Say Goodbye to Ronald Reagan's Apartment: the Supply-Chaining of Hyde Park

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It's really not a building you'd give a second look.  A nondescript apartment block, presentable enough, to be sure, but pretty much what you'd see in any Chicago neighborhood.  When you walk by and it's gone, will you even notice?

But the six-flat building resting gently at the corner of Maryland and 57th has one great claim to fame.  For less than a year, it was home to a four-year-old Ronald Reagan.  It was here, according to a an eloquent requiem by Mary Clare Kendall in the Examiner, that young Ronnie would watch horse-drawn fire engines race by his window.   In his gas-lit apartment, the small boy dreamed of sportscasting and Hollywood and Pennsylvania Avenue, and of a nearby Theological Institute rededicated to the theology of Milton Friedman.  On warm, summer days, his mother would take him to feed cabbages to the small dinosaurs that still grazed in Washington Park.

Today, the apartment block sits in the deep shadow of the new, state-of-the-art University of Chicago Center for Care and Discovery, right across the street.  That same kind of hyper-density is planned for the two blocks to the north of the massive battleship of a hospital, including where the Reagan apartments stand.  Kendall writes that it may be gone as early as January 1st.   The Commission on Chicago Landmarks has already determined the building doesn't meet the criteria for designation, and Kendall says Mayor Rahm Emanuel's office hasn't responded to her request for comments.  (Considering how Emanuel not only crafted an elaborate charade to designate Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital a landmark and rescind that designation only minutes later, but was actually complicit in helping Northwestern develop a campaign to destroy the building, I would advise Kendall not to hold her breath waiting.)

The University of Chicago is both a world-class institution and an urban mega-power.  It goes where it pleases, and strikes where it pleases, and in this it is largely unchallenged by governmental entities, such as the city, which operate in the same Era of the Supply Chain dynamics of relentless consolidation and standardization.  When Rafael Viñoly , architect of the new Center for Care and Discovery, mapped out the eventual filling out of the blocks to the north with the same massive amount of square-footage as in his building, he cited a basic principle that the sign of success when you do something is that you wind up doing more and more of it (and build even bigger buildings).

Such is the case in health care, where what was once a distributed network of neighborhood hospitals is being supplanted by a smaller number of far larger, increasingly centralized facilities like the U of C, Rush, Lurie and Northwestern, all of which have recently completed new facilities with price tags of half a billion dollars on up.  You can witness the fallout at Ravenswood Hospital on the northwest side, a community institution with a century of history that, even as it bulked up, found itself unable to compete.

 In 1998, the hospital barely retained its Medicare eligibility after a 15-year-old gunshot victim who collapsed only 35 feet from the hospital's entrance died after being refused care.  That same year, Ravenswood was acquired by Advocate Health Care, which merged the facility with Illinois Masonic, cut jobs, downgraded the status of the emergency room, and eliminated in-patient services.  It didn't help. Ravenswood's healthier competitors hired consultants to poach its doctors,  and Advocate closed the hospital in 2002. The brain surgeons (this is not a metaphor) who took it over and made it a  Neurologic and Orthopedic Hospital departed for better climes in 2009, and Ravenswood was euthanized for good.  A 2005 proposal to convert the hospital to condos went nowhere.The once modern showcase of a building remained boarded-up and empty.  This past July, a 16-year-old boy broke in and fell two stories to his death.

Now the main hospital, the Adler Building, a rock-solid structure not much more than 40 years old, is being demolished for a handsome new $33 million Lycée Français School designed by Krueck and Sexton.  May it live to least half a century.

rendering courtesy Krueck and Sexton

This is an example of outlying districts actually de-densifying - it takes a lot less construction to serve hundreds of students than 300 hospital beds.  At the cores, however it's a different story.  Density is good, say the urbanologists, so it follows that more must always be better - right?  In the case of the University of Chicago, this means an enormously rich and powerful institution spilling over into the residential districts on its borders and remaking them in its own super-scaled image.  So long, Ronnie's apartment - at the end, your bulked-up neighbors made you look like a discarded toy.  Hello - eventually - to Center for Care North.  Relentless big, bearing down, block after block.

