Chicago Streetscene II: Ordination Day

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Chicago Streetscene: Cedar Terra Cotta; Plywood Insert

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The Billion Dollar Mansion where No One Sleeps

photograph: Jhariani, Wikipedia

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Back in 2010, we wrote about how architects Perkins+Will and interior design firm Hirsch Bender Associates had become extremely shy when it came to talking about their new billion dollar, 550-foot-high mansion, named Antilla, they had just finished in Mumbai for the Ambani family.  168 parking spaces. Three helipads.  400,000 square feet.  A billion dollars.  You can appreciate their dilemma.

photograph: Shashi Bellamkonda, Wikipedia

From a PR standpoint, it was a no-win scenario, but as a challenge - and a commission - how could you pass it up?  Still, the situation couldn't be more delicate.  Or could it?

The Engineering News-Record is reporting that at the billion-dollar-mansion, it's Nessun Dorma, each night, every night. 

According to the principles of Vastu Shastra, a home's eastern side should have enough windows or other openings to let residents receive sufficient morning light. The Ambani home fails on that and other counts, reportedly leading the family to believe that moving in will bring them bad luck and misfortune.

And so, while in sunlight hours you will find Ambani's galore populating Antilla, the "21st-century Taj Mahal", at end of day, as sleep beckons, all the Ambani's slip away.  That's the story.  A family spokesperson demurs.

According to the just-published Forbes list of the world's richest people, Mukesh Ambani is now, at $22 billion, the 19th wealthiest person on the planet.  Just two years ago, in 2010, at $29 million, he was fourth.  He remains the richest man in India, where the per capita annual income is $1219.  In India, the Gini coefficient, where a larger number indicates greater income inequality, was 36.8 in 2004.  In the United States, in 2007, it was 45.0.

It's said that, as recently as the 1970's, the Ambani lived in a two-bedroom apartment.

Some views of the new Logan Center for the Arts - architects Williams & Tsien at Art Institute Panel Thursday

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Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, architects of the new Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, will be part of a panel discussion on University of Chicago Architecture taking place this Thursday, May 24th, from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. at Rubloff Auditorium at the Art Institute of Chicago.  Also participating will be architects James Carpenter and Ana Beha.  The event, sponsored by the Art Institute's Architecture and Design Society, will be moderated by Steven Wiesenthal, FAIA.  Tickets are $15.00 for the general public; $10.00 for members, $5.00 for students.  Information and registration here.

There are still nearly a dozen items still to come to check out on the May Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

Adler & Sullivan's Auditorium gets a view block

We wrote last year about how the construction of Roosevelt's University's new vertical dorm uncovered, however briefly, a part of Adler and Sullivan's Auditorium Building that hadn't been seen in over half a century.

We've been spoiled down through the years by another open view of the Auditorium building from the southwest, courtesy of a surface parking lot that's been there since the days when the raptors were dropping off their dinomobiles.

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Now that's changing.

Under construction is Roosevelt's new 27,000-square-foot Lillian and  Larry Goodman Center, designed by Solomon Cordwell Buenz.  The two-level building is essentially a field house to support the university's athletic program.  It was jump-started by a $3,000,000 gift from real estate  magnate Larry Goodman, founder of the Community Discount store chain.  Opening is scheduled in time for the 2012-13 academic year.

 

It's possible the Goodman Center may actually be the tallest structure ever to occupy the site.  The classic Rand McNally view from 1893 shows it as a vacant lot, and a vintage postcard on the Chicago-L website  offers a murky view of what appears to be either a single story building, or a sequence of plywood walls papered over with billboards.

 The somewhat derelict self-park next door, however. endures.

Guide to the NATO Summit: Your Country is probably not going to be a player if . . .

1.  You're staying at the Acme Hotel.
2.  Your security detail is wearing old Andy Frain uniforms they bought on E-Bay
3.  Your motorcade consists of three Jimmy John's delivery vehicles and a Zipcar
4.  Your complimentary fruit basket is filled with gummi bears
5.  In Executive Briefings, your country is listed under the wrong continent.
6.   The Chicago Council on Global Affairs has scheduled a lecture titled "(your country's name) - Why?"
7.  Your country's currency can only be exchanged for Target coupons.
8.  The State Department's Chief of Protocol lists your diplomatic title as "Whatever".
9.  The broadcast of your big speech is confined to McCormick Place security monitors.
10.  You're welcoming committee at O'Hare consisted of three semi-retired Hooter girls and Rod Blagojevich's bail bondsman.

