Of $300 million pork barrel Roller Coasters and the Sweet Scent of Chocolate in the Chicago Air - why newspapers still matter

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The prognosis for newspapers, especially in Chicago, is deeply problematic.  The Sun-Times continues to throw parts of itself - including a lot of talented people - overboard, just to scrap together enough cash to get through another day, while over at the Tribune, the company is stripping its namesake newspaper of assets and loading it up with debt just before pushing it out as an independent company, a stripped vessel pitched on treacherous seas.

apologies, as always, to Stanley Tigerman.  Related story here.

What makes it more painful is when you see what newspapers, even ones in diminished states, offer what no web-based news aggregator can or ever will.   For the moment at least, both papers still have crack investigative teams that uncover scandals and outrages and campaign - often successfully - for reforms.  For example, this Sunday's edition of the Sun-Times, which wouldn't let the Koschmann case be buried, tells us how corrupt former Cook County President Tod Stroger has again found his way onto the public payroll, while  on the art's beat there's also a great profile on the restoration of historic Thalia Hall and a Hedy Weiss' QandA with Mary Zimmerman.

Thalia Hall

Over at the Trib, there's another Zimmerman interview from Jennifer Weigel, plus David Kidwell's The man who knew everybody, a great profile of John Bills, the machine fixer charged with rigging the bidding for Chicago's Red Camera contract, plus an overview of the life and work of improv master Mick Napier.

We hope to be writing later this week on Rahm Emanuel's plan to slum up Lakeview with a tornado-like path of destruction for a third-of-a-billion dollar roller-coaster Brown Line overpass just north of Belmont, but in today's Trib, Blair Kamin has beaten me to the punch with a detailed analysis on why this is such a bad idea.

Last but not least, I've written about the wonderful Blommer Chocolate plant before, but today Phil Rosenthal has a great piece Inside Blommer Chocolate, giving us a look at the previously off-limits factory, and detailing the history of a 75-year-old Chicago institution that fended off a hardball campaign by mega-conglomerate Cargill to acquire it, remaining a family-run business that handles 45% of all cocoa beans processed in the United States.  An entire new residential neighborhood has grown up around the handsome, light-colored brick plant at 600 West Kinzie, including a new park just across the street.  Blommer remains an unique part of the character of Chicago, wafting the faint aroma of chocolate throughout River North whenever a new batch is being made.

The aroma used to be a lot stronger, and drift a lot wider, before the EPA teamed up with NIMBY's to have it classified as a health hazard, as I wrote about in A Bureaucrat Triumphs and a Little Bit of Chicago Dies.

I also wrote about the new park, which, I argued six years ago, should be officially renamed the Chocolate Park.

Eight Ways of Looking at “T”

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Variations on the media obsession of moment. 

(Normally, you try not to call attention to those strips of metallic slots marking a mechanical floor slicing through an otherwise continuous wrapper of curtain wall.)

  

Previously:

Battle of the Bling Rages between two Iconic Chicago Skyscrapers

Still to come this month: John Tolva, Tatiana Bilbao, Pecha Kucha Big Data, Anne Pasternak and more - it's the May calendar!

So it was getting to be near the middle of the month, and someone asked about the May Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events, “So I said, ‘Yeah - sure!’”  Much like Frankie Pentangeli at those Senate hearings.

Even with the Memorial Day Holiday, there are still dozens of great events to come, beginning today, Wednesday the 14th, with former Emanuel administration tech guru John Tolva discussing Networked Urbanism: Re-Thinking Cities as Smart Machines,  lunchtime at CAF in conjunction with the Foundation's new show Big Data.  Tomorrow at 12:15 in the Murray-Green Library, Dennis McClendon will discuss Congress Street, the Auditorium and the South Loop for Landmarks Illinois, while in the evening, San Simeon historian Victoria Kastner will talk about Hearst Ranch: Family, Land and Legacy at the Driehaus.  (Don't bring up the Orson Welles thing.)

Just some of the month's other highlights also include Preservation Chicago's Ward Miller on 2014's Seven Most Threatened Buildings at CAF,  Creative Time Director Anne Pasternak discussing audacious public art at MCA, architect Tatiana Bilbao at the Art Institute, a special Pecha Kucha: City of Big Data edition, and a town meeting at Crown Hall on proposals for saving Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House from recurring flood damage.


But wait, there's more!  Check it all out on the May Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

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

Chicago on a Spring Morning: Architecture and Nature interact

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 Finish the journey, after the break . . .

Archipalooza! Not One. Not Two. Three Chicago Schools Showcase Student Work on Friday

Exactly what are they teaching the kids in architecture school today?  Well, Friday, May 9th gives you the perfect opportunity to find out, as three major Chicago architecture schools will be showcasing the work of their students on the same day.

The School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago will be holding its Year End Show at the galleries of the A and D Studios, 845 West Harrison Street, from 5:00 to 7:30 p.m. while in the building's south lobby, Friday and Saturday are the last days for Myth, the exhibition by Molly Hunker, winner of this year's Douglas A. Garofalo Fellowship.


Meanwhile, down at Crown Hall, 3360 South State, IIT's College of Architecture will also have it's annual Student Work Exhibition and Open House, kicking off at 5:00 p.m., with the presentation of the Louis Vuitton SPARK Award chosen from six finalists “from IIT's undergraduate and graduate Cloud Studio program reflecting the College's focus on the City of Chicago and ‘Rethinking the Metropolis.’”.  At 5:45 there will be the Spring Student Award Ceremony, followed by the Open House studio exhibition from 6:30 to 8:30.


