Photo Study: Aqua

This will likely be my ultimate post before I go on Summer hiatus; I hope to return to posting in August or September.

"The Aqua" is a fairly recent addition to the Chicago skyline though it has made quite an impression despite being hidden away in the cluster of skyscrapers West of Michigan Ave. between the Chicago River and Millennium Park. It was designed by Jeanne Gang of Studio Gang architects and was completed in 2009. The tower's proportions, which are long and slender compared to most in Chicago, immediately set the structure apart. What truly makes it unique is clearly its waves.

Skyscrapers have an immense verticality that can be exploited for captivating effect. Art Deco towers emphasized their height by featuring unbroken lines that would run along their surface from top to bottom. Mies buildings, with their numerous I-beams running their vertical length, change their appearance as you walk alongside them. The Aqua building presents a different vista; one that morphs as one's distance to Aqua's base changes. It's surface undulates before your eyes, creating a delightful effect. If the sky had been blue I'm sure Aqua's "valleys" and "lakes" would have been ocean azure as well, though the perpetually grey Chicago sky precluded that possibility for today.

Photo Study: Aqua 1

Photo Study: Aqua 2

Photo Study: Aqua 3

Photo Study: Aqua 4

Photo Study: Aqua 5

Photo Study: Aqua 6

Photo Study: Aqua 7

Photo Study: The Spertus Center

Architecture does not necessarily rely on context, but it is always sensitive to it. Good contextual architecture enters in dialog with its surroundings by conforming, contrasting, or something in between. Most built environments, specifically urban ones, will have a dominant style or architectural tradition. Sometimes a specific site will have complex restrictions (legal or otherwise) with which a designer must contend. Other times there will only be a few simple parameters, such as a limit on height or space that can be occupied.

The Spertus Center is a fascinating example of contextual architecture. Like most buildings on Michigan Ave, it must fill a narrow but long space that is exposed to pedestrians in one limited facade. The Spertus' striking glass grid contrasts well with its surroundings: it fits in its alloted space while creating a memorable spectacle that leaves an impression in any passerby. It's not just the material and modern appearance of the Spertus; it's also its creation of a landscape with highs and lows that makes the building worthy of note.

Photo Study: Spertus Center 1

Photo Study: Spertus Center 2

Photo Study: Spertus Center 3

Photo Study: Spertus Center 4

Photo Study: Spertus Center 5

Photo Study: Spertus Center 6

Photo Study: Spertus Center 7

Photo Study: The Rookery

It's a common misconception that buildings are designed and built in one fell swoop. Most are built and modified over time by a number of architects and owners in both subtle and less-than-subtle ways. I wanted to look at the Rookery because it's an excellent example of just such a composite structure that is the result of many creative influences.

The Rookery, located on La Salle St., was initially built in 1887-88 by Burnham and Root, a firm responsible for many of Chicago's great early skyscrapers. The building featured a "light court," a large open internal space designed to bring in natural light throughout the structure. The space has undergone two significant renovations; one in 1905 by Frank Lloyd Wright and another in 1932 that added the staircase that begins on the 2nd floor of the light court.

Wright's renovation totally changed the character of the court, though was able to very successfully subsume elements of the old cast-iron decorations (see photo of column revealing the marble's hidden interior). The art-deco staircase similarly works with the existing space, and not against it, despite its return to the cast-iron motif. This court epitomizes the aesthetic evolution of a building, though hides that evolution behind the great craftsmanship that blurs its heterogeneous styles.

Photo Study: The Rookery 1

Photo Study: The Rookery 2

Photo Study: The Rookery 3

Photo Study: The Rookery 4

Photo Study: The Rookery 5

Photo Study: The Rookery 6

Photo Study: The Rookery 7

Art Museums and Museum Visitors as Art

The meaning and importance of museums have changed a great deal since the Renaissance. What began as a cabinet of curiosities or a private collection has transformed itself into a massive public institution where the state of art is actively defined and shaped. Granted, museums (especially in the beaux-arts tradition) have long worked to define the parameters of what art could or could not be. Despite the fact that those parameters have become meaningless with the advent of post-modern art, the museum has expanded to envelop this genre of expression as well. No medium or style is outside the purview of a museum of contemporary or modern art; any and all works are subject to its taste.