Relief for NATO Weekend, at the Lurie Garden

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 this one's a cheat - taken at the Widow Clarke house.

 . . . and this one's from somewhere along Archer avenue.  Now back to Lurie:

 Buckyballs.

more after the break.

Tonight: Preservation Chicago goes to Mars for Spring Fundraiser

Tonight, Friday, May 18th, Preservation Chicago will be holding it's spring fundraiser at the Mars Gallery, 1139 West Fulton.  The gallery, housed in a 19th century warehouse loft that was originally the home of the Empire Butter and Egg Company. specializes in contemporary pop art and outsider artwork.  The evening will feature the announcement of winners of Preservation Chicago's Photograph Chicago competition, including a $2,000 Best in Show as the top award.

The picture you see below, "Sears Tower, 3" by D. Harris, was among 15 finalists.  It depicts the interior of the long abandoned, original Sears Tower, by architect George C. Nimmons, on Homan Avenue on Chicago's west side.

Tickets are $25.00 purchased in advance, or $30.00 at the door.  Beer, wine and light hors d'oeuvres included.

The Architect as Zelig: Tigerman's Ceci n'est pas une reverie at the Graham, open late tonight, closes Saturday

You have only through Saturday, May 19th, to view Ceci nʻest pas une rêverie: The Architecture of Stanley Tigerman at the Graham Foundation at Madlener House, 4 West Burton Place.

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Two images that stuck with me after reading Designing Bridges to Burn: Architectural Memoirs by Stanley Tigerman . . .

His portrait of his grandfather, a Hungarian tailor, who, after emigrating to America "never worked another day in his life".  Instead, he would reinvent himself as a Talmudic scholar, spending his days smoking cheap cigars and studying the Torah.  He would take young Stanley under his wing.  "At once handsomely well-turned-out and easily enchanting" as would take his grandson along as he went to play cards with his cronies.

It was his grandfather that told Stanley the story of the origins of the family name, of how " . . . a Jewish serf in Hungary who lacked a proper surname" acquitted himself so well in battle behind enemy lines that his superiors bestowed on him a last name appropriate for his bravery, "'tiger" for courage and 'man' for his intelligence" - Tihany, then Tiegermann and finally, at Ellis Island, Tigerman.

And then, the image of  Tigerman and his young friends sprawled on the floor drawing, one cartoon after another, increasingly bellicose as World War II approached.  After his grandfather's death afflicted him with a Mosaic stutter, Tigerman would say little, but draw a lot.

Tigerman loves dialectics, and he draws the distinction between those who build their lives on intrepretation - Mies van der Rohe, whose architecture can be seen as a re-interpretation of classical architecture in the context of the modern world and its technology - and faith, which would include those who Tigerman refers to as  the "sycophants" of Mies, fetishizing the modernist idiom Mies had created while remaining obstinately clueless about the broader streams of knowledge and values that informed it.

These formative influences are all on display at Ceci nʻest pas une rêverie: The Architecture of Stanley Tigerman, which closes at the Graham on Saturday, May 19th.  Today, Thursday, May 17th, the Graham is open until 8:00 p.m., with wine and 10% off all bookshop sales.

Ceci n'est pas spreads out over three floors of the Graham with over a hundred drawings, models, and designed objects by Tigerman,   The free-form drawings,  including the the "architoons" that couple a breezy R. Crumb whimsy to David Macaulay detail, can't help but remind you that kid making cartoons on the floor.

 The constant reworking of the past, from the iconic montage of Crown Hall sinking into Lake Michigan, to the neo-classical designs, to the theme of cleaved volumes, and the recurring consideration of Solomon's Temple, culminating in the design of the Illinois Holocaust Museum, measured in cubits, with representations of the temple columns, Jachin and Boaz, uniting two split volumes, one dark, one light . . . all speak to the rich career of a man who "never developed a signature" like a Mies or Frank Gehry style, but has spent a lifetime restlessly interpreting the role and ethics of architecture, who through his work, polemics and activism has made his very life a work of art, its ambitions and imperfections making for an indelibly human portrait.

Rem Koolhaas's latest blockbuster book is again shining the spotlight on the Japanese Metabolists;  Tigerman's was already there in his early proposals such as the Instant City, offering up a synchronicity at the time of the movement's fullest flowering.  Throughout his life, Tigerman has been a kind of architectural Zelig, present and contributing to the great focal points of his time, from his relationship to Mies, to working with Fazlur Khan in Bangladesh, helping define Post-Modernism, mentoring countless major architects, and, in the end, striving to go beyond the usual "building houses for rich people" to create the new home for the Pacifc Garden Mission.