On the peripheries of the University campus, the juxtapositions are almost surreal . . . 

The old stone-clad houses on Maryland Avenue, reflected in Helmut Jahn's spectacular West Campus Combined Utility Plant, are like ghosts who have yet to realize they're dead.

Doug Farr accepts AIA/Chicago's Firm of the Year Award

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Last night at the Revolution Brewery on North Kedzie, AIA/Chicago gave out its recognition awards, and I'd to again express my thanks for receiving a 2012 Distinguished Service award, as it was the first - and probably last - time the words "Distinguished" and "Lynn Becker" will ever appear contiguously.

Matt Dumich of Valerio Dewalt Train received the Dubin Family Young Architect Award, Paul Knight of Domus PLUS and Vincent Paglione of UIC received Distinguished Service Awards, and Farr Associates was named Firm of the Year.

You see watch below, in my patented jittery, out-of-focus video style, Doug Farr's exuberant acceptance speech . . .

Stay against demolition of Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital remains, for now

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Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital will stand, at least through next January 11th.

That's the date set by Cook County Circuit Court Judge Neil Cohen for oral arguments on a City of Chicago motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Landmarks Illinois and the National Trust for Historic Preservation.  That lawsuit challenged actions taken by the Commission on Chicago Landmarks on November 1st when the body first voted unanimously to grant preliminary landmark designation to Prentice Hospital, only to rescind designation little more than an hour later.  On November 15th, Judge Cohen ruled that preliminary landmark status will remain in effect until a ruling is made on the lawsuit.

The Chicago Architecture Foundation is currently hosting an exhibition, Reconsidering an Icon: Creative Conversations about Prentice Women's Hospital, that showcases the results of a competition in which 71 architects from 13 countries presented alternative proposals for retaining the Goldberg-designed structure.  Northwestern University is seeking to demolish the building to create a vacant lot for a new research lab to be built at a later date

Wolf Point Update: Reilly yanks proposal from December Plan Commission agenda; schedules Third Public Meeting

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 In an email to his constituents, 42nd ward alderman Brendan Reilly announced he has requested the Chicago Plan Commission defer consideration of proposals for the development of Wolf Point from its December agenda.  Instead, he will be calling a third public meeting on the evening of December 20th to review the revised plan.

Since deferring this item from the November Plan Commission Agenda, I have spent the past week meeting with the City of Chicago's planning and infrastructure departments as well as representatives from the River North and Fulton River District neighborhood associations to evaluate the new details recently released by the Developer that call for a hotel use and the potential for additional residential units on the site.

Although Hines/Kennedy have been aggressively lobbying for a process that would allow them to secure all necessary city approvals by the end of 2012, in light of the recent events, I have informed the development team that their preferred timeline is simply no longer feasible. As a result, I have again requested that the Chicago Plan Commission defer this item from its December 20th Agenda, for the purpose of vetting new information related to the Bulk Table for the site and to allow for a much-needed sixth revision to KLOA's traffic study.

Reilly yanked consideration of the three-building project from the November Plan Commission agenda after, as reported by the Chicago Reader's Ben Joravsky, documents obtained by Friends of Wolf Point uncovered a request for up to 1,800 hotel rooms on the site that had never before been part of the developer's documents or discussions.

Reilly, whose ward includes most of downtown, including Wolf Point, invoked his aldermanic prerogative to request the delay in consideration.  In his Thursday email, Reilly said that in the latest "Bulk Table" defining the developer's request,  the maximum hotel "keys" requested is now down to 450. The maximum allowed construction is now listed at slightly over 4,000,000 square feet, with a maximum of 1,410 residential units and 1,285 new parking spaces.

Reilly said the revised plan submitted by Wolf Point Owners LLC, representing the Hine Interests and the Kennedy family, which owns the land, not only included the previously unmentioned 1,800 hotel rooms, but "did not include the long list of previously negotiated changes and improvements to the proposal" originally submitted in May.

You can read Reilly's complete statement after the break.

CAF's 2012 Patrons of the Year: a Kitchen (Inspirational), a Rush (and Bill Kurtis's hips), a Tower (melange included), and the "Blood and Guts" of the City

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Rush didn't set out to create an architectural icon here in the city.  Hopefully that's what it will become , but it's not what we set out to do. We set out to administer the best health care for our patients.

