manta, i have been in the museum...let's say that it's one half bad: i actually liked the inside, had a pleasent couple of hours there, so there you are; but the exterior IS dark and overbearing. but most museums don't engage the street very well except at the entrances, so don't take Kleihues to task for providing a large set of steps; they work nicely at the Art Institute, at the Met in NY, and at the PMA in Philly, great places to people watch. don't know why they don't work there...maybe a movie character has to run up them first. As far as the rigidity and symmetry of the design, i actually like seeing that as a relief from all the zooting and blobbing these days.
I had Joe Rosa as a prof in a class that focused entirely on the contemporary digital generation in architecture (Asymptote and Neil Denari were the oldest practices we looked at, mainly focused on offices like Jurgen Mayer H. and that [latest] generation of digital practices). So, without having been present at the event in question, I can pretty well say that Rosa's interests truly lie with the young architects. Look up his books and essays - you'll see that he's a bug proponent of digital architetcure, and that a fair chunk of his writing is devoted to establishing a place in the discipline for emerging offices. Whether the selection of Hadid and UNstudio for the pavilion commissions is completely in line with this or not is hardly reason enough to judge his character - clearly he's not the only one making the calls (although as the head Architecture curator at the Art Institute, surely he had his say in the pick).
Other than sticking up for Rosa, who is a good guy, even though I do not completely agree with his view of the discipline (I'd like to think I'm far from capitulating to the digital camp), I think that some of the reasoning behind the two picks has to do with wanting the pavilions to provoke a reaction and challenge, rather than blindly uphold, Burnham's vision. In that regard, a public competition judged by the public at large could hardly result in a provocative selection - if everyone had a say in the pick the design would have been populist by definition. And frankly the masses have a strange sense of 'taste' in North America (call me an elitist immigrant if so your heart desires). Granted, I don't think Zaha's entry is exceptional by any means, especially in the context of her work. (still probably going to be a cool space to experience). I like UNstudio's entry, but it's hard to look beyond it's sculptural form. I wonder if it will have the capacity to perform like Cloud Gate does...
mantaray - Doug Garofalo did that part of the park. next thing you'll be saying is that he should have done one of the pavilions! :) my guess is it wouldn't turn out to be a bad entry either
how could two cute little temporary pavilions have anything to do with 'make no small plans' anyway? i think they're fine, as i noted in the news. they sort of ride the coattails of kapoor's success. tourist-engaging trinkets sprinkled around the place.
millenium park is sort of a star-art/arch park anyway, not a venue for new talent. that might have to happen elsewhere.
if chicago wants transformation and to show confidence in the future (as one of the VIPs claims in one of the articles) little pavilions are not the right medium.
on another note, i'm a fan of kleihues and love the museum when it opened. the comments i'm seeing here don't mesh with my experience of the place 10+ yrs ago. i wonder what's changed. it was crawling with people then, the building was crisp and bright, and the construction was stunning - the kind of detailing and resolution you can only expect from a german rationalist. i loved the sensuous stairs as counterpoint to the discipline of the rest.
seemed to position itself well in the urban environment. i do understand the issues with it being closed, but i haven't seen many 'open' art museums that work as art museums. and its monumentality: that's who they hired. kleihues hardly did anything that wasn't monumental and formal; don't know that he could. i guess i'll have to visit chicago someday soon and update my impressions.
You said I had Joe Rosa as a prof in a class that focused entirely on the contemporary digital generation in architecture (Asymptote and Neil Denari were the oldest practices we looked at, mainly focused on offices like Jurgen Mayer H. and that [latest] generation of digital practices)
I am sure he is a very nice guy but it's about the claims he makes. And what does he know about architectural practice? The Architectural Historians that I know are nice people but they know very little about architectural practice other than vague generalizations. Historians and critics are a different animal, not always though.
I still fail to see how this pavilion thing has anything to do with Burnham. If anything the transit essay competition won by the Urbanophile Blogger was much more in the spirit of the Burnham Centenial. Also, the Comercial Club of Chicago, the same group that comissioned the original released a new plan in 1997 called 2020. I have a copy and its pretty facinating. Most of it deals with government and tax reform. A lot of education. The only infrastructure cited which is a departure from the original plan is to convert the miles of belt line rails which are hardly used anymore in the city into trucking highways to seperate cars from trucks in the inner city and inner suburbs. Anyone who drives around here knows the trucking problem. Ever been boxed in at 50 mph by 5 trucks?
Chicago is the 2nd largest intermodal hub outside of Hong Kong. Most of it is rail to Truck transfers. Its imperative to streamline both of these processes. Also in accordance with the 2020 plan they recomend the Peotone airport be the worlds largest all freaight and rail facility which would link directly into the I-80 east west trucking rout accross the country as well as be connected to the Canadian National terminus for the new super port of Prince Rubert.
These are the "make no little plans" ideas I think Burnham would have enjoyed.
