So I went to the 100th anniversay of the Burnham Plan event tonite and listened to the presentation. My ears perked up when Joseph Rosa from the Art Institute presented the two choices for the pavilions. A couple of things he said were quite ironic and, I think, disturbing and harmful to our profession. The first was he said they wanted to pick a "young" architect who "had a lot of built work." So they picked Zaha Hadid -- who's like 60? and won a Pritzker Prize -- and Ben van Berkel. I am a fan of both of these architects. I am not a fan of Mr. Rosa's attitude. The irony was pretty thick. Van Berkel was awarded the Erasmus bridge commission in the early 1990s even though he had never done one. He said in an interview that in America this would never happened because people want someone to have done 30 bridges to even qualify for the "honor" of doing one. Berkel sees this as what's wrong with American architecture. Instead the local authority welcomed the fact that he had never designed a bridge. This was lost on Rosa...
How does a young Architect get a lot of built work if people have an attitude like Rosa's?
What does this day about Chicago?
It's too bad that Chicago got its fill of superstar architect syndrome rather than an open competition where ALL Architects could show off what they could do and Chicago would have been better for it. Rosa should bring something to Chicago rather than see it as a place to easily add to his resume before moving on to someplace else.
maybe by "young" he meant "having a youthful and fresh outlook"
look ... the average client who wants to build a project isn't going to risk his/her money or reputation on an untested, unproven architect ... an innovative design may be important, but the damn thing still has to get built ... and completed on schedule and within budget. why is that a "disturbing" perspective ... if it was your money and your reputation, you'd probably feel that same way.
we are a profession that requires "patronage" ... you gotta play by the patrons' rules or spend a lifetime in total frustration. in my view, there's not much point in railing against that particular wind. if you want to build, then you have to have clients.
but the pavilions should have been chosen by public competition. Gehry's banshell is fucking gross, I still think it will be torn down in 20-30 years. Now we'll have to other jerk stores putting up shit in the park. On top of that the Burnham Memorial was closed to outsiders as well. DAM U CHICAGO
"its like vera wang doing something for Kohl's." Ridiculous Rosa quote...I think Chicago could have used an Arne Quinze construction. And like his Uchronia project at Burning Man it could be set alight to celebrate the Chicago Fire of 1871 which was responsible for Burnham and (the great and unfortunately forgotten due to his death at 44) Root ending up in Chicago to begin with....
The point I am making is that Berkel never would have gotten the bridge built unless the authority overlooked the fact that he had never done one before.
This is the real hindrance to getting new stuff built. Things are a bit more enlightened in Holland as they welcomed Berkel and allowed him to move forward.
The Art Institute, we would hope, should have an enlightened attitude as well rather than more of the same.
Vado,
That's great stuff!
Maybe the competition winning entry should be recycled at the end of the season?
make: what I think you really mean is "This is the real hindrance to certain inexperienced individuals getting new stuff built." -- every competition for a new project has a winner.
It seems to me that you're flogging this particular horse unnecessarily. There are a lot of very strong designers around the world who work for established firms that offer a solid track record in the building type in question ... there's simply no reason those firms cannot support and promote the design talents of those individuals in the pursuit of new work. There is also the option of forming associations.
there is no reason that anyone HAS to allow someone young or inexperienced a chance to prove they can do it if they would prefer someone else
if you were some developer, and you had a budget for a project, would you always look for someone new to give them a chance to get "their shot"?
when hiring someone, do you always look for someone new and inexperienced just so you can "give them a shot"?
i needed some plumbing work a couple months ago
i didnt hire some high school kid with no experience
i hired a plumber who came with lots of references of good work
you are looking at things from the perspective of the architect who wants the job, or looking for their break
that is not how a client looks at it
and just because its not that complicated of a project, doesnt mean that someone young and inexperienced has to get hired
there are a million different agendas that a client has
one perhaps, is the ability to sell the project
who do you hire?
zaha, who is a household name now?
or someone no one has ever heard of?
there are a lot of things that go into hiring an architect, especially for a public project in a major city
"why should these pavilions have been chosen by a public competition?
am i wrong in thinking the people who are funding this project should get to decide how to chose who designs it?
and lets remember, that what you may think is "shit", is not a universal or necessarily correct opinion
its just your opinion"
I could not disagree with your opinion any more.