That was Mike Lamont, the AVP of Capital Projects, talking about the new Rush University Medical Center, picture above.  Rush and their architects, Perkins+Will, were among six projects honored at the Chicago Architecture Foundation's 2012 Patron of the Year awards luncheon at the Palmer House on Wednesday.

"Having had two hips replaced at Rush Presbyterian, I helped pay for it.  Money well spent," joked newsman Bill Kurtis, MC for the event. [You can see some of our photos of Rush here.]

While architectural awards usually go to the designers, these awards, as the name implies, go to the people who create the commissions and pay the bills.   ("Was the Mann Center named after the Mann who writes the novels, Mr. Ormandy?" "No, madam, it was named after the Mann who writes the checks.")

Steven Stein, Bill Kurtis

"Good architecture requires more than a good architect," said Steven Stein,  Senior Partner of event host Stein Ray LLP. "It requires a great client - a risk-taker."

How the client/architect relationship can create superior buildings was a central topic of the acceptance speeches, including one from Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, the architects of another winner, the University of Chicago's new Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts . . .

Good buildings can only happen when there is a good client.  Great buildings can only happen when the client has vision and a commitment that exceeds beyond reasonableness.  We thank the University of Chicago, who along with the family of David and Reva Logan were unreasonable in their belief that a building could change the lives of students and those in their community  . . .

Williams and Tsien's statement was read by Logan Center Executive Director Bill Michael, who added, "Like many of the other clients in the room, I will never admit with my colleagues to being unreasonable.  On the other hand, I do believe that great buildings come from collaboration and the Logan Center is one such building."  [You can see our tour of the Logan Center and read the interview with Williams and Tsien here.]

"The architecture is really about the journey of discovery," added University Architect Steven Weisenthal, "which is in many ways what the melange of materials, volumes, spaces, vistas is - you never know what you're going to find next."

"There is a saying," said Carol Ross Barney, architect of the third winner, the new Morgan Street CTA Station,  "that I would like to debunk totally here today .  The saying that 'it's good enough for government.'  Because I'm going to tell you how gratifying it is to work with CDOT, work with the people at the City of Chicago .  They're devoted; they're dedicated .  This - it's not even a building -  it's infrastructure; it's the blood and guts of our city." Added Chicago Department of Transportation Commissioner Gabe Klein, "We have a small but very experienced team and they work very hard and I think more important they work really smart."  He cited the role of the station in supporting the accelerating revitalization of its Fulton Market neighborhood. [You can see our photo review of the Morgan Street Station here.]

from left: Chicago Architecture Foundation President Lynn Osmond, the top of Steve Stein's head, Carol Ross Barney, Gabe Klein

Shannon Stewart, CEO of Inspiration Corporation, thanked Larry Kearns of Wheeler Kearns Architects for the success of the fourth winner, the Inspiration Kitchens in Garfield Park, supporting a mission of  "helping people who are homeless or low income getting culinary skills and then moving to the food industry and in addition to that, it also is a place that we provide free meals to people who are working but who are still struggling to make the ends meet.  Larry Kearns and Chris Spencer. . . are awesome architects. and they made it easy for us to be good patrons because they really led us to great choices and making a beautiful building."

Inspiration Kitchens, courtesy Wheeler Kearns Architects

There were also two honorable mention awards,  for the Black Ensemble Theater from Morris Architects Planners. . .

Black Ensemble Theater, courtesy Morris Architects Planners

. . . and the   Instituto Health Sciences Career Academy from JGMA and Ghafari.

Instituto Health Sciences Career Academy High School, courtesy JGMA

The awards were determined by a blue-ribbon jury chaired by Stanley Tigerman and including Joseph Burns, Roberta Feldman, Reed Kreloff, Mike McCaskey, Cathleen McGuigan, Steve Stein and John Ronan.

Even the 19 nominees that did not win awards - from the new City Target on State, the Roosevelt University Tower. Burberry on Michigan, the Museum of Broadcast Communications, and the Old Town School of Folk Music -  would seem to prove that enlightened patronage, the kind that actually enriches and extends the glory of Chicago Architecture, is far from impossible.  If only the builders of all those deadening residential towers could take the hint. 