From Isotap's post it sounds like Rosa is simply behind the curve as far as the "young hotness" is concerned. I mean c'mon, i thought the CGI blob went out of style in early 2000's and we've all moved back to haptics and craft. There are fewer and fewer "blob firms" in Arch Record's Design Vanguard these days...
Nonetheless, the pavillions will generate tourists and that seems to be what that part of town is used for anyway.
well he outlived him by 20 years but yeah, as Sullivan said the 1893 Exposition set architecture back 20 years. Root on the other hand was a forward thinker who was working on the Reliance Building (which is now called the Burnham Hotel) when he croaked.
That sounds fascinating, evilp -- I would love to read that someday. I agree with the trucking problem -- but wonder if rail reform isn't a better idea? Is there maybe a way to move the intermodal hubs slightly out the of the city? The local railways here are so gunked up with Amtrak, Metra, and 90+ car freight trains all sharing the same rails -- it's absurd. I agree that the trucks are an issue here though.
SW : I completely agree with the entirety of your description of the interior experience. I do enjoy the clean rationality of the interiors of that museum -- they make a great backdrop to art, although I wish the lighting were better in the actual gallery spaces (the contrast, especially on a sunny day, between them and the brightness of the two huge east & west curtainwalls makes it more difficult to engage with the art). I like the interior monumentality, also -- the scale works well for contemporary pieces, I feel. There is also good variation to scale that probably gives the curator greater staging flexibility I imagine.
It's really the street experience that is awful. The Art Institute works because a) it is scaled differently -- the steps are scaled to work as a vertical threshold, merely a point of pause at the entry to a large mass -- whereas at the MCA, the steps ARE the large mass you are confronted with. There is no threshold experience. There is no sense of entry progression, and this is unfortunately reinforced at the point of actual entry : when you go through a little revolving door and suddenly find yourself faced with ANOTHER large mass, only a wall of negative space this time. There is no moment of relief to allow you to digest the spatial experience. Also, the purity, poise, and graciousness of the airy interior space at the entry is disserved by the abruptness of the entry.
b) the Art Institute's steps give on to a busy, VERY busy, and wide open boulevard. Therefore they function fantastically as Emilio suggested : as a viewing platform of sorts. The street the MCA is on is tiny, cramped, and utterly devoid of any passing traffic, people or otherwise. The only people that ever walk down that street are literally the people about to hike Museum Mountain. Who goes out of their way to walk down Mies van der Rohe Way?
Also, I disagree about transparency in museums -- I think contemporary museums with constantly revolving exhibits have proven that they work well with some street transparency. Heck, even the CAF down the street benefits from this. The Pompidou is about the best example I know of...
***
anyway, I just re-read the article and noted that the pavilions are NOT publicly funded. That is a relief but I still have no idea what they have to do with Chicago or Burnham. I find myself agreeing with ep for the first time in my life...
SW, I didn't write my response very intelligibly there. Ack. Anyway I agree with you about the interior experience. I wish the museum were larger... and it would be awesome if it could have reached out to the lake somehow, but architecture-wise I think the interiors are great.
where is that comment about unstudio's pavilion being a frame for the city. may be on the news page about this. anywaze i was expecting gehry goofy bridge to do that ie frame or expose a particular view at its turns but does it? not at all. so, its good for skate boarding except for the cops.
Rosa called it a frame or an aperture through which to see the city skyline. It's the same formal/structural type used for that passenger railroad shed in Germany. I am not sure that it really looks like an aperture. It resembles the train shed more. The steep angles on it invite skate boarders. This solution should have thrown out because of that. IT DOESN"T WORK. It is likely a recycled project like chicago, il says and although it was privately funded, it sits in public space. I hope there are two pavilions every summer and that it is an open competition.
I think that a design about apertures would have looked much different. The existing Berkel thing has a platform. How do they keep people from climbing up the aperture and onto the roof? There's no railing. These restrictions are why Architecture is so difficult. The Berkel pavilion looks like a half-thought through undergraduate project.
• World’s #5 intermodal container handler (after Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai and Shenzhen)
• #1 in Western Hemisphere
• Chicago handles 13.98 million twenty-food equivalent units (TEUs) or intermodal freight
• More than LA/Long Beach
People forget about the inland port because its not on an ocean and doesnt handle the point of entry / exit shipping. But a lot of it originates or ends here - including what flows through long beach and NJ
especially those whining about this not being a public competition with the architects selected from Chicago. all these posts and no one has suggested which chicago based young architects you think should have been included...
burnhams plan wasnt a public selection either, for the record. and joe rosa isnt an "architectural historian." but a curator/critic who trained as an architect at columbia and worked in architectural offices before jumping into the curator discipline. if theres anyone youd want as a curator of architecture, it would be him. someone whose both keenly aware of whats going on and intimately familiar with the daily practice of architecture from training and personal experience.
stop acting like slighted lovers with "outrage" over this and grow up.