And I agree, while being a tested architect should be important in the eyes of the people funding the project, it is a damn pavilion. More important should be interesting design that will last.
More important should be interesting design that will last.--these are temporary constructions. half a million budget. that is not a lot of money. that's a remodel in hinsdale.
This is a paviion made with DONATED materials. That makes the $500k budget more realistic. And free engineering help. It's a relatively safe project.
If it's about giving it to a "young Architect", then do it. But don't give the commission to Zaha Hadid and tell me that you've given the commission to a "young Architect."
The designs both resemble stuff designed for other places that got recycled. There's no connection to Burnham or Chicago that I can see.
The point is that Chicago had a remarkable Architectural culture in 1909. Rosa said that Architects from across the world would come through Chicago to see what's going on. Both Schindler and Neutra moved here from Vienna a few years after that. So why not take this to its logical conclusion and show the world that Chicago once again has an Architectural scene that can make top-shelf stuff. For example, what if the Aqua commission went to someone else who had done a tower before?
Rosa missed a great opportunity to promote the spirit of what Burnham's ambition to make Chicago a world class city and a vibrant local architectural culture. LA has the latter.
i have seen it and it looks like another variation of the War of The Worlds Death Ray that has denominated her work. This should have been an open competition because the Lakefront is open to the public...
Does it help Architecture in general when you pay for a 60 year old stararchitect to drop in a recycled project to your city and then claim it's all about promoting your city's architectural culture and "young" architects?
No it does not. This all about having something to look at from the new modern wing's second floor windows when it opens. It has nothing to do with the Burnham Plan.
Remember "think globally, buy locally"? Same proverb should apply to architectural commissions, and selection committees should turn to local architects (in this instance, Chicago market) to award their building commissions. The star-architecture problem has engulfed the architectural commission award process, as each committee tries to create a "star-architect" monument-of-the-moment, while in reality, only realizing a recycled, retread flashy architectural design that will be costly to build, costly to maintain, not particularly functional (because star-architecture is all about the napkin sketch of the design vision) and quickly dated.
Anyone remember Kleihues and the Museum of Contemporary Art award? Dumpy building, schlumpy design, and no one likes it now.
It's time that architectural selection committees realize that community support includes employment of local resources, including local architects. There's plenty of talent here in Chicago. Let's stop worshipping at the altar of Hadid/Gehry/Piano et al.
And wouldnt that dear Chicago, IL be in keeping with the spirit of the Burnham plan? A permenant design aesthetic in keeping with the dialouge of the decades to wouldnt hurt when it comes to the river. A continuation of the neoclassic esplanade along Wacker seems appropriate enough even for the most hardened modernist. even Mr. Glasses.
I don't know Chicago, I'd suck Gehry's dick twice a week for a job even though I despise him.
Hell, if Zaha wants to get in on the employment practices... she can ride me like a pony while slamming my face by my hair into Gehry's geriatric pubic bone.
Emilio, have you been in it? Ugh. I wish Doug Garofalo's intervention-on-the-steps was still around -- at least that made the entrance ever so slightly less overbearing. That museum is all about NOT inviting people in... thank goodness they have the corner entrance into the store at street level, so you can peer through a tiny window and actually see an inviting array of color. Man I hate that museum's design, it's like the anti-urban museum. Why try to compete with the Art Institute's elegant monumentality when you could take a different approach and better engage with the people you're supposed to be attracting?
But I digress -- I came on here to say :
Make -- I had meant to go to that presentation and totally forgot about it yesterday. I specifically wanted to go because I was so pissed that it's supposed to be all about Chicago and then, what the heck, they randomly invite two proven, world-reknowned architects to come in and fake-experiment based on a theme that's very specific to Chicago?
What the heck?
Isn't this, at heart, a publicly funded endeavour? The way it went down is SO LAME. If you really want to inspire people to think about / reflect on the meaning of the Burnham plan, then you should have had the CAF sponsor an open public competition, had an exhibit where you displayed all the entries so that the public at large could come in, take a look, think about it and have a stake in the project, then announce the two winners and allow the community of chicago to volunteer to help build the designs (a la Pasadena Parade of Roses). Now THAT would be a fucking celebration of our city.
you could put a junkyard in grant park and it would be a tourist attraction.