Tonight at MOCP: the Changing Chicago Project

Tonight at 6:00 p.m. at the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College, 600 South Michigan, Peter Bacon Hales will lead a panel discussion on the Changing Chicago project, a MOCP archive of photographic images from a 1987 project in which 33 photographers fanned out to document Chicago's neighborhoods and suburbs. Some of those photographers are expected to be on tonight's panel, along with Jan Tichy, whose exibition, 1979:1 - 2012:21:Jan - Tichny Works with the MoCP Collection runs through December 23rd., Information on-line.

Also, today at 12:15 p.m., Brian Lee and Ross Wimer of SOM discuss the Lusail Marina on Doha and Infinity Tower in Dubai at today's lunchtime lecture at the Chicago Architecture Foundation. Check out this and all the other great items on the December Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

Tartan check-mate: Burberry's Reinvigorates the Mag Mile

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God save us from the tasteful.

In selecting the new Burberry store on Michigan Avenue as her calling-card critique, interim Tribune architecture critic Cheryl Kent has chosen to rechannel Blair Kamin's worst schoolmarm tendencies, slamming it as "a screaming chrome ornament", "a boor", and a "noisy drunk", concluding, "That's sort of a bad joke like the Burberry store is a really not-funny, bad joke."  (Seriously - does that last sentence even qualify as English?)

Chicago Marriott, left; 600 North Michigan, right

To be sure, there's a lot to be offended by on Michigan Avenue, from the ballroom bunker of the Marriott, to the sugar-candy grotesque of John Buck's 600 North Michigan.  To be offended, instead, by Burberry's, however, is an admission of catatonia.

Once upon a time, as can be seen in remnants such as the Jacques Building and Women's Athletic Club, north Michigan Avenue was the chic street of the city, with upper-end shops, galleries and restaurants housed in classically-styled edifices.  That day is long gone.  At some point in the 1970's, the Mag Mile began to usurp State Street as Chicago's great commercial thoroughfare, and it has gradually become a series of malls separated by stretches of architectural glop. And lest we over-sentimentalize the past, remember that the Mag Mile was once home to a Woolworth's Five and Dime, and that the current site of Tiffany's was previously a McDonalds.

Compared to Robert Stern's goofy tin facade for Banana Republic, now replaced with a "tasteful" glass front, the new Burberry is the height of reticence.  If you want to be offended by something, be offended by the growing inequality of our current Gilded Age Redux, not by the highly engaging design of the new Burberry's, which opened late in November.  It replaces a far more modest two-story precessor . . .

. . . with a five-story-tall, 25,000-square foot flagship squeezed onto the same small site at the northeast corner of Michigan and Ontario. 

Against the taller buildings to its north and west, it looks a bit like a stylish handbag placed on a table next to the bookshelves.

Prada Store, Tokyo, Herzog and DeMeuron, architects - photograph Wiiii, Wikipedia

Burberry's is Chicago's late entry in the luxury retail flagship wars that have, until now, passed the city by.  Those wars of conspicuous consumption could said to have started in 2001, when Prada turned Rem Koolhaas loose to create a $50 million New York City flagship.  It was followed in 2003 by an even more spectacular Tokyo store by Herzog and de Meuron that cost  $83 million and was described by Deyan Sudjic as "a new building type, part billboard, part architectural gift wrapping."  New manifestations continue to pop in the world haunts of the super-rich - London, Singapore, Beijing, etc. - including another glittering box by Toyo Ito for shoe emporium Tod's on the Omotesandon in Tokyo.

Prada store, Chicago

Until now, Chicago's pretensions of being a world-class city have still left us short of qualifying for this type of architectural hyper-bling.  Here, Prada set up shop in a simple whitewashed brownstone on Oak Street, while Tod's has contented itself with a small showplace in One Mag Mile.

