Foul Ball Hotel: the In-Your-Face Mediocrity of the Wrigleyville Sheraton

image: Chicago Cubs 

Tom Ricketts officially revealed renderings for the Wrigley Field and environs rehab at a City Club breakfast Wednesday morning.  Inside Wrigley, the most prominent change is the addition of a 6,000 square foot Jumbotron screen.  The terra cotta along Wrigley Field's roofline is also scheduled to be restored, and there's a large number of adjustments designed to improve basic functionality.

At least for the moment, I'm leaving the critique of changes to the actual stadium to the Trib's Cheryl Kent.  (Although if she thinks the Landmarks Commission will do anything other than roll over for whatever plan Mayor Rahm Emanuel signs on to, I've got a big shiny bean to sell her.) 

I do want to say a couple words about the 175-room Sheraton hotel the Ricketts want to build across the street from the stadium, where a McDonalds currently stands . . .

It sucks.

image: Chicago Cubs - hotel to left

I think that's pretty clear even from the rudimentary renderings released so far.  The office structure to be built to the north isn't much better, but at least it has a couple of doo-dads - a rounded ramp building and a tall clock tower - stuck on to provide at least a pretension of personality.

image: Chicago Cubs - click for larger image (recommended)

The hotel can't even be bothered with such minimal gestures.  It looks like a parking garage with balconies.  The design makes SCB's design for a mega-development south on Clark look like Pritzker-Prize winning work.  At Wednesday's presentation, the spin was how the hotel is in ‘harmony’ with Wrigley across the street.  And if you're looking to memorialize the cheapness of P.K. Wrigley, I guess you've got a point. (A January Tribune article cited Rebel Roberts and VOA as project architects.)

What was originally Wrigley's charm - an old school stadium smack dab inside a working class neighborhood - is evolving, perhaps inevitably, into a supply-chain designed sports complex.  Oozing like The Blob, it absorbs more and more of the surrounding community.  An untidy, diverse but sub-potential economy of multiple businesses finds itself squeezed out by a centrally controlled, precisely engineered profit engine, constructed out of a Disneyfied historicism reeking nostalgia for a time that never existed.

This is the way the world works, and it would be naive to believe Wrigleyville could somehow be exempt.  With 35,000 square feet of new, state-of-the-art advertising, the area west of the stadium will become a little bit of Ginza on Clark.  All the more reason, then, to embrace the reality and reject mediocrity masquerading as contextualism. The current design for the hotel is ‘like’ Wrigley Field in only the laziest, most cynical sense.  This is one of the most visible corners in Chicago.  Can we please get a building that frankly addresses the needs of its program with a honesty that honors rather than mocks Chicago as a place where relevant architecture can still be made?

Read:
Ragged Liberty or Polished Upscaling?  Wrigleyville's Mutant Urbanism.

Crunching the Numbers: Perkins + Will number 3 on Architectural Records's list of top 250 firms

It's that time again.  Architectural Record has released its 2012 edition of the Top 250 Architectural Firms in the U.S.  And, of course, quality doesn't always equate to quantity.  Studio/Gang, John Ronan, Tigerman/McCurry, Krueck and Sexton, and many more award-winning Chicago firms are nowhere to be found.

On the 2008 list, total architectural revenues for the top 250 totaled over $12 billion, 18% of it from overseas projects.  On the 2012 list, total revenues were under $9 billion, with almost a quarter coming from foreign projects.

Perkins+Will, at number 3, remains Chicago's largest architectural firm.  Its 2011  revenues of $365 million was down 10% from 2008, but was good for third place among U.S. firms.  San Francisco based Gensler, which has a large Chicago office, moved to number one by growing it's revenues by nearly 20%, to $764 million.  The former number one AECOM Technology of L.A., saw its revenue in free fall, at $445 million, less than half what it took in in 2008.  VOA, at 42, was the second biggest Chicago firm.

Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture is new on the list this year at position 87, with revenues of $28.5 million, all but $1 million of which comes from foreign projects.  SOM, which has a large Chicago presence, continues to have a roughly 50/50 split between foreign and domestic, while over 70% of Goettsch Partners' (#111) revenue comes from overseas.  In contrast, the billings of Solomon Cordwell Buenz (#83) are entirely domestic.   Also making the list this year:  FGM Architects, Epstein, Wight and Company, Legat, Anderson Mikos, Chipman Design and DLA Architects.

All told, Chicago proper has eight firms on the list, with another five in the suburbs.  Gone from the 2008 list are DeStefano (disbanded), OWP/P (absorbed by Cannon Design) and Teng (derailed by their failed bid to become real estate developers).  Murphy/Jahn, which held down 72nd place in 2008, with over $50 million in reported revenues, has completely dropped off the 2012 list.  Of course, the firm is in good company.  Last year, AR acknowledged that firms such as Gehry Partners never respond to requests for information.  Pelli Clarke Pelli, Robert A.M. Stern Architects, and Richard Meier and Partners are also among the Bartleby contingent of heavyweights that never appear on the list.

Check out the full Architectural Record list here.

VOA's Old Town School of Folk Music Opens Today

I won't be able to make it, so this pathetic photo of the new building for the Old Town School of Folk Music  designed by VOA Associates I snapped last night with my camera pressed against the window is all I've got.  However, the Old Town School is having a  week of grand opening events, including free tours today, Monday January 9th.  So take your pick and check it out for yourself.  Let us know what you think.  Or you can read Blair's review here.  (He actually got inside.)

"The Cartridge" Snaps into the Chicago Skyline

 

click images for larger view

It's already the most distinctive addition to the Chicago Skyline since Trump Tower: VOA's new baby-blue, LEED-green, 479-foot-tall dorm building for Roosevelt University.  It's scheduled to be completed in time for the winter semester in January of next year, and if that seems kind of close for comfort, keep in mind it didn't even begin to rise from the ground until last November.

It didn't reach the height of the next-door Adler & Sullivan Auditorium tower until this March.  In May, it was here, but as late as the beginning of June, it still looked like this.

After watching it go up, I finally realize what it's wafer-thin, notched profile reminds me of: one of those ink-jet cartridges - the magenta one, to be specific - that snaps into your personal printer.  Hence the nickname, "The Cartridge" for the way it snaps into the skyline between the fire-engine red CNA Building and the limestone tower of the Auditorium. 

The view from the north, as it rises behind the landmark Michigan Avenue streetwall, grabs red checkmarks from the reflections of the CNA into the windows of its tall bustle like a grid-like study of color and form.

To the south, we now have a year-round, patriotic red, white and blue trifecta, if not in that order, in which the upward punch of the proud Auditorium tower more than holds its own.

Curtain Wall, Lightly Crumpled, emerges at VOA's Roosevelt U Vertical Campus

 click images for larger view

The glass is starting to go up at Roosevelt University's new, 32-story-high Vertical Campus, designed by VOA Associates. I kind of like the windows to the left, which give the building a sort of Scottish Parliament vibe, however temporary.  On the north side of the building, the pegboard back cover is also rising.

It's there because there's a big parking lot on the corner waiting to be filled, once economic conditions revive, with another Solomon Cordwell Buenz residential high-rise, Buckingham II.  You can see the Vertical Campus rise and the empty site to the northwest in this shot from our indefatigable correspondent Bob Johnson.

Buckingham II was projected to be almost as tall as the Vertical Campus whose height, I think, is something like 469 feet, although I can't quite recall where I saw that figure.

This is what it's supposed to look like  when it's all finished.  With that corner space empty, it looks like half of a Miesian duo, laid out, as at the Federal center, right angle to each other, but ditching the black tie formality for a full-up "let's party" mode.

You can read our previous post on the construction - copiously illustrated - here.