Last but not least, at Sullivan Center (a/k/a the Louis Sullivan designed former Carson Pirie Scott

building), 36th South Wabash, 12th floor, from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m., you can take in SAIC's 2014 Thesis Show: Masters of Architecture and Masters of Architecture with an emphasis in Interior Architecture . .  .

The graduating class of 2014 in the [School of the Art Institute's] newly accredited Master of Architecture program invites you to a year-end exhibition of their thesis work.  Please come to meet the graduates, have some refreshments, and celebrate the 5th graduating class of Chicago's 3rd professional architecture program.

Make it into a pub crawl, going from show to show and downing a shot every time someone mentions parametricism.  After it's over, head down to the Palmer House, up to the Wit, or whatever's chacun à son goût for continuing lubrication and to try start a brawl debating the deficiencies and merits of what you've just seen.   

Battle of the Bling Rages between Two Iconic Chicago Towers

The contenders: Trump Tower, left; IBM Building (AMA Plaza), right

“Less is more” is taking a bit of a beating right now on a two-block stretch along the Chicago river.

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The minimalist plaza that Mies van der Rohe designed for his soaring IBM Building (now AMA Plaza) is slowing filling up with stuff.   The Langham Chicago, the 316-room hotel that opened last year on the lower 14 floors of Mies's dark 52-story tower, has now populated the plaza with the fabulous furniture of Elle, a 70-seat outdoor café.

Not far behind will be the 11 bronze sculptures by Taiwanese artist Ju Ming of businessmen in fedoras, holding umbrellas, to be installed on the plaza, closer to the river, later this year.

Ever since its opening in 2009, Donald Trump has been satisfied letting the sleek telescoping curtain-wall of his 98-story, Adrian-Smith/SOM-designed tower pretty much speak for itself.  Then the Langham got approval to add a “He went to Jared!"-styled canopy to tart up Mies elegant design in a blaze of light bulbs and shiny metal.

Obviously, the Donald could not let this vulgarity go unanswered.  So, in February, it was announced that 20-foot-high stainless steel letters would be mounted on his tower's riverfront facade, lighting up the night with that most magic of all words:  T R U M P

Tuesday afternoon, all the pieces were falling into place.  Supports for the signage were hanging from the facade . . . 

. . . and the letters themselves huddled in alphabet-soup clumps along the Trump Riverwalk.

When the deed is done, we'll post pictures.  Rumors that the Langham will respond with an animated neon Mies on the AMA's east facade, blowing phosphorescent smoke rings out over Wabash, are yet to be confirmed.

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “A vast, incredible hank of hair
slouches at the base of a ruined tower.
Nearby, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read.
Right until the moment of the dreaded You're fired!
Stamped on the Jerusalem stone, a wind-worn inscription.
My name is Donald Trump, King of the Developers:
Look upon my many truly amazing properties
(And they're tremendous.
  Really tremendous),
and despair!
Nothing beside remains.
Save for storefronts still empty, and
gigantic, scattered letters,
half-buried in the sand,
spelling out where they fell,

       TorT ew rump

Read More:

Mies Goes Soft: At the IBM Building, The Langham Chicago Pushes Against the Envelope.

Pretty Ribbons

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Like a Model T Ford, you can generally have architecture in any color you want, as long as it's gray or black (or white, if you're Richard Meier).  A large part of this, of course, is due to the material's natural hue, or to the fact that black paint is often on sale since no one wants to buy it for interiors.  A larger factor, however, is the basic fact that monochrome has a way of seeming to go with anything, and never being in danger of going out of style, which is more than can be said for Victorian polychrome or post-modernist salmon.

The early skyscrapers that rose up, early this century, at the massive Lakeshore East development on the site of the old IC railyards, followed this safe pattern, classic glass boxes, bland as paste.  2007's 340 on the Park, by SCB's Martin Wolf, broke through with a bit of sculpting, and Jeanne Gang's Aqua blew up the place with its undulating balconies, but both building's fed their distinction through form rather than color.

Now the LSE towers are being upstaged by a rambunctious stump, the new ten-story home to the GEMS World Academy Chicago, part of a rapidly expanding international chain of private schools founded in Dubai in 1959.  Designed by bKL architecture, the 82,000 square-foot structure due to open this September, a year later than originally projected, is known as the Lower School, either because its shorter than the second stage building to be constructed on East Wacker, or because it will serve students from Kindergarten through 4th grade.

The exterior is a combination of translucent and clear vision glass set flush within metal panel spandrels and mullions.  What sets it all apart is a crazy-quilt intrusion of colorful mullions in red, yellow, turquoise and robin's egg blue.

The north elevation of the building is basically a continuous flat surface.  Here, yellow is banished from the palette, and the colored stripes seem a bit passive and inert. Meh.

The southern facade, extending below the street down to the lower-level park,  is much taller, but the way the facade is broken up above the fourth floor and along the open air play area on the roof makes it read as a very horizontal building, pulled skyward by those vertical bands of color.  The counterpoint holds the vertical and horizontal in a satisfying visual tension.

Is it too much?  Not for me.  Will it date badly?  I'd put it at a 50-50 shot.  For now, Gems Chicago has the slightly exhausting charm of a hyper-kinetic toddler, running at the knees of the far taller,  boringly behaved adults all around it, laughing with delight in refusing to be ignored.

Color contemplates color at Lake Shore East.

Read More:

Where Chicago Public Schools deign not tread: GEMS descend on Lakeshore East