Crate and Barrel store, Michigan Avenue, Chicago

Michigan Avenue's most spectacular retail structure staked out a far more democratic price point.  Solomon, Cordwell Buenz's Crate and Barrel store remains, even two decades after its opening, a beacon of modernist elegance.  With its gently enceinte swell curving at the corner, it's a worthy successor to Louis Sullivan's Carson Pirie Scott.  An open glass box, visually centered by a sequence of open escalators, its uses the display of goods and movement of shoppers to animate the act of consumerism into a kind of architectural street theater.  It anticipates the clean, minimalist Apple Store designs that would come to define retailing in the new century.

If Crate and Barrel is Michigan Avenue's white princess, Burberry's is its new dark knight.  Its five-story-high facade of dark glass and chrome, articulated into an homage to the brand's distinctive Tartan check, has the look of a fortress drawing you in through the vertical shafts of light above the entrance and alongside the bravura stair against the southern wall.   It's a personification of high-end retail's tricky balance between snob appeal and inclusion.

The hand of Burberry Chief Creative Officer Christopher Bailey, a/k/a the "brand czar", can be seen in the design of every aspect of the Burberry experience, including the new Michigan Avenue store, carried out by Callison Barteluce architects of New York. In a 2009  interview with Lauren Collins in The New Yorker, Bailey talked about his own experience as a middle-class sixteen-year-old going to buy the gift of a watch for his mother at a designer store . . .

The service was so intimidating and so unpleasant . . . And I really wanted to call my dad aferward and say, 'Dad, it was amazing, and there was this and there was that!' But instead I was like, 'Oh, Dad, it was awful.  It was horrible.'

Bailey is clearly looking to create a more inviting scenario for Burberry in general, and Chicago in particular.  According to Crain's Chicago Business's Brigid Sweeney, he designed Burberry Michigan Avenue as total retail theater, with floor-to-ceiling "digital walls" and a hyper-connected environment which may have more Apple product than Apple's actual store up the street - iPhone docks, untethered iPads for salespeople and embedded iPads for customers.  Plus 500 loudspeakers and 100 display panels.

It's that balance between the physical and virtual worlds that Burberry - and every other retailer - is working overtime to figure out.  The pundits keep telling us we've entered a brave new Amazon world where on-line retailing is king and bricks-and-mortar a lingering anachronism.  The unceasing crowds on Michigan Avenue would suggest otherwise.  Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts told Crain's,  "How we use technology was going to be our greatest differentiator," and adds that in the luxury segment, 70 percent of the customers shop on-line but shop in the physical stores.

The photograph that accompanied the Tribune review depicts the new Burberry facade in the highest possible contrast, the chrome elements sticking out like plastic on a cheap radio.  Using a photograph that documents your opinion is always fair game, but the way the inset strip of windows doesn't read at all is an over-the-top misrepresentation.

As with Blanche DuBois, bright daylight may not always create the most flattering view of the Burberry store.  Yet even though the sun illuminates the chrome elements very strongly - you can think of it of a gift box densely wrapped in a shiny weave of metallic ribbon -  I've never really found it, in any of my real world encounters, as harsh as Kent depicts.  That same chrome is highly reflective, in a way that visually breaks up the mass of the facade into a set of variations, cleanly illuminated bands next to reflections of neighboring buildings and elements of shadow.

At night, the building has a certain magic.  The insistent white metal dissolves into gradations of black, as  the building becomes a dark, permeated fortress.  Unlike the usual mass-market backdrop of an almost clinical, foot-candle overload of whiteness, the amber elements of Burberry's interior seep light through the facade in an almost liquid way. Even as the intricate geometric banding of the Tartan check locks down the facade like a chastity belt, the warm shafts of light offer up a "come-hither" look that suggests you might actually be in for erotico-shopping fulfillment.

You want tasteful?  Try Lucien Lagrange.  I'll take Burberry's stew of money-grubbing and elegance, the subtle and the insistent, any day.

Also on ArchitectureChicago Plus:

• Chicago under Construction: Burberry's on Michigan
• Burberry Plaid Facade: Limited Time Only!

Can Signage Save Block 37?

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In his email newsletter to his constituents Monday, 42nd ward alderman Brendan Reilly released renderings of proposed new signage for Chicago's beleaguered Block 37.  Apparently, it requires a zoning variance, so Reilly is scheduling a public meeting to invite comments.