So true, vado. I am forever ranting about how that stupid, sacrosanct "park" is more or less useless as an actual urban park, to the citizens of this city. And unfortunately, because we have it, we will never get any other parks built (except as tiny, locked-and-gated bits of grass created solely to minimally satisfy the city's open space requirements for developers).
I mean urban park as in, a slice of park interconnected with the urban fabric. The lakefront is nice (although, I would argue, also under-developed relative to what it could be to the city) but it's still a destination park. The city needs more small, urban parks/squares that fit right into the fabric of the city and provide small moments of relief from the built nature of the city, and moments for public interaction and public pause. We have a decent park system (ahem, if you live on the north side) but it's based on a concept of park as "playing field" rather than as simply a quiet, green, urban space that provides a place for rest, relaxation, and public interaction, within the context (rather than apart from the context, or seperated / severed from the context as the lakefront and grant park are) of the built city.
Does that make sense?
And both Grant Park AND the Lakefront suffer from the same lack of variety that makes them, ultimately, pretty dull parks. Luckily for the lakefront, the variety of the lake itself (weather, movement, some (few) opportunities for actual public use) keeps the park somewhat engaging; and the playing fields and zoo help with this in the summer. But no one I know goes to Grant Park except in the event of a large public gathering, specifically created to make use of the open space. Therefore it makes a great outdoor concert / festival space, but not a great urban park. It's not particularly useful at all to city-dwellers or workers, unless programming has been brought in to *make* it useful. Does that make sense? This is why I don't oppose the Children's Museum proposal. It's not like there's anything else going on with that land.
I agree with Make and Ep on this one. The more I think about it, I'm disappointed by the selections for these pavilions. The designs look unique enough, though incredible irrelevant and arbitrary. I see no connection to Burnham, Chicago or anything else that the project should really be about.
They seem to be just skillfully selected sculptural forms, devoid of any reference or connection to location or context. They could be so much more, if not at least a launching pad for one of our local pavilion sculptors.
In fact, it's pretty telling that the part of Grant / Millenium park that gets used (by both tourists and, to my knowledge, citizens) is the park that's been built out with landscaping and sculptures that provide variety and interest : the Lurie garden, Cloud Gate, and the picture-tower-fountain thingies whose name escapes me at the moment. Those are FANTASTIC urban interventions. The small hills and planted variation of the Lurie garden are FANTASTIC and provide a novel and refreshing way to view (and get relief from) the city; and both Cloud Gate and the tower thingies are the two most engaging and successful public sculptures I've ever come across.
I wish the Lurie garden extended throughout the whole park and up the lakefront, too. Down with wide flat swaths of scrubby, high-maintenance grass. Bring back the rolling prairie on the lakefront!
you know what s fun? go down to the corner bakery across from the art institute in the summer and listen in while a japanese tourist tries to get directions from the girl behind the counter who doesn't speak english. thazz fun.
"We wanted someone young but with a lot of built work" - Joseph Rosa, Curator at the Art Institute
So I went to the 100th anniversay of the Burnham Plan event tonite and listened to the presentation. My ears perked up when Joseph Rosa from the Art Institute presented the two choices for the pavilions. A couple of things he said were quite ironic and, I think, disturbing and harmful to our profession. The first was he said they wanted to pick a "young" architect who "had a lot of built work." So they picked Zaha Hadid -- who's like 60? and won a Pritzker Prize -- and Ben van Berkel. I am a fan of both of these architects. I am not a fan of Mr. Rosa's attitude. The irony was pretty thick. Van Berkel was awarded the Erasmus bridge commission in the early 1990s even though he had never done one. He said in an interview that in America this would never happened because people want someone to have done 30 bridges to even qualify for the "honor" of doing one. Berkel sees this as what's wrong with American architecture. Instead the local authority welcomed the fact that he had never designed a bridge. This was lost on Rosa...
How does a young Architect get a lot of built work if people have an attitude like Rosa's?
What does this day about Chicago?