It's a great show.  If you haven't seen it, try to stop by the Graham today and tonight, Friday or Saturday.

Chicago Streetscene: Inflamed Tonsil

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Chicago Streetscene II: The Bunker

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AMLI River North, 49th stories.  Lipstick will be applied . . . 

 . . . but this elongated lump still looks to be one of SCB's less felicitous additions to the Chicago skyline.

Where the Bottom Drops out of Chicago: Wack Wack Wacker Drive

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Every couple of generations, Chicago reminds itself that it's a city on stilts.  Over a century and a half ago, Chicago decided to raise itself out of the swamp muck of its origins, six feet and more up and away from the mire and indifferent sanitation, and the disease that it engendered.

Phase II of rebuilding double-decker Wacker Drive has been going on for some time now.  The final leg - from Monroe to Van Buren - is scheduled to be completed by the end of the year.  It's called Revive Wacker Drive, an urban root canal that scraps out the decaying pulp and rebuilds the canal that supports the traffic.

We've been through it all before, in the 1950's, as you can see in this photograph from the Chuckman archive. 

Then, as now, the process is a surreal reveal of the real underpinnings of the city's great buildings, a pulling back of the veil of the man behind the curtain.  For the brief period of construction, you can see a tower like the Civic Opera is not really anchored by a colonnade of massive columns at sidewalk level, but by a grid of fireproofed steel columns beneath that, in comparison, seem little more than a succession of thick pins.

Photograph: Bob Johnson

CANstruction 2012, via Public Art in Chicago

OK, so we haven't made it to this year's CANStruction exhibition at the Merchandise Mart, benefiting the Greater Chicago Food Depository, where volunteers from various Chicago design firms compete to build sculptures out of cans of food.

We've already shown you Bob Johnson's photo of Alfred Benesch & Company's award winning Mr. Peanut construction, and now here it is again along with Hirsch Associates / C.E. Anderson & Associates / Linn-Mathes' Chicago Harbor Lighthouse - A beaCAN of hope, from a photo catalog of this year's entries on Jyoti Srivastava's indispensable Public Art in Chicago website.  Check it out here.

The show is up through May 30th, and it's free - bring along your own can goods to contribute.  You can check out this year's list of winners here, and see even more photographs on CANstruction Chicago's Facebook page.

Friday Lite Reading Edition

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The Little Farmhouse that Roared: Cycles of time at Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House

In a story published a couple years ago in the British tabloid The Daily Mail about the legal travails of Lord Peter Palumbo, reference was made to one of his global collection of homes, "a historic rural farmhouse near Chicago."

Far from the picture of a rock-walled rustic retreat that this reference might suggest, the domicile in question is, of course, Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House, one of the most iconic structures in the history of modern architecture, now available in Lego.

Completed in 1951, it's shrine-like qualities were derived not only by its unmistakable posture and the trespassing acolytes it drew, braving the hawk-like gaze of the house's owner tracking their every move through binoculars, but by its isolation, 55 miles southwest of Chicago, on a wooded, 60-acre site overlooking the Fox River. 

The radical genius of Mie's glass house is its subversion of the homily of the house as castle.  These were no longer medieval times, or even the late nineteenth century, when the city's industrialists often secreted themselves in homes that looked like battlements, as security against their fears of violent reprisals from the working class. 

Now it was Eisenhower's America.  The brutal war had been won.  Labor had won its place at the bargaining table, and heated negotiations were now less likely to mean thugs and goons clashing in back alleys than lawyers in pinstripes facing off across a conference table.  It was gestation time for suburban sprawl, and Farnsworth House in Will County was at the country-estate cutting-edge of the great destabilizing waves to come.

“Here I am, Philip, am I indoors or am I out?” gibed Frank Lloyd Wright - whose own buildings tended to shut themselves up from the outside world - when confronted by another famous glass house, the home architect Phillip Johnson had designed for himself in New Canaan, Connecticut.  "Do I take my hat off or keep it on?”

Wright had begun to sour on Mies and his kind of modernism. But in this instance Mies was the one who got it right. “Before you live in a glass house you do not know how colorful nature is,” Mies said. “We should attempt to bring nature, houses, and human beings together in a higher unity.”  All those uninvited pilgrims never got the real story. You don't get the true experience of Farnsworth by looking in, but by looking out. This is the realization of an organic architecture  The border between the man-made and the works of nature dissolves to "almost nothing," and polar opposites reform as a single, flowing continuity.