The proposal, backed by the Chicago Loop Alliance, hardly seems radical, but it's probably not entirely adequate to the stated objective of securing new tenants to the substantially empty, 300,000-square-foot mall - only 35% leased, and continuing to hemorrhage tenants.  Just this month, Beard Papa closed its pedway cream puffery.   Alternative Shoes pulled out in August and Andy's Custard shut down in July.  Block 37 was acquired for $84 million by Los Angeles real estate firm CIM Group this past April from Bank of America, which had worsened the mall's problems by blocking a lease to the Muvico chain for a multiplex proposed for the hard-to-rent upper-floor space.

Early in the design of the mall, it was to include a wrap-around digital art work, quickly eliminated, leaving reflections of the  Ford Oriental marquee across the street the only animator of Block 37's woven metal facades . .  .

The greatest excitement Block 37 has yet experience remains the over-the-top groundbreaking ceremony then-owner Mills Corporation put on in 2005, complete with quick-change artists . .  .

. . .  dramatic interludes stranger than anything in O'Neill . . .

. . . and a grand finale with Mayor Daley, lame-clad dancers, golden shovels, and a burst of confetti . . .

In September of 2003, when Block 37 was still an empty lot,  Marshall Field's, on the other side of State Street, put on a vertical fashion show, with models rappelling down its Burnham-designed facade. It attracted 12,000 spectators, most of whom flooded into the store afterwards.  The event was named the PR event of the year.  You can see video of it here.

photos courtesy Fancy agency

More than signage, perhaps a little theatricality is what can differentiate what is now a mall without personality.

Hack-Fabric Swatch mars Mag Mile Classic

(Yeah, I know, the real action is up the street at the new Burberry store, but I'm holding off until I can get better photographs - hopefully tomorrow.)

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You want elegance?  543-545 North Michigan exudes elegance, just as it has since 1929, when architect Philip B. Maher designed the classically-styled building, complete with Mansard roof and the Art Deco reliefs of two women suitably draped to represent the original, long-vanished occupant, one of Chicago's premiere dressmakers.

Even as its neighbors fell to hyper-development, 545 North has endured as a momento of the Mag Mile's golden age of carriage-trade elegance.  The interior has gone through a number of gut rehabs - most recently as a flagship store opened by Nokia just as its cellphone empire had begun to crumble -  but the facade and form have always served admirably, regardless the tenant.

Until  now.  543-545 doesn't seem to have been good enough for Swatch Tourbillon, which is creating its own flagship boutique in the space. I checked it out after being tipped off by my friend Joel Bruner, and while there's always the chance the final result will somehow be better, for now, it's one of the ugliest - and unnecessary - "upgradings" I've seen inflicted on any building, much less one on such a high-rent street.

The architect has chosen to cover up the first floor facade with a graceless false front, covering over the opening above the doors while herniating a miniscule sliver over the top that's like an eyebrow window struggling against the effects of a bad hangover.

 

It's not exactly a premium quality facing . . .

On the scale of outrages, I know this doesn't rank very high.   It can all be ripped out later, when Swatch goes the way of all trendy boutiques.  Still, it rankles.  If you've already got something this handsome, why muck it up?  Hasn't anyone told the Swiss that this brand of cheap irony is dead?

Chicago Macro and Micro: Wacker re-opens while a bike expressway comes to Dearborn

Both cars and bikes scored victories this week.

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On Friday, a multi-year nightmare finally ended as the reconstructed western leg of Wacker Drive  opened.  Officials marked the conclusion of the $300 million project with a promise that it should keep motorists and pedestrians both from having to deal with detours and temporary sidewalks for at least another 75 years.  What hasn't changed, however, is that Wacker is a basically unattractive, anti-urban thoroughfare, with a lot of grand buildings fronting on what amounts to an expressway with stoplights, a place where, despite wider sidewalks and touches of ornament, pedestrians are tolerated more than embraced.

At the same time, a very different kind of expressway was coming to Dearborn from Polk to Kinzie, as a lane of traffic was being removed from the northbound, one-way street, to allow CDOT crews to demarcate a dedicated set of protected, two-way bike lanes along the western curb.  Cars will actually park to the east of the lanes.  We'll we watching to see how well everyone adapts.