Carnival of Possibilities: A Photographic Tour of the first morning of the Chicago Architecture Biennial

First of all, it's an incredible show.  The Cultural Center never looked so good.  As Margaret [McCurrey] said last night, this is a much better venue than in Venice.  I really am thrilled by the exhibition, by the energy of the catalog, the series of events that are going on and on and on for the next many weeks.  This show that emanates from Chicago is the beginning of a rebirth in a certain way of the energy that we have lost as architects in this city until now.

So said 85-year-old godfather of Chicago architecture Stanley Tigerman of the opening day of the first Chicago Architecture Biennial, a massively ambitious exhibition of the work and thought of over one hundred invited designers from more than 30 countries.  The theme of the Biennial, The State of the Art of Architecture, is actually crib of a 1977 conference organized by Tigerman as a shot-across-the-bow of the perceived icy grip of the followers of Mies van der Rohe on architectural practice and discourse.

In his generally upbeat review of the Biennial, Chicago Tribune architecture Blair Kamin called the range of work "uneven", with a "lack of thematic coherence that could have benefited from "a stronger curatorial hand."

To which I can only reply, "Praise God."  The last thing architecture in Chicago - or anywhere - needs right now is a curator's heavy thumb pre-digesting whose ideas are admissible, or straight-jacketing the anarchic world of contemporary architecture into a neat little box.

The strength of the Chicago Architecture Biennial is its catholicity.  Rightfully, co-curators Sarah Herda, Director of the Graham Foundation, and architect and author Joseph Grima did their due diligence of ensuring participants were at a high level of accomplishment, and then largely got out of the way.  Much like a Mahler Symphony is said to encompass the world, the first Chicago Architecture Biennial offers up the experience of encountering a universe of architecture, with all of its differences in outlook, technique and philosophy.  Some of it will astonish, some annoy, some appall.  But Herda and Grima attempt to give us the thing whole.  Their subset world may not be in perfect fidelity to the real thing, but it's an enthralling representation.

Over the next three months, until the Biennial's close on January 3rd, we hope to explore some of its most interesting installations in greater detail.  As an introduction, however, we're going to give you a photo portrait of our first impressions being one of the first persons to enter the exhibition shortly after its official opening at 9:00 a.m., Saturday, October 3rd.

click images for larger view

Approaching the Cultural Center from Washington Street, you find the Biennial spilling out beyond the building with John Ronan's installation, Leaf Lounge, enclosed in a six-foot hedge made up of wire-bound baskets of fallen leaves,where visitors can take a rest on the stumps of trees laid low by ash borer infestation.

You enter the lobby and confront the Cultural Center's grand stair.

It's a fall start.  Resist the temptation to climb it, as you will find the Cultural Center's showpiece Preston Bradley Hall has no exhibits.  Not knowing this, I mounted the stair, and I was taken aback to hear celestial voices rising far above me, as if from heaven.

What I found, however, was not an array of angels, but a rehearsal of the great Chicago Childrens Choir, whose offices are on the top floor.

As I made my way back down to the main floor, I heard music again, very dark, very seductive music, and began walking down the Michigan Avenue galleries to find it.

To my left, I encountered the locked doors to Bold: Alternative Scenarios for Chicago, a sub-exhibition curated by Iker Gill.  Blair didn't think much of it, but I found the entries, in turn, maddening, challenging, fascinating, and engaging.  I'll be writing more about it later.  The thing to know right off, however, is that part of the genius of Herda and Grima is how the Biennial gives lesser known architects their time in sun at the expense of big name firms that often dominate such exhibitions.  In fact, it's only in Bold that you'll see contributions from such mainstays as SOM, Krueck and Sexton, and Jahn.

Finally I found the source of the music.  Mass Studies+Hyun-Suk Seo from Korea is presenting a video, Zoom Out/Zone Out of 400 photographs of 39 built projects set to the iconic Bernard Hermann score for Hitchcock's Vertigo, with individual images of patterned details sometimes sent swirling like the rotating graphics of Saul Bass's title sequence.

You may not notice the black curtain along the right wall of this gallery.  Find it, and step inside, where you will find a number of cases filled with spiderwebs.  Tomás Saraceno invites you to contemplate the incredible constructive intricacies of the webs, "complex geometries suspended in air, each piece appears as a unique galaxy floating within an expansive infinite landscape."

