chronicle, claims is a first in the U.S.. Not only does the new curtain wall provide a major boost in energy efficiency, the fritting is expected to flatten the transparency of the facade just enough to discourage the usual carnage when migratory birds try to fly through hyper-transparent glass.

In its master plan, Columbus noted that the similar floor levels between 618 and 624 allow it to expand its library across both buildings.  Already, Columbia has created a new gallery space on the 2nd floor overlooking Grant Park and the lake called The Arcade, a nod to one of 618's original names.  (Gallery scheduled to re-opened September 4th.)

Obviously, the appearance of the facade will change depending on the light.  The pictures you see here were taken late afternoon.  It will be interesting to see how it resolves in direct sunlight.