It's too bad that Chicago got its fill of superstar architect syndrome rather than an open competition where ALL Architects could show off what they could do and Chicago would have been better for it. Rosa should bring something to Chicago rather than see it as a place to easily add to his resume before moving on to someplace else.
this attitude is NOT unique to rosa or chicago. it's the norm.
not unique to architecture, either.
isn't saying we wanted a young architect actually age discrimination? not that zaha is young. well maybe he was comparing her to f.o.g.
maybe by "young" he meant "having a youthful and fresh outlook"
look ... the average client who wants to build a project isn't going to risk his/her money or reputation on an untested, unproven architect ... an innovative design may be important, but the damn thing still has to get built ... and completed on schedule and within budget. why is that a "disturbing" perspective ... if it was your money and your reputation, you'd probably feel that same way.
we are a profession that requires "patronage" ... you gotta play by the patrons' rules or spend a lifetime in total frustration. in my view, there's not much point in railing against that particular wind. if you want to build, then you have to have clients.
but the pavilions should have been chosen by public competition. Gehry's banshell is fucking gross, I still think it will be torn down in 20-30 years. Now we'll have to other jerk stores putting up shit in the park. On top of that the Burnham Memorial was closed to outsiders as well. DAM U CHICAGO
why should these pavilions have been chosen by a public competition?
am i wrong in thinking the people who are funding this project should get to decide how to chose who designs it?
and lets remember, that what you may think is "shit", is not a universal or necessarily correct opinion
its just your opinion
Anyone who hired Zaha thinking for her firm's technical competence is in for an expensive surprise.
"its like vera wang doing something for Kohl's." Ridiculous Rosa quote...I think Chicago could have used an Arne Quinze construction. And like his Uchronia project at Burning Man it could be set alight to celebrate the Chicago Fire of 1871 which was responsible for Burnham and (the great and unfortunately forgotten due to his death at 44) Root ending up in Chicago to begin with....
Before:
After:
Vado...NOW THAT IS SOME HOT ARCHITECTURE!
marmkid,
The point I am making is that Berkel never would have gotten the bridge built unless the authority overlooked the fact that he had never done one before.
This is the real hindrance to getting new stuff built. Things are a bit more enlightened in Holland as they welcomed Berkel and allowed him to move forward.
The Art Institute, we would hope, should have an enlightened attitude as well rather than more of the same.
Vado,
That's great stuff!
Maybe the competition winning entry should be recycled at the end of the season?
make: what I think you really mean is "This is the real hindrance to certain inexperienced individuals getting new stuff built." -- every competition for a new project has a winner.
It seems to me that you're flogging this particular horse unnecessarily. There are a lot of very strong designers around the world who work for established firms that offer a solid track record in the building type in question ... there's simply no reason those firms cannot support and promote the design talents of those individuals in the pursuit of new work. There is also the option of forming associations.
file,
I completely disagree with you. The status quo is just that. It's funny how so many architects loose any perspective and get swallowed by it.
its a pavilion. not that complicated.
there is no reason that anyone HAS to allow someone young or inexperienced a chance to prove they can do it if they would prefer someone else
if you were some developer, and you had a budget for a project, would you always look for someone new to give them a chance to get "their shot"?
when hiring someone, do you always look for someone new and inexperienced just so you can "give them a shot"?
i needed some plumbing work a couple months ago
i didnt hire some high school kid with no experience
i hired a plumber who came with lots of references of good work
you are looking at things from the perspective of the architect who wants the job, or looking for their break
that is not how a client looks at it
and just because its not that complicated of a project, doesnt mean that someone young and inexperienced has to get hired
there are a million different agendas that a client has
one perhaps, is the ability to sell the project
who do you hire?
zaha, who is a household name now?
or someone no one has ever heard of?
there are a lot of things that go into hiring an architect, especially for a public project in a major city
get some power tools....
screw saying 'how do i/i need/etc'.... just make the shit happen....
"why should these pavilions have been chosen by a public competition?
am i wrong in thinking the people who are funding this project should get to decide how to chose who designs it?
and lets remember, that what you may think is "shit", is not a universal or necessarily correct opinion
its just your opinion"
I could not disagree with your opinion any more.
And I agree, while being a tested architect should be important in the eyes of the people funding the project, it is a damn pavilion. More important should be interesting design that will last.
you could put a junkyard in grant park and it would be a tourist attraction.
who is to say that your opinion of the chosen design not being interesting is what everyone else thinks as well?
why do you assume Zaha will have an un-interesting design?