I wasn't very impressed by Rosa. I think anyone with an Architectural education or less can walk around and pick some stuff by starchitects and call himself a "critic." What's so difficult about that? I don't even think you know what a "critic" is. It's not a high school popularity contest and that's about all this was.
but for real... all this outrage because the curator of the art institute decided to bring two of the best architects today to chicago to do two small pavillions for a privately funded celebration of the cities plan... amazing..
all of you i presume are "fans" of architecture by being on this site, but the insane "outrage" you express over this makes me seriously doubt any of your interest in it at all. claims of the pavilions being from foreigners! theyre too old! no context! no relation to the burnham plan! (whatever that would mean..they in the park, which is pretty relational the plan)..
seriously.. Make, whats your deal?
name 10 young chicago architects you would have wanted to participate in a competition for this, and since your such a stickler for "young" be sure you dont count doug garofalo, or jeanne gang or anyone over 50.
where is the line between what should be an open competition and what should be done through "normal" proposals?
competitions can get expensive for all parties involved
would it be just highly visible projects?
because lets be honest
if someone is privately funding a project, why should they spend extra money to have an open competition if they already have someone in mind they want to hire
plus, then we would get into the situation where we get sham "open competitions" where the winner would already be determined thus causing a lot of work for nothing by some up and coming "young" architects
one other point after catching up.. if you really think arch records' vanguard issue should be considered "cutting edge" you are pretty out of touch.
you have a better chance of marie claire figuring out whats really going on in fashion or music than you do archi record being at the forefront of design.
evilplatypus... you cant name 10? and yet you want us to take your interest in the city's architecture seriously? for fucks sake..youve got to be kidding me.
i can name 10 and i dont even live in your city.. ill throw up my list after Make gives his, since this was his thread anyhow..i dont want to give him answers.
Look around you and you'll see plenty of talented people who do just as well and BETTER than these starchitects. There are a lot of unemployed Architects here in town that need a job. It should be like the locavore movement in food. Use a local architect and make Architecture part of your everyday life.
Read the claims made about the project. Do the projects add up? They don't. Not even close. If they did, then great! But they are like undergrad design projects and not anything more. The claim about the aperture for Berkel's isn't suported by the design and the idea that a "missing diagonal" spawn the Hadid one is so arbitrary they should have claimed they saw the shape in a passing cloud. Are they disappointing? yes. But perhaps a something like Serpentine can be done here every year but it should be as an OPEN competition.
We should encourage local Architects and not just Skidmore or the darling of an Architecture school. It should be a meritocracy and open to all. May the best project win!
We need a defined problem and then people working on them. I don't care if they were popular in high school or Architecture school or whatever.
Architecture is not about lists. It's about making something architecture. it's about work and then enjoying the process, the collaboration with other disciplines, contact with the client and the final product .
I think some here think Architecture is all about going to an Ivy League school, then joining the right Stararchitecture firm and then getting on the "List."
No thanks. That's too much like high school.
We're talking about Architecture and we take it seriously in Chicago.
i suggested a belgian. i don't care if the designers are from chicago or not. my initial response to the chosen pavilions is that thousands of designers, architects, artists, students working on rhino could have offered the same or better and it comes off as selecting a brandneme rather than the store brand and nothing more.
I see so little discussion about Architecture on here that I think that many here are architecturally illiterate. I dunno. I wish more people went through the thinking behind a project. Or said something Architectural about something. Architecture instead is a product with a name on it like Prada and you're cool if you know whose label has "IT."
Frankly Im so tired of amorphic "view framing" blobs and pushed / pulled nurb creations I could actualy get behind the idea of some neoclassical balustrades or nice esplanade.
Did anyone see the name the pavilions list on Skyline Blog? My favorite - The Wannabeans
since others are too scared to list ten. ill go first.
Alex Lehnerer (faculty at UIC, interested in new manners of urban rules)
Jimenez Lai (had an exhibition in that gallery on halstead that you could interact with and created an amazing installation in LA)
Marshall Brown (IIT, worked on the atlanta yards project in NYC)
Sarah Dunn/UrbanLab (the won that water competition and were part of Joe Rosa's YOUNG CHICAGO show)
Paul Preissner (just had a solo exhibition of his work at the MCA, also part of the Art Institutes YOUNG CHICAGO show)
Julie Flohr (IIT fmr employee of Doug Garofalo)
Eric Ellingson
David Woodhouse
Teddy Slowik
Laura Felhberg (School of the Art Institute)
i find it hilarious that Make wont even name ten people but says there are ones that exist.. help educate us then! let me know their names!
whats amazing about evilplatypus's comments wanting more colonnades because EP is "tired" of blobs is that it shows complete lack of awareness of the reality of architecture today in general, much less in chicago. you want colonnades? thats all this city has been doing.. go check out the majority of condos. show me more than 1 "blob" (acqua). i can show you a lot of colonnades.
look make. we dont know each other and most likely would get along in person.. but to me you sound like someone ranting about the inside because your on the outside. im sorry youre frustrated. joe rosa, zaha hadid, and ben berkel prob arent the best places to let out your frustration.. as much as you might think so.. they hardly have a stranglehold on architecture or construction in the world today and you can find much more suitable targets to take down, in certain.
how do you decide which projects get open competitions and which ones dont?
and how do you convince the "owners" or financers that they should select by "open competition"
BB Ive heard of David Woodhouse and Sara Dunn - who I thought was older but I guess theres no definition of young. Got me there. Might as well count her partner then to - the guy with the black hair.
