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

Model Chicago Engulfed by Water at CAF, plus AIC, Maggie Daley Park: Thursday Updates Edition

Smokefall production still, courtesy Goodman Theatre

As we continue to work on the November calendar, and just in general take a breather (including taking in Noah Haidle's Smokefall, with the great Mike Nussbaum, at the Goodman Thursday night - closing Sunday), we turn to our indefatigable correspondent Bob Johnson to bring you this update, which begins at the Chicago Architecture Foundation, where its striking model of Chicago . . .

photograph: Lynn Becker

. . . now well into its fifth year, has seen even its tallest tower eclipsed by twin walls of water . . .

photograph: Bob Johnson

 . . .  that form the backdrop for CAF's new exhibition, Great Lakes, Great Cities, Great Basin: Bold Ideas for the Great Basin Park . . .

You know your neighborhood, but do you know your basin? Through this exhibition, the urban designers at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP issue a call to arms for all of us to think about our water, our boundaries and our identity. The Great Cities, Great Lakes, Great Basin exhibition depicts the Great Basin as one region defined by the watershed rather than political boundaries. Visit this exhibition and learn the impact you make not only in your immediate neighborhood or city, but in the basin in which you live.

Now open daily, 9:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.

photograph: Bob Johnson

Meanwhile, Bob provides us this aerial shot of the progress at the $55 million Maggie Daley Park, which the Sun-Times' Tina Sfondeles reported  this week has reached the halfway mark towards a soft opening next fall, and a final completion in 2015.  Viewer drivable webcams here.

And that crane you see in the picture hovering over the Modern Wing of the Art Institute?  That was for the installation of the latest installation at the sculpture garden, Ugo Rondinone's we run through a desert on burning feet, all of us are glowing our faces look twisted, which runs through April 20 of next year, by which time the Picasso's and Matisse's should be back from Ft. Worth and the now closed Modern Wing third floor re-opened..

Now, back to the calendar.  Or maybe just a nap.

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

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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)