More important should be interesting design that will last.--these are temporary constructions. half a million budget. that is not a lot of money. that's a remodel in hinsdale.
maybe i should have said a remodel in Evanston since that's where Burnham lived.
sometimes it does suck to be in america^^
-- yeah, I suppose that's why we're suffering from such extreme out-migration.
This is a paviion made with DONATED materials. That makes the $500k budget more realistic. And free engineering help. It's a relatively safe project.
If it's about giving it to a "young Architect", then do it. But don't give the commission to Zaha Hadid and tell me that you've given the commission to a "young Architect."
The designs both resemble stuff designed for other places that got recycled. There's no connection to Burnham or Chicago that I can see.
The point is that Chicago had a remarkable Architectural culture in 1909. Rosa said that Architects from across the world would come through Chicago to see what's going on. Both Schindler and Neutra moved here from Vienna a few years after that. So why not take this to its logical conclusion and show the world that Chicago once again has an Architectural scene that can make top-shelf stuff. For example, what if the Aqua commission went to someone else who had done a tower before?
Rosa missed a great opportunity to promote the spirit of what Burnham's ambition to make Chicago a world class city and a vibrant local architectural culture. LA has the latter.
Go make! Give them hell
so it seems this Rosa was really just giving a speech full of crap and lies
of course it would be nice to have clients who didnt lie or were not full of crap
but again, it really sounds like his agenda wasnt helping young architects or helping architecture in general
i have seen it and it looks like another variation of the War of The Worlds Death Ray that has denominated her work. This should have been an open competition because the Lakefront is open to the public...
Does it help Architecture in general when you pay for a 60 year old stararchitect to drop in a recycled project to your city and then claim it's all about promoting your city's architectural culture and "young" architects?
No it does not. This all about having something to look at from the new modern wing's second floor windows when it opens. It has nothing to do with the Burnham Plan.
this person is not interested in helping "architecture"
isnt that obvious yet?
So make, you're arguing that this project should be more of a PS-1 type approach? Sounds good to me.
LB i just went and looked at sHOP's Dunescape again. Now that is an exciting Pavilion and we had cocktails with 'em!
LB,
Yes. That's a good, forward-looking approach.
Where did you meet the SHoP folks?
Where's the Dunescape?
In Muncie!
Is where we had cocktails.
Remember "think globally, buy locally"? Same proverb should apply to architectural commissions, and selection committees should turn to local architects (in this instance, Chicago market) to award their building commissions. The star-architecture problem has engulfed the architectural commission award process, as each committee tries to create a "star-architect" monument-of-the-moment, while in reality, only realizing a recycled, retread flashy architectural design that will be costly to build, costly to maintain, not particularly functional (because star-architecture is all about the napkin sketch of the design vision) and quickly dated.
Anyone remember Kleihues and the Museum of Contemporary Art award? Dumpy building, schlumpy design, and no one likes it now.
It's time that architectural selection committees realize that community support includes employment of local resources, including local architects. There's plenty of talent here in Chicago. Let's stop worshipping at the altar of Hadid/Gehry/Piano et al.
And wouldnt that dear Chicago, IL be in keeping with the spirit of the Burnham plan? A permenant design aesthetic in keeping with the dialouge of the decades to wouldnt hurt when it comes to the river. A continuation of the neoclassic esplanade along Wacker seems appropriate enough even for the most hardened modernist. even Mr. Glasses.
I don't know Chicago, I'd suck Gehry's dick twice a week for a job even though I despise him.
Hell, if Zaha wants to get in on the employment practices... she can ride me like a pony while slamming my face by my hair into Gehry's geriatric pubic bone.
hmm, i wonder if Arne Quinze has been hanging out with the Starn twins (or vice versa).
and, chicago, c'mon the Kleihues museum is not a bad building.
That's funny! It's actually devoid all interest...
Emilio, have you been in it? Ugh. I wish Doug Garofalo's intervention-on-the-steps was still around -- at least that made the entrance ever so slightly less overbearing. That museum is all about NOT inviting people in... thank goodness they have the corner entrance into the store at street level, so you can peer through a tiny window and actually see an inviting array of color. Man I hate that museum's design, it's like the anti-urban museum. Why try to compete with the Art Institute's elegant monumentality when you could take a different approach and better engage with the people you're supposed to be attracting?