What do have against open competition? The Chicago Arch Club did one for the Burnham Station and 3 kids won. Thats what this should be about.
Technicaly your all right, private money, their rules. But the spirit of these types of comisions I think is best served by open participation. Afterall, if not for open competition would Mya Lyn not have given the world one of the most haunting and iconic sculptures ever built? Thats the power of open Competiton. Or what about the Chicago Tribune Tower competition where the neo Gothic winner was overshadowed by such entries as Sarrinin's prophetic glass office building?
you're cute for thinking the idea of a "meritocracy" even has the possibility of existing. much less in a subjective endeavor like architecture.
and its not a criticism of my comments to say that im looking for the cool kids. im openly for that, because cool kids do cool things and tend not to be bitter that they are passed over. the dont care about whats established. the get their friends, do what facinated them and they make their own scene, and then that scene grows into a movement and people want in and then people want what theyre selling. and then finally after all their work in creating their scene and turning people on to what they think is cool, curators of major institutions finally come around and throw money at them to build a small short lived pavilion in the park. thats amazing. and thats a real meritocracy.
i think your idea of open competition for everything is naive, boring and has proven to offer very few good projects in the world anyway.
one other point after catching up.. if you really think arch records' vanguard issue should be considered "cutting edge" you are pretty out of touch.
you have a better chance of marie claire figuring out whats really going on in fashion or music than you do archi record being at the forefront of design.[i]
Hey, bigbear, i was using it as an [i]example
, but if you follow architectural "trends" at all you would know that blobs have been out of fashion, at least amongst us architects, for a while now. All the new, good stuff out there now from the younger generation is mostly about craft, haptics and bands and primitive shapes as form generators.
Oh, and I subscribe to Record because i cant afford the $1000 annual subscription to El Croquis or any of the other neat European mags you elitist pig.
And as for Zaha and Ben's pavilions, Ben's is fine because at least it works as an urban artifact the with the views in generates. Zaha's on the other hand looks like the VE'd version of the Chanel pavillion she did almost a year ago.
Big Bear, I find your blobs comment insulting. Everyone knows they exist in German and dutch manufacturing headquarters and American Pavilions only. Dont begrudge the condo by bring it into such competiton as with a pavilion for a park. And dont dare say Aqua is a blobular object. If anything its more akin to the process of integration, the mathematical act generalising the funcation as well as the domaine bounded by the graphical curve. In other words its like any of the extruded and sliced meats this city is famous for.
EP. competitions are great. and good opportunities for nobodies to become somebodies.. its what we all want. what im against is whiners complaining everytime (which, to be honest, is very very very very few times) UNStudio or Zaha or Frank Gehry or some other architect who busted their ass and gambled with poverty in the belief that what they were making was interesting and worth other peoples attention, gets a project. How many projects do zaha and every other "star" architect have compared to all the projects handed out.. its not very many at all. so stop bitching when someone finally makes it and then gets rewarded for their work with a project. its petty.
BB - However your making the jump from I find the winning pavilions to be sort of lame and awkward for a celebration of the Burnham Plan to petty complaining or jealousy for Zaha Hadid, is truely the sign of a powerful imagination. Im all for Zaha doing her thing. I liked it in Central Park. Im glad we got the guy on the Corner in Times Square knock off version for hal price.
"We wanted someone young but with a lot of built work" - Joseph Rosa, Curator at the Art Institute
manta, i have been in the museum...let's say that it's one half bad: i actually liked the inside, had a pleasent couple of hours there, so there you are; but the exterior IS dark and overbearing. but most museums don't engage the street very well except at the entrances, so don't take Kleihues to task for providing a large set of steps; they work nicely at the Art Institute, at the Met in NY, and at the PMA in Philly, great places to people watch. don't know why they don't work there...maybe a movie character has to run up them first. As far as the rigidity and symmetry of the design, i actually like seeing that as a relief from all the zooting and blobbing these days.
I had Joe Rosa as a prof in a class that focused entirely on the contemporary digital generation in architecture (Asymptote and Neil Denari were the oldest practices we looked at, mainly focused on offices like Jurgen Mayer H. and that [latest] generation of digital practices). So, without having been present at the event in question, I can pretty well say that Rosa's interests truly lie with the young architects. Look up his books and essays - you'll see that he's a bug proponent of digital architetcure, and that a fair chunk of his writing is devoted to establishing a place in the discipline for emerging offices. Whether the selection of Hadid and UNstudio for the pavilion commissions is completely in line with this or not is hardly reason enough to judge his character - clearly he's not the only one making the calls (although as the head Architecture curator at the Art Institute, surely he had his say in the pick).
