The imposing Bertrand Goldberg-designed Marina City Towers star in Jordan Peele's 'spiritual' Candyman remake

2021-11-04T19:22:00-04:00

The new film, co-written and produced by Jordan Peele and directed by Nia DaCosta, needed a backdrop for the home of one of the characters (played by Rebecca Spence). Production designer Cara Brower knew the perfect place where a design-obsessed art critic would live: the modernist masterpiece that is Marina City on the Chicago River.

Like the original, the movie is set in the notorious Cabrini-Green housing project that has become synonymous with both the city’s South Side and the inhumane forms of low-income housing that dominated the era. Candyman creator Clive Barker said he selected Chicago for the adaptation in part because of his interest in disparate architecture as a symbol of inequality. Director Jordan Peele was able to recreate the demolished structures through a series of 3D replicas created by an Australian VFX studio called Rising Sun Pictures.

Peele picked Bertrand Goldberg's 1960s residential towers in a possible homage to the blaxploitation period classic Three the Hard Way (1974). The new film features a biting critique of commercial art galleries’ long-established role in gentrification as well as a few nice wide-angle shots of Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower) and some of The Loop’s more important architectural landmarks.

Infamous Chicago public housing project faces redevelopment

2014-04-07T15:01:00-04:00

Little remains of Chicago's Cabrini-Green, a mid-century public housing complex once home to as many as 15,000 people. The poorly maintained high rises, rife with gang violence, were eventually demolished (the final one came down in 2011). [...] The Chicago Housing Authority hopes to see it all redeveloped soon. [...] CHA says half the new residential units to be market rate, another 30 percent public housing, and the remaining 20 percent affordable housing.

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The imposing Bertrand Goldberg-designed Marina City Towers star in Jordan Peele's 'spiritual' Candyman remake

Infamous Chicago public housing project faces redevelopment