From here, make your way back to the beginning, to the Randolph Street entrance, where you can rest in the foyer on the reused materials of Studio Albori's Makeshift . . .

To your left is the Biennial Bookstore, which has a generous selection of books and periodicals. (I picked up a copy of Hilberseimer's recently translated Metropolis-architecture that I didn't know existed.)  Here you can pick up Biennial T-shirts, pencils and erasers.  Most importantly, make sure you pick up a copy of the official Guidebook - nearly 180 lavishly illustrated pages - so fresh I could still smell the ink.  An essential resource and an irresistible bargain at $8.95.

Sharing the space is RAAF's The End of Sitting - Cut Out,  a sculpted alternative to the traditional seated desk (you do know standing is a much healthier way to work, right?

Returning to the foyer, you move into Randolph, Pedro and Juana's complete re-design of the Cultural Center's Randolph Square space, complete with adjustable pulleys, new lighting and stylish seating.

On either side under the stairs, an appropriate location for a crime-oriented presentation, is Studio Gang's Polis . . .

. . . showcasing the firm's usual exhaustive research in service for a highly creative reconception of the architectural presence of police in neighborhoods often beset with virulent gun violence.  We hope to be writing more about this as well.

Be prepared to encounter the occasional bridal party.  They are not an official Biennial exhibit, but a product of the Cultural Center's popularity as a wedding venue.

At the first landing of the stair, you encounter Atelier Bow-Wow's Piranesi Circus,  in the sealed terrarium named the Gertrude Bernstein Memorial Garden.  An intersecting assemblage of ramps, stairs, ladders, platforms and even a swing "not accessible to the general public but are rather for the use of circus performers - or for imaginary prisoners."

Again, Blair was underwhelmed by the "limp finished design", but in fact the Circus may be the visual linchpin of the entire exhibition.

Viewable at several different levels, the Circus both gives views into individual galleries and reflects their content, creating a complexity of different planes viewable at the same instant.

The constructed window wall of the second-level walkway provides an extra level of complication.

As Tigerman mentioned, the exhibit installations within the Cultural Center has turned one to be of the Biennial's greateststrengths.   Designed by Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge and completed in 1897 at a cost of $2 million as Chicago's central Public Library, the building's restored interiors are an almost overwhelming collection of grand spaces arrayed in luxury materials, richly ornamented, that includes Tiffany mosaics throughout.  They provide a brawny counterpoint to the spare, modernist character of the Biennial installations.

The G.A.R Hall along the north end of the 2nd floor was originally built as a museum and meeting space for the Grand Army of the Republic - Civic War veterans who were still very much a living presence at the time of the library's opening.  This may be the first time the hall has seemed almost stretched to capacity, with large scale installations such as Onishimaki+Hyakudayuki Architect's Children's Town . . .

The giant hanging tubes, looking like long fluorescent bulbs  of Maio's Floating: The Presence of the Present, Selegascano+Helloeverything's Casa A . .
 .

Always in the background are the views out the Cultural Center's tall windows, towards such visual landmarks as Frank Gehry's Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park . . . 

. . . the post-fire buildings on Randolph . . .

. . . and the stark Stone Container Building . . .  

. . . competing in its abstracted whiteness with Bureau Spectacular/Jimenez Lai's Furniture Urbanism . . . 

 The exhibition continues into the nearby Chicago Rooms . . . 

. . . where Pedro Reyes' People's United Nations: pUN was one of a number of exhibits undergoing its final fine-tuning.

Moving to the fourth floor, we find a way of turning a corner quite different from Mies's . . ..

. . . and in the massive bordello-red walled Yates Gallery, mock-ups of entire houses, with Tatiana Bilbao's Sustainable Housing, a 463 square-foot house that can be built for $8,000 on one end . . .

. . . and  MOS Architects Corridor House, built of modules that "approximate the dimensions of a standard corridors and of a sheet of plywood measure 5 x 10", on the other . . .

. . . between them a work at a mannerist inversion of scale, the miniatures of Sou Fujimoto Architects' Architecture is Everywhere, a sea of isolated stick pedestals holding everyday objects suggesting architectural structures . . .