I don't wish to portray the museum as a monstrosity. They do an excellent job providing intellectual stimulation to the public. As an nascent architect I cannot help but be fascinated by the museum spaces themselves, which tend to be architecturally and stylistically neutral in deference to the art they contain. This seems a little ironic in contrast to their function, which inherently involves taste and choice. The clean lines and pale tones of the Griffin Court of the Art Institute's Modern Wing made an excellent canvas to capture these colorful images of guests moving through the museum space. I hope these images are both visually stimulating but also subtly, if indirectly, critique the museum's neutral facade.

Modern Wing 1

Modern Wing 2

Modern Wing 3

Modern Wing 4

Photo Study: The Inland Steel Building

From the very start of the Chicago Loop as we know it in the early 20th century, its architects and their clients have been guided by the search for the most economical and cost-minimizing ways to make office space. Unfortunately this search has, for the most part, produced rather boring office towers. However, a few original skyscrapers do stand out as both unique and beautiful.

One of those surprising stand-outs is the Inland Steel Building. Designed by architects from Skidmore Owings & Merrill and built 1956-57, the building strictly divides its office space from its secondary functions (such as elevators, bathrooms, heating, cooling, etc). While these secondary functions are cordoned off within a windowless steel tower, the adjacent office space is encased within a beautiful turquoise glass curtain wall. By separating these two portions of the building the architects were able to create massive swaths of uninterrupted office floor that could be customized to any client's desired configuration.

What I particularly like about this building is how its glass exterior interacts in the sunlight with the reflective stainless steel covering the load-bearing columns. In a beautiful example of art following structure (much like the dramatic ornamentation encrusting the flying buttresses of a cathedral), the steel and the glass work together to produce a wide range of colors and tones. It's a remarkably striking piece of corporate architecture.

Photo Study: Inland Steel Building 1

Photo Study: Inland Steel Building 2

Photo Study: Inland Steel Building 3

Photo Study: Inland Steel Building 4

Photo Study: Inland Steel Building 5

Photo Study: Inland Steel Building 6

Photo Study: Inland Steel Building 7

Photo Study: Frank Gehry's BP Bridge

As part of his push to make Chicago a "global city" (a center for transnational commerce and communication) the soon-to-be former Mayor Daley embarked on a significant effort to make Chicago a global artistic and cultural destination. Part of that effort to beautify Chicago and make it worthy of the global limelight was the renovation of Millennium Park, which borders the city's central business district, a major transportation hub, and the Art Institute. Daley selected Frank Gehry to design the center piece of the park, the Pritzker Pavilion.

Choosing Gehry comes as no surprise. Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao nearly single-handedly transformed that small town into a global destination on the sheer force of its photogenic and aesthetically pleasing appearance. Mayor Daley no doubt hoped that lightning would strike twice and that a Gehry building would similarly propel Millennium Park (and Chicago) into global renown.

Though the Pritzker Pavilion is quite beautiful, I chose to instead focus on the less well-known BP Bridge, which is located right next to the Pavilion. It is a foot bridge that connects two parts of the park that are separated by a small highway. Gehry's work is very sculptural and energetic. He has said in statements that he tries to simulate movement and action in his structures. I think the BP Bridge succeeds at this task, seeming to leap over a highway like a snake in a jungle leaping from one tree to another. It's a very simple and poetic structure.

BP Bridge Study 1

BP Bridge Study 1

BP Bridge Study 1

BP Bridge Study 1

The Reliance Building and The Rise of Plate Glass

Much like a hall of carnival mirrors, the streets of central business districts are lined with facades of glass that reflect and distort each other. When massive structures with glass retaining walls are lined up alongside each other in such numbers they create a "funhouse" effect on a scale that would put Barnum and Bailey to shame. This distortion is supremely prevalent in the Chicago loop, which is in fact the birthplace of the plate glass building.

The first skyscraper whose surface was more than half glass was the Reliance Building, built at the corner of State St. and Washington St. in 1895. At the time Chicago was a center of architectural and structural innovation; the introduction of plate glass and steel structural frames meant that the exterior of a structure could be fitted with unprecedented amounts of glass. This was because the interior steel frame alone carried the weight of the structure; the exterior was free to be constructed with any material(s). The spaces between the large glass panes were filled with decorative terra cotta, in the style of the times (after Chicago's Great Fire in 1871 many buildings were built with this fireproofing measure).