Other than sticking up for Rosa, who is a good guy, even though I do not completely agree with his view of the discipline (I'd like to think I'm far from capitulating to the digital camp), I think that some of the reasoning behind the two picks has to do with wanting the pavilions to provoke a reaction and challenge, rather than blindly uphold, Burnham's vision. In that regard, a public competition judged by the public at large could hardly result in a provocative selection - if everyone had a say in the pick the design would have been populist by definition. And frankly the masses have a strange sense of 'taste' in North America (call me an elitist immigrant if so your heart desires). Granted, I don't think Zaha's entry is exceptional by any means, especially in the context of her work. (still probably going to be a cool space to experience). I like UNstudio's entry, but it's hard to look beyond it's sculptural form. I wonder if it will have the capacity to perform like Cloud Gate does...
mantaray - Doug Garofalo did that part of the park. next thing you'll be saying is that he should have done one of the pavilions! :) my guess is it wouldn't turn out to be a bad entry either
how could two cute little temporary pavilions have anything to do with 'make no small plans' anyway? i think they're fine, as i noted in the news. they sort of ride the coattails of kapoor's success. tourist-engaging trinkets sprinkled around the place.
millenium park is sort of a star-art/arch park anyway, not a venue for new talent. that might have to happen elsewhere.
if chicago wants transformation and to show confidence in the future (as one of the VIPs claims in one of the articles) little pavilions are not the right medium.
on another note, i'm a fan of kleihues and love the museum when it opened. the comments i'm seeing here don't mesh with my experience of the place 10+ yrs ago. i wonder what's changed. it was crawling with people then, the building was crisp and bright, and the construction was stunning - the kind of detailing and resolution you can only expect from a german rationalist. i loved the sensuous stairs as counterpoint to the discipline of the rest.
seemed to position itself well in the urban environment. i do understand the issues with it being closed, but i haven't seen many 'open' art museums that work as art museums. and its monumentality: that's who they hired. kleihues hardly did anything that wasn't monumental and formal; don't know that he could. i guess i'll have to visit chicago someday soon and update my impressions.
Isotap-
You said I had Joe Rosa as a prof in a class that focused entirely on the contemporary digital generation in architecture (Asymptote and Neil Denari were the oldest practices we looked at, mainly focused on offices like Jurgen Mayer H. and that [latest] generation of digital practices)
I am sure he is a very nice guy but it's about the claims he makes. And what does he know about architectural practice? The Architectural Historians that I know are nice people but they know very little about architectural practice other than vague generalizations. Historians and critics are a different animal, not always though.
I still fail to see how this pavilion thing has anything to do with Burnham. If anything the transit essay competition won by the Urbanophile Blogger was much more in the spirit of the Burnham Centenial. Also, the Comercial Club of Chicago, the same group that comissioned the original released a new plan in 1997 called 2020. I have a copy and its pretty facinating. Most of it deals with government and tax reform. A lot of education. The only infrastructure cited which is a departure from the original plan is to convert the miles of belt line rails which are hardly used anymore in the city into trucking highways to seperate cars from trucks in the inner city and inner suburbs. Anyone who drives around here knows the trucking problem. Ever been boxed in at 50 mph by 5 trucks?
Chicago is the 2nd largest intermodal hub outside of Hong Kong. Most of it is rail to Truck transfers. Its imperative to streamline both of these processes. Also in accordance with the 2020 plan they recomend the Peotone airport be the worlds largest all freaight and rail facility which would link directly into the I-80 east west trucking rout accross the country as well as be connected to the Canadian National terminus for the new super port of Prince Rubert.
These are the "make no little plans" ideas I think Burnham would have enjoyed.
From Isotap's post it sounds like Rosa is simply behind the curve as far as the "young hotness" is concerned. I mean c'mon, i thought the CGI blob went out of style in early 2000's and we've all moved back to haptics and craft. There are fewer and fewer "blob firms" in Arch Record's Design Vanguard these days...
Nonetheless, the pavillions will generate tourists and that seems to be what that part of town is used for anyway.
well he outlived him by 20 years but yeah, as Sullivan said the 1893 Exposition set architecture back 20 years. Root on the other hand was a forward thinker who was working on the Reliance Building (which is now called the Burnham Hotel) when he croaked.
That sounds fascinating, evilp -- I would love to read that someday. I agree with the trucking problem -- but wonder if rail reform isn't a better idea? Is there maybe a way to move the intermodal hubs slightly out the of the city? The local railways here are so gunked up with Amtrak, Metra, and 90+ car freight trains all sharing the same rails -- it's absurd. I agree that the trucks are an issue here though.