In the hallway leading back to the foyer is Amanda Williams Color(ed) Theory, photos documenting Williams's exploration of the symbolism and power of color in repainting abandoned houses, often standing alone in abandoned landscapes throughout the city.

In the foyer, you'll encounter Fake Industries Architectural Agonism + UTS Indo-Pacific Atlas, a collage of 4,000 "that chart the intersections of media, capital flows, gentrification, and post-traumatic conditions . . . "

Underneath the top of the elegant soaring stair, in the land of the heavenly voices, you'll find Al Borde's House under Construction, which is just as the name describes.  If you want, you're supposed to be able to follow the progress on the firm's website.

So, some first impressions.  A small fraction of what there is to see and consider.   We hope you'll follow our subsequent posts, as we continue our profound contemplation both of what's inside the Cultural Center, and at the various remote sites that are also part of the Biennial.  Still better, you should check it out for yourself.  It's quite a trip.

John Ronan walks us through his first skyscraper, 151 Franklin

click images for larger view - photo courtesy John Buck Company

“Here's the site,” said Dominic Adducci, “I think we all agree it could use a little attention and love.”

In the eyes of the site's owner - and Adducci's boss - developer John Buck, “a little attention and love” comes in the form of a 36-story office tower, to be named after its address, 151 Franklin.  Buck was in attendance but let Adducci do the talking for him at last Monday's community meeting on the project presented by 42nd ward alderman Brendan Reilly. (Reilly has made Buck's Powerpoint presentation available for download here.)

It's the initial step of a public review process that he hopes will end in the demolition of the Walgreen's currently on the site next July and the first tenants moving in to his shiny structure in September of 2016.

Rendering: John Ronan Architects

The skyscraper is the first tower to be designed by Chicago architect John Ronan, best known for his school designs such as Christ the King and Gary Comer College Prep, and the striking new home for the Poetry Foundation. Ronan spoke about the challenges of designing a skyscraper in a video presented at the meeting . . .

For me the most unique and interesting challenge of this is how do you take this building type of which there are hundreds and hundreds of buildings and do something unique.  And I think we've rethought it from a different vantage point - not from a formal aspect but from more of a spatial aspect, so the character of the building is really comprised of two contrasting qualities.  We have this very earthbound, heavy base of the building which is out of a basalt stone which is actually a gray volcanic rock .  The contrast with that is the tower itself, which is very clean, light and technical in appearance.  What this building is about is experiencing it and being inside of it and finding that place in which you feel comfortable.  And it's about new discoveries.  It's not something you understand in a single glance.  It's something you have to go through, walk through, experience it and when you leave you say: Wow - you know, that was really great.  

Rendering: John Ronan Architects

The idea of solid stone at the base and a lighter cladding above hearkens back to Chicago's earliest skyscrapers, many of which featured rough-cut ashlar stone at the bottom providing the appearance of a solid foundation to the tall shaft with its thinner cladding - in brick, stone or terra cotta - that more frankly expressed the structure's metal frame.  

After Adducci provided an overview to the project - 25,000 square-foot, column-free floorplates, 825,000 square-feet overall, with retail and restaurants on the ground floor and a sky garden on the roof, Toronto's skyscraper associates Adamson Associates as architects-of-record, and Lend-Lease as the general contractor - he turned the meeting over to Ronan to walk attendees through the project.  We captured his talk below, complete with our usual bad sound, out-of-focus photography and Cabinet of Dr. Caligari camera angles . . .

One of the more interesting aspects or Ronan's design is his concept of public space.  At 151 Franklin, a large amount of the open plaza space is actually tucked under the building.

155 North Wacker, Arcade looking towards 151 Franklin site

Unlike the grand arcade at Buck's 155 North Wacker, just across the street, Ronan seems to be encouraging people to linger, with cafe seating and steps made for sitting.  (This actually evoked stress in one meeting attendee who anticipated the open area becoming a smokers haven that would force her to walk in the middle of the street to be able to get a breath of fresh air.)

Rendering: John Ronan Architects

Even more interesting is the second-level garden terrace  reached by a thin, long staircase rising up from Randolph Street. 

Placed in a sliver between 151 Franklin and the parking garage structure next door, this would be a public space that would both serve the new building and serve as a sheltered refuge from the bustle of the street.  

