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| Renzo Piano's Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas CityLab Photo |
Just finished an online
article in CityLab, a daily rundown of interesting topics
collected by The Atlantic Monthly,
that article entitled “For the Best U.S. Architecture Per Square Mile, Head to
Dallas.” The headline got my attention
right away. The sub-headline explained, “New York has the nation’s
tallest skyscraper. Chicago has some
fancy buildings. But one city wins when
it comes to sheer density of urban design.”
Chicago has some
fancy buildings? W-h-a-a-a-a- . . .
I get what the
author, Kriston Capps, was going for.
Pei, Piano, Koohaas, Johnson, Foster all lined up next to one another in
the Arts District of Dallas. I’m not
taking anything away from Dallas. Norman
Foster’s Opera House is magnificent.
Renzo Piano’s Nasher Sculpture Center is as restrained and as respectful
of its purpose as any of the great buildings his workshop has designed.
But a city is more
than a new car showroom.
And in Chicago
within an area of five square blocks some pretty good stuff, too. What I keep coming back to, though, is not so
much how many great buildings Chicago has or how many big names have come to
the city to design them. What impresses
me is how much the buildings respect each
other as well as the city in which they stand.
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| CitiGroup Center & 2 North Riverside Plaza JWB Photo |
Take for, example,
the two buildings in the above photo – Helmut Jahn’s CitiGroup Center,
completed in 1987, and Two North Riverside Plaza, formerly the home of the Chicago Daily News, designed by Holabird
and Root and finished in 1929.
Is it just me? Or do those glassy curves of the 42-story
tower at 500 West Madison whisper to the stepped-back limestone at the top of
the Art Deco building on the river. The
arrangement of the silvered windows on the edges of the newer building almost
outline the earlier building, emphasizing its sleek lines, rather than diminishing
them.
But . . . there’s
more.
Where did the
curves of Helmut Jahn’s design start? In
another building just down the street and across the river, a building designed
by the same firm that designed the 1929 Art Deco beauty that thrusts its great
public plaza toward the river in front of the CitiGroup Center.
Check this out . .
.
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| Board of Trade Interior (JWB Photo) |
See what I
mean? The unbelievable interior of the
Chicago Board of Trade, completed in 1934, clearly gives rise to the Helmut
Jahn design of the CitiGroup Center. And
why shouldn’t it? The building on Madison
Street was originally designed to be the addition to the Board of Trade before
the powers that be rejected that design and opted for another Helmut Jahn plan.
And that’s my
point. Density of good design is a
wonderful thing. What city wouldn’t want
that? In Chicago, though, we not only
have a city jam-packed with great buildings. But
we have something more, I think. We have buildings that don’t mind talking to
one another.
Sometimes they even shout to one another from the rooftops . . .
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| Ceres by John Stoors (JWB Photo) |
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1 comment:
Thank you for standing up for Chicago!!!!!!!!!
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