SW : I completely agree with the entirety of your description of the interior experience. I do enjoy the clean rationality of the interiors of that museum -- they make a great backdrop to art, although I wish the lighting were better in the actual gallery spaces (the contrast, especially on a sunny day, between them and the brightness of the two huge east & west curtainwalls makes it more difficult to engage with the art). I like the interior monumentality, also -- the scale works well for contemporary pieces, I feel. There is also good variation to scale that probably gives the curator greater staging flexibility I imagine.
It's really the street experience that is awful. The Art Institute works because a) it is scaled differently -- the steps are scaled to work as a vertical threshold, merely a point of pause at the entry to a large mass -- whereas at the MCA, the steps ARE the large mass you are confronted with. There is no threshold experience. There is no sense of entry progression, and this is unfortunately reinforced at the point of actual entry : when you go through a little revolving door and suddenly find yourself faced with ANOTHER large mass, only a wall of negative space this time. There is no moment of relief to allow you to digest the spatial experience. Also, the purity, poise, and graciousness of the airy interior space at the entry is disserved by the abruptness of the entry.
b) the Art Institute's steps give on to a busy, VERY busy, and wide open boulevard. Therefore they function fantastically as Emilio suggested : as a viewing platform of sorts. The street the MCA is on is tiny, cramped, and utterly devoid of any passing traffic, people or otherwise. The only people that ever walk down that street are literally the people about to hike Museum Mountain. Who goes out of their way to walk down Mies van der Rohe Way?
Also, I disagree about transparency in museums -- I think contemporary museums with constantly revolving exhibits have proven that they work well with some street transparency. Heck, even the CAF down the street benefits from this. The Pompidou is about the best example I know of...
***
anyway, I just re-read the article and noted that the pavilions are NOT publicly funded. That is a relief but I still have no idea what they have to do with Chicago or Burnham. I find myself agreeing with ep for the first time in my life...
SW, I didn't write my response very intelligibly there. Ack. Anyway I agree with you about the interior experience. I wish the museum were larger... and it would be awesome if it could have reached out to the lake somehow, but architecture-wise I think the interiors are great.
where is that comment about unstudio's pavilion being a frame for the city. may be on the news page about this. anywaze i was expecting gehry goofy bridge to do that ie frame or expose a particular view at its turns but does it? not at all. so, its good for skate boarding except for the cops.
Vado,
Rosa called it a frame or an aperture through which to see the city skyline. It's the same formal/structural type used for that passenger railroad shed in Germany. I am not sure that it really looks like an aperture. It resembles the train shed more. The steep angles on it invite skate boarders. This solution should have thrown out because of that. IT DOESN"T WORK. It is likely a recycled project like chicago, il says and although it was privately funded, it sits in public space. I hope there are two pavilions every summer and that it is an open competition.
They should have given the commission to me. I'm young, unemployed and not from Chicago.
- Lucas Gray
www.talkitect.com
EP, Singapore and the Port of Long Beach disagree with you.
I think that a design about apertures would have looked much different. The existing Berkel thing has a platform. How do they keep people from climbing up the aperture and onto the roof? There's no railing. These restrictions are why Architecture is so difficult. The Berkel pavilion looks like a half-thought through undergraduate project.
Rockhil - this is intermodal containers but..
• World’s #5 intermodal container handler (after Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai and Shenzhen)
• #1 in Western Hemisphere
• Chicago handles 13.98 million twenty-food equivalent units (TEUs) or intermodal freight
• More than LA/Long Beach
People forget about the inland port because its not on an ocean and doesnt handle the point of entry / exit shipping. But a lot of it originates or ends here - including what flows through long beach and NJ
link
you all sound like crying babies.
especially those whining about this not being a public competition with the architects selected from Chicago. all these posts and no one has suggested which chicago based young architects you think should have been included...
burnhams plan wasnt a public selection either, for the record. and joe rosa isnt an "architectural historian." but a curator/critic who trained as an architect at columbia and worked in architectural offices before jumping into the curator discipline. if theres anyone youd want as a curator of architecture, it would be him. someone whose both keenly aware of whats going on and intimately familiar with the daily practice of architecture from training and personal experience.
stop acting like slighted lovers with "outrage" over this and grow up.
jeebus..
didnt you know bigbear?
the architect that should have been selected is everyone who posted here! the outrage is because THEY were not selected
just kidding :)
Hey Bigbear,
I wasn't very impressed by Rosa. I think anyone with an Architectural education or less can walk around and pick some stuff by starchitects and call himself a "critic." What's so difficult about that? I don't even think you know what a "critic" is. It's not a high school popularity contest and that's about all this was.