Buck says the rude facade of the parking garage will receive a more attractive surfacing, and he's bought the air rights above the garage to prevent another tower from rising next to 151 Franklin.

Ronan's multi-level lobby . . .

Rendering: John Ronan Architects

. . . reminds me of the one in Harry Weese's 1969 Time-Life Building . . . 

For all of its more progressive aspects, Buck has carefully engineered his tower to serve the new feudalism of our supply chain world.  Despite increasing reports casting doubt on the efficacy of those work-benched open offices currently so in vogue with management, Buck, in a video, sells the concept not as a command-and-control strategy coming down from above, but as something workers supposedly are clamoring for: “A more recent change is that as young people enter the workplace they want a different environment, more casual, more interfacing with their colleagues, so the private office is not disappearing, but it's on the wane.”  Similarly, much was made of the fact that Buck's building's 34 parking spaces actually represents a reduction in the number of spaces of the surface lot currently on the site, but those spaces aren't for just anyone - they're 34 “executive spaces.”  Like open-space offices, transit-oriented development is a great thing to force on 151 Franklin's 3,600 rank and file employees, so long as it doesn't affect the habits of the top brass. 

Is 151 Franklin coming late to the party when, only a few blocks way, a million-square-foot River

Dominc Adduci

Point is already under construction, and a 1.2 million square foot 155 North Riverside is well on its way to groundbreaking?  Are there any anchor tenants left to be had?

“All three of the projects are in the lease stages right now,” answered Adducci.   “The finance part of this project I can tell you that, having been with other developers for many years before coming to The Buck Company, it's very conservatively financed.  Over half of the project costs are equity,  so the actual debt on the project is quite low.  And we are working on several major tenants right now who are prospective at this point.”

Rendering: John Ronan Architects

Previously:

Great Architect is Fleeting; Ugly Garages Forever

Is White Modesty the new Overreaching Ambition?  200 West Randolph

Chicago Historic Schools: A Great new Website documents over a century of vital buildings and their architects

click images for larger view

I was out in Humboldt Park over the weekend taking pictures of John Ronan's new addition to Erie Elementary Charter School - which I hope to write about tomorrow, in time for the school's Thursday Open Doors Benefit and Open House and Reception -  when, just in the next block, I encountered the splendid 1884-1893 Alexander von Humboldt Elementary . . .

Renovated as recently as 2008, the structure now stands empty, one of the 54 schools closed this year by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.  Searching on Google for more information, I came across this informative history of von Humboldt on Chicago Historic Schools, a site I had never encountered before.

And here's why:  it's brand new, and it's terrific.  A collaboration between Frances O'Cherony Archer, Chicago Park District historian Julia Bachrach, Elizabeth A. Patterson, architect Bill Latoza, supplying many historical images, and the Art Institute's James Iska and Brooke Collins adding contemporary photographs.

A group of passionate historians and architects produced this website; they are not affiliated with Chicago Public Schools.

The schools they document represent some of the most important architecture in the city.  Few may make the standard architectural guidebooks, but they are both very fine buildings in their own right, and the kind of structural anchors that define the character of their respective neighborhoods.  They are time capsules of Chicago's architectural and social history, and Chicago Historic Schools fills out their stories to a depth not previously available.

There's also profiles of  22 school district architects, from the somewhat well known Dwight Perkins, a member of the Steinway Hall gang whose innovative work including such schools as Graeme Stewart, Trumbell and Schurz.  The facade of his former office across the Water Tower survives today as an upscale fashion boutique.  

Far more rare are profiles of 22 school district architects from Louis Sullivan's mentor, John H. Edelmann, to August Bauer, Frederick Baumann, Paul Gerhardt and more. If it consisted of nothing more than these architectural biographies, Chicago Historic Schools would be an invaluable website.

There are currently 24 structures on Chicago Historic Schools, with more to be added in the future.  There are also pages on three lost buildings.   Two of the existing schools on the site - von Humboldt and Perkins's Trumbull - now stand empty as part of this year's great wave of closings.  The advocacy of the “passionate” group producing Chicago Historic Schools  has not only produced a great addition to the record of Chicago's architectural heritage, but their advocacy stands to increase awareness of the irreplaceable value of vital, historic structures that are increasingly being treated as  disposable.

© James Iska