Mies made no secret of thinking great architecture was the expression of the technology of its time, and so his architecture combined the lightness and strength of materials like steel and glass.  Yet, Mies was not only appreciative of nature, landscape was an integral part of his designs, working with masters such as Alfred Caldwell, for the design of the IIT campus.  Mies's drawings of trees are highly distinctive, to the point where Petra Blaisse incorporated them, full-size, in the 30-foot draperies she designed for Rem Koolhaas's IIT McCormick Tribune Student Center.

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At Farnsworth, Mies made sure there was a sweeping, sturdy Black Sugar Maple to shade the living spaces.  For over a half century, the great tree did its job well.  It endured, decade after decade, after Mies died in 1969; after Edith Farnsworth, who commissioned the house, died in 1978.  It saw the arrival of Lord Palumbo, and his departure.  Now its time, too, has come.   The long, low branch that reached down like a benediction to cover the house's great porch was lost a couple of years ago.  Just as, in his later years, Mies van der Rohe depended on crutches, the great tree, itself, is now held up by wires.

A great house is both backdrop and participant in the life stories of those who inhabit it.  The story of Farnsworth House is nothing short of an epic.  A tale of creation,  a love story, an affair gone sour, a bitter courtroom battle, floods of biblical proportions,  the threat of dismemberment, a dramatic auction, an unexpected twist, a last second triumph.  All the stuff of high melodrama - what more could a dramatist want?  We wrote our own version of the Farnsworth Saga (sounds like a Masterpiece Theatre series, doesn't it?) back in 2003.  Check it out here.

Farnsworth House is now a public museum, and is open April to November, Tuesday through Sunday - a perfect alternative for when city attractions are shut down for the NATO summit.  From May to October, the Chicago Architecture Foundation offers twice monthly all-day Farnsworth House excursions, buffet lunch included (but probably not cigars or martini's).

Bloomingdale Trail, Cramer, Goldberger and Bey ponder Does Modernism Still Have Meaning?, Navy Pier, Kingscote, Williams and Tsien: May calendar blooms

We continue to add to the May 2012 Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

This week starts out today, Tuesday, May 8th, with a discussion of The Bloomingdale Trail at AIA Chicago at noon, and Archeworks Final Presentation + Review at Access Living at 6:00.  At 7:30 SUNY's Jack Quinan talks about Frank Lloyd Wright's Darwin D. Martin house at Unity Temple in Oak Park.

On Wednesday, the 9th, lunchtime at CAF, the Park District's Gia Biagi and Paul Seck and Matt Urbanski from Michael van Valkenburgh Associates talk about the plans for the renovation of North Grant Park.  At 6:00 p.m., at the Driehaus Museum, a/k/a Nickerson Mansion, Caitlin Emery talks about Stanford White's Kingscote Dining Room. (a repeat version of this lecture on Thursday is already full.)

And Thursday is logjam day, with Critic's Challenge: Does Modernism Still Have Meaning, a panel of Architect Magazine editor Ned Cramer, Lee Bey, and Vanity Fair architecture critic Paul Goldberger at Harry's Weese's Seventeenth Church of Christ Scientist going up against another great Chaddick Institute panel with  Larry Booth, Reuben Hedlund, Rick Fawell, John Schmidt and Jerry Butler offering up a Beyond Burnham Roundtable Discussion: Re-Envisioning Navy Pier, at CAF.

Over at the Merchandise Mart, there's this year's A-can-emy Awards Gala and Cocktail Party benefiting the Greater Chicago Food Depository.  Our indefatigable correspondent Bob Johnson has already scoped out the entries, and provides us the photograph of Mr. Peanut seen here.

Friday is Friends of the Parks 202 Parks Ball 23rd Annual Gala; Saturday the Second Annual Clarke House Museum History Symposium.  And that's just some of the events this coming week.

Coming up later in the month is Stanley Tigerman talking about Architecture and Education at AIA Chicago, Larry Shure on the Typography of Courtyard Apartments in Rogers Park for Landmarks Illinois at the Cultural Center, Tony Smith on TIFs at APA Chicago, and Michael Marshall of StructureCraft Buildings talking about bravura heavy timber construction of the new Arena Stage in DC and other structures making innovative use of wood.   

Ted Wolff talks about the Landscape Renovation at Graceland Cemetery for CAF on the 30th, and on the 24th Tod Williams and Billie Tsien will be part of a panel at the Art Institute to talk about their new Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts at the U of C.

It's a safe bet there'll be still more, but even now there are over three dozen great items still to come on the May Calendar  of Chicago Architectural Events.