Make it an open competition.
of course it is..
but for real... all this outrage because the curator of the art institute decided to bring two of the best architects today to chicago to do two small pavillions for a privately funded celebration of the cities plan... amazing..
all of you i presume are "fans" of architecture by being on this site, but the insane "outrage" you express over this makes me seriously doubt any of your interest in it at all. claims of the pavilions being from foreigners! theyre too old! no context! no relation to the burnham plan! (whatever that would mean..they in the park, which is pretty relational the plan)..
seriously.. Make, whats your deal?
name 10 young chicago architects you would have wanted to participate in a competition for this, and since your such a stickler for "young" be sure you dont count doug garofalo, or jeanne gang or anyone over 50.
ok. go. lets see your list.
where is the line between what should be an open competition and what should be done through "normal" proposals?
competitions can get expensive for all parties involved
would it be just highly visible projects?
because lets be honest
if someone is privately funding a project, why should they spend extra money to have an open competition if they already have someone in mind they want to hire
plus, then we would get into the situation where we get sham "open competitions" where the winner would already be determined thus causing a lot of work for nothing by some up and coming "young" architects
Bigbear - I cant name 10 young designers from Chicago. Maybe if there was an open competition I could, but until that happens they will go unoticed.
one other point after catching up.. if you really think arch records' vanguard issue should be considered "cutting edge" you are pretty out of touch.
you have a better chance of marie claire figuring out whats really going on in fashion or music than you do archi record being at the forefront of design.
evilplatypus... you cant name 10? and yet you want us to take your interest in the city's architecture seriously? for fucks sake..youve got to be kidding me.
i can name 10 and i dont even live in your city.. ill throw up my list after Make gives his, since this was his thread anyhow..i dont want to give him answers.
or her.. i dont know makes gender.
Bigbear,
Look around you and you'll see plenty of talented people who do just as well and BETTER than these starchitects. There are a lot of unemployed Architects here in town that need a job. It should be like the locavore movement in food. Use a local architect and make Architecture part of your everyday life.
Read the claims made about the project. Do the projects add up? They don't. Not even close. If they did, then great! But they are like undergrad design projects and not anything more. The claim about the aperture for Berkel's isn't suported by the design and the idea that a "missing diagonal" spawn the Hadid one is so arbitrary they should have claimed they saw the shape in a passing cloud. Are they disappointing? yes. But perhaps a something like Serpentine can be done here every year but it should be as an OPEN competition.
We should encourage local Architects and not just Skidmore or the darling of an Architecture school. It should be a meritocracy and open to all. May the best project win!
Let's do it!
I dont think Big Bear can name 10 young Chicago Architects.
this sounds like an OPEN competition to see who can name 10 young architects in Chicago
:)
at least we are heading in the right direction...right?
Bigbear,
We need a defined problem and then people working on them. I don't care if they were popular in high school or Architecture school or whatever.
Architecture is not about lists. It's about making something architecture. it's about work and then enjoying the process, the collaboration with other disciplines, contact with the client and the final product .
I think some here think Architecture is all about going to an Ivy League school, then joining the right Stararchitecture firm and then getting on the "List."
No thanks. That's too much like high school.
We're talking about Architecture and we take it seriously in Chicago.
i think the problem is not that architects dont view so called real "architecture"
its that clients dont always care or view it that way
and since they ultimately pay the bills, they get the final say
how do you convince rich old people that they they should "care" about these ideas?
its not people on archinect who need convincing
Good point, EP!
i suggested a belgian. i don't care if the designers are from chicago or not. my initial response to the chosen pavilions is that thousands of designers, architects, artists, students working on rhino could have offered the same or better and it comes off as selecting a brandneme rather than the store brand and nothing more.
Marmkid,
I see so little discussion about Architecture on here that I think that many here are architecturally illiterate. I dunno. I wish more people went through the thinking behind a project. Or said something Architectural about something. Architecture instead is a product with a name on it like Prada and you're cool if you know whose label has "IT."
Frankly Im so tired of amorphic "view framing" blobs and pushed / pulled nurb creations I could actualy get behind the idea of some neoclassical balustrades or nice esplanade.
Did anyone see the name the pavilions list on Skyline Blog? My favorite - The Wannabeans
What about a wind tunnel? It's the Windy City, right? It could pummel you cold wind and snow on a hot July day in the park! ;-)
since others are too scared to list ten. ill go first.
Alex Lehnerer (faculty at UIC, interested in new manners of urban rules)
Jimenez Lai (had an exhibition in that gallery on halstead that you could interact with and created an amazing installation in LA)
Marshall Brown (IIT, worked on the atlanta yards project in NYC)
Sarah Dunn/UrbanLab (the won that water competition and were part of Joe Rosa's YOUNG CHICAGO show)
Paul Preissner (just had a solo exhibition of his work at the MCA, also part of the Art Institutes YOUNG CHICAGO show)
Julie Flohr (IIT fmr employee of Doug Garofalo)
Eric Ellingson
David Woodhouse
Teddy Slowik
Laura Felhberg (School of the Art Institute)
i find it hilarious that Make wont even name ten people but says there are ones that exist.. help educate us then! let me know their names!