The Reliance Building has a remarkable lightness and modernity in its construction that I suspect can only be experienced in person. However, I thought it might be interesting to see its plate glass descendants reflected in its windows, and vice versa. It's certainly a rare opportunity to have the first of its kind in dialogue with its successors.

Central Business District as Carnival Hall of Mirrors

The Reliance Building Reflected

The Reliance Building

The Reliance Building Reflecting

Photo Study: The High Line

All cities have parks. In fact, they're such a familiar sight that we usually walk by them without appreciating how peculiar they are. A little piece of forest, of unspoiled nature, deposited in an urban jungle? I see two tensions that the city park evokes: firstly, the tension between its artificiality and its naturalness. Does a park try to present itself as a strip of virgin forest dropped into a city block - does it try to hide the fact that it was built with bulldozers and jackhammers, that its streams are fed by pumps and a sprinkler system runs throughout? The second tension comes from the inherent contrast between its own natural environment and the urban environment around it. Does it isolate itself and its visitors from the city or accept itself as just another feature on the urban landscape?

The High Line takes the opportunity afforded by its unique origins to play with these tensions. Before it was made into a park, the High Line was in a state of decay. It was overrun with tough grasses and bushes. That vegetation is still mostly there, in a perpetual state of contest with the concrete around it. The tension between artificiality and naturalness is released in the form of simulated decay. Playful decrepitude is the theme that creates transition. I found transition to be a common theme even in the benches and their materials, which seem to take the wood and steel of the High Line and rise up from its surface. The park also toys with its identity as both an urban and natural space: at times its concrete paths are constricted and confined by the wild areas around them while later the concrete isolates and contains the park's natural elements. Truly, the High Line resolves many of the conflicts inherent in a city park.

The High Line Study 1

The High Line Study 2

The High Line Study 3

The High Line Study 4

The High Line Study 5

The High Line Study 6

The High Line Study 7

Soldier Field: Fusing the Past and the Present

The Chicago Loop is a fascinating architectural artifact. It’s unlike the central business district of any other city in the world. Paris’ business district, La Défense, is a collection of skyscrapers on the city’s periphery that’s totally set apart from the mid 20^th century buildings that comprise the city center. Places like Dubai jumped straight from living in small villages to dwelling within what are now the tallest office buildings and residencies in the world. But not Chicago. Chicago is where the skyscraper was born and the loop was its nursery.

One can trace the evolution of the skyscraper, and of the scale of most modern urban architecture, in the Loop. We usually don’t realize that Chicago in the late 19^th century, like most other industrializing cities, rarely had buildings greater than four or five stories. Due to the introduction of steel frame construction, the need for large office spaces, and the spread of the elevator, buildings got bigger throughout the 20^th century. Much bigger. Figures 1 through 4, taken from a photo of Michigan Avenue, demonstrate the massive difference in urban architectural scale that was created in the space of less than 100 years. A small figure on the right gives some human scale to the buildings.

Orders of Scale: Michigan Avenue

So what does any of this have to do with Soldier Field? Much like the Loop itself, the stadium has one foot in the past and one in the present. Originally built in the 1920s then rebuilt in 2003, Solider Field uniquely posses the architectural scale of both the early 20^th century and the early 21^st century. Its massive Greco-Roman colonnade was probably one of the grandest structures in early Chicago, but those columns are insignificant compared to the scale of the new sleek glass-and-steel structure occupying the stadium’s center. Its old, empty concrete bleachers look helplessly upon the exterior of the new stadium.

On one level, it’s as if a giant hand scooped out the old stadium and built a new one in the resulting pit. The new stadium presents some energetic sculptural forms independent of the vestiges of the old stadium around it.  However, on another level I think the styles and scales of the old and new are put in an interesting dialogue.  Whether you like its appearance or not, there’s no doubt that it’s hard to find a better exemplar of the past meeting the present and future within a single space.

Soldier Field: The New Dwarfs the Old

Solider Field: The Old was Monumental in Scale for its Time

Solider Field: Sculptural Forms 1

Soldier Field: the New in Dialogue with the Old 1

Solider Field: Sculptural Forms 2

Soldier Field: the New in Dialogue with the Old 2