But I digress -- I came on here to say :
Make -- I had meant to go to that presentation and totally forgot about it yesterday. I specifically wanted to go because I was so pissed that it's supposed to be all about Chicago and then, what the heck, they randomly invite two proven, world-reknowned architects to come in and fake-experiment based on a theme that's very specific to Chicago?
What the heck?
Isn't this, at heart, a publicly funded endeavour? The way it went down is SO LAME. If you really want to inspire people to think about / reflect on the meaning of the Burnham plan, then you should have had the CAF sponsor an open public competition, had an exhibit where you displayed all the entries so that the public at large could come in, take a look, think about it and have a stake in the project, then announce the two winners and allow the community of chicago to volunteer to help build the designs (a la Pasadena Parade of Roses). Now THAT would be a fucking celebration of our city.
also, my favorite quote of the week :
you could put a junkyard in grant park and it would be a tourist attraction.
So true, vado. I am forever ranting about how that stupid, sacrosanct "park" is more or less useless as an actual urban park, to the citizens of this city. And unfortunately, because we have it, we will never get any other parks built (except as tiny, locked-and-gated bits of grass created solely to minimally satisfy the city's open space requirements for developers).
you got the whole lakefront girl! walk up to lawrence and take a right and keep going til your feet are wet.
I mean urban park as in, a slice of park interconnected with the urban fabric. The lakefront is nice (although, I would argue, also under-developed relative to what it could be to the city) but it's still a destination park. The city needs more small, urban parks/squares that fit right into the fabric of the city and provide small moments of relief from the built nature of the city, and moments for public interaction and public pause. We have a decent park system (ahem, if you live on the north side) but it's based on a concept of park as "playing field" rather than as simply a quiet, green, urban space that provides a place for rest, relaxation, and public interaction, within the context (rather than apart from the context, or seperated / severed from the context as the lakefront and grant park are) of the built city.
Does that make sense?
And both Grant Park AND the Lakefront suffer from the same lack of variety that makes them, ultimately, pretty dull parks. Luckily for the lakefront, the variety of the lake itself (weather, movement, some (few) opportunities for actual public use) keeps the park somewhat engaging; and the playing fields and zoo help with this in the summer. But no one I know goes to Grant Park except in the event of a large public gathering, specifically created to make use of the open space. Therefore it makes a great outdoor concert / festival space, but not a great urban park. It's not particularly useful at all to city-dwellers or workers, unless programming has been brought in to *make* it useful. Does that make sense? This is why I don't oppose the Children's Museum proposal. It's not like there's anything else going on with that land.
I agree with Make and Ep on this one. The more I think about it, I'm disappointed by the selections for these pavilions. The designs look unique enough, though incredible irrelevant and arbitrary. I see no connection to Burnham, Chicago or anything else that the project should really be about.
They seem to be just skillfully selected sculptural forms, devoid of any reference or connection to location or context. They could be so much more, if not at least a launching pad for one of our local pavilion sculptors.
In fact, it's pretty telling that the part of Grant / Millenium park that gets used (by both tourists and, to my knowledge, citizens) is the park that's been built out with landscaping and sculptures that provide variety and interest : the Lurie garden, Cloud Gate, and the picture-tower-fountain thingies whose name escapes me at the moment. Those are FANTASTIC urban interventions. The small hills and planted variation of the Lurie garden are FANTASTIC and provide a novel and refreshing way to view (and get relief from) the city; and both Cloud Gate and the tower thingies are the two most engaging and successful public sculptures I've ever come across.
I wish the Lurie garden extended throughout the whole park and up the lakefront, too. Down with wide flat swaths of scrubby, high-maintenance grass. Bring back the rolling prairie on the lakefront!
you know what s fun? go down to the corner bakery across from the art institute in the summer and listen in while a japanese tourist tries to get directions from the girl behind the counter who doesn't speak english. thazz fun.
manta have you been to the dunes state park?
Block this user
Are you sure you want to block this user and hide all related comments throughout the site?
Archinect
This is your first comment on Archinect. Your comment will be visible once approved.