i wish my architecture would become a brandname
i think i would be ok with that
and Make
i wouldnt take online posts as meaning people are architecturally illiterate
i would take it as people venting online for the most part
here is an example of how someone will respond to your post:
"how do you say something Architectural?"
ep
i am also kind of tired of the blobs and nurb renderings
they dont seem real, and actually arent that cool looking to me most of the time
you fucking CRYBABIES!
whats amazing about evilplatypus's comments wanting more colonnades because EP is "tired" of blobs is that it shows complete lack of awareness of the reality of architecture today in general, much less in chicago. you want colonnades? thats all this city has been doing.. go check out the majority of condos. show me more than 1 "blob" (acqua). i can show you a lot of colonnades.
whining?
crying?
on an architecture message board?
noooooooooo
never
Thanks, Vado, I feel better now. ;-)
look make. we dont know each other and most likely would get along in person.. but to me you sound like someone ranting about the inside because your on the outside. im sorry youre frustrated. joe rosa, zaha hadid, and ben berkel prob arent the best places to let out your frustration.. as much as you might think so.. they hardly have a stranglehold on architecture or construction in the world today and you can find much more suitable targets to take down, in certain.
Bigbear,
The irony is pretty thick. You're doing the same thing.
I ask for a meritocracy.
You're looking for the cool kids.
Bigbear,
I don't give a shit. Build it on your property where I don't have to look at it.
If it's on public land, open up the process to the best and the brightest.
i want to be one of the cool kids
you never answered my questions make, or anyone
how do you decide which projects get open competitions and which ones dont?
and how do you convince the "owners" or financers that they should select by "open competition"
BB Ive heard of David Woodhouse and Sara Dunn - who I thought was older but I guess theres no definition of young. Got me there. Might as well count her partner then to - the guy with the black hair.
What do have against open competition? The Chicago Arch Club did one for the Burnham Station and 3 kids won. Thats what this should be about.
Technicaly your all right, private money, their rules. But the spirit of these types of comisions I think is best served by open participation. Afterall, if not for open competition would Mya Lyn not have given the world one of the most haunting and iconic sculptures ever built? Thats the power of open Competiton. Or what about the Chicago Tribune Tower competition where the neo Gothic winner was overshadowed by such entries as Sarrinin's prophetic glass office building?
you're cute for thinking the idea of a "meritocracy" even has the possibility of existing. much less in a subjective endeavor like architecture.
and its not a criticism of my comments to say that im looking for the cool kids. im openly for that, because cool kids do cool things and tend not to be bitter that they are passed over. the dont care about whats established. the get their friends, do what facinated them and they make their own scene, and then that scene grows into a movement and people want in and then people want what theyre selling. and then finally after all their work in creating their scene and turning people on to what they think is cool, curators of major institutions finally come around and throw money at them to build a small short lived pavilion in the park. thats amazing. and thats a real meritocracy.
i think your idea of open competition for everything is naive, boring and has proven to offer very few good projects in the world anyway.
you have a better chance of marie claire figuring out whats really going on in fashion or music than you do archi record being at the forefront of design.[i]
Hey, bigbear, i was using it as an [i]example
, but if you follow architectural "trends" at all you would know that blobs have been out of fashion, at least amongst us architects, for a while now. All the new, good stuff out there now from the younger generation is mostly about craft, haptics and bands and primitive shapes as form generators.
Oh, and I subscribe to Record because i cant afford the $1000 annual subscription to El Croquis or any of the other neat European mags you elitist pig.
And as for Zaha and Ben's pavilions, Ben's is fine because at least it works as an urban artifact the with the views in generates. Zaha's on the other hand looks like the VE'd version of the Chanel pavillion she did almost a year ago.
Big Bear, I find your blobs comment insulting. Everyone knows they exist in German and dutch manufacturing headquarters and American Pavilions only. Dont begrudge the condo by bring it into such competiton as with a pavilion for a park. And dont dare say Aqua is a blobular object. If anything its more akin to the process of integration, the mathematical act generalising the funcation as well as the domaine bounded by the graphical curve. In other words its like any of the extruded and sliced meats this city is famous for.
EP. competitions are great. and good opportunities for nobodies to become somebodies.. its what we all want. what im against is whiners complaining everytime (which, to be honest, is very very very very few times) UNStudio or Zaha or Frank Gehry or some other architect who busted their ass and gambled with poverty in the belief that what they were making was interesting and worth other peoples attention, gets a project. How many projects do zaha and every other "star" architect have compared to all the projects handed out.. its not very many at all. so stop bitching when someone finally makes it and then gets rewarded for their work with a project. its petty.
BB - However your making the jump from I find the winning pavilions to be sort of lame and awkward for a celebration of the Burnham Plan to petty complaining or jealousy for Zaha Hadid, is truely the sign of a powerful imagination. Im all for Zaha doing her thing. I liked it in Central Park. Im glad we got the guy on the Corner in Times Square knock off version for hal price.
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.