Blair Kamin reports on the so-called Winners of the Lakeshore Bridge Competition in Chicago. The Mayors Department of Transportation 'over road' the Juries Selection to choose this winner...
Phillips Swager Associates winning entry for North Ave,
"Boomerang bridge
New look for North Avenue span is among winners in city competition"
By Blair Kamin
Tribune architecture critic
Published January 14, 2005
Offering a major surprise, the City of Chicago on Friday will announce winners in its international design competition for pedestrian bridges along the lakefront, choosing a bold new look for the North Avenue Bridge instead of a plan that would have echoed the gently curving profile of the existing bridge.
The winners, all Chicago-area firms, include little-known Phillips Swager Associates, which suggested a boomerang-shaped bridge at North Avenue, complete with a trellis of solar panels that might provide electricity to light the bridge at night.
The apparent favorite of a jury of experts -- by the Chicago firm Lohan Caprile Goettsch, part of the design team for the renovated Soldier Field -- would have closely followed the form of the present North Avenue Bridge, which has an elongated steel arch and an elegantly thin walkway. Jury members said they selected the Lohan plan because area residents considered the bridge a beloved icon. But city transportation officials decided to go in a different direction.
"We really saw North Avenue as one of the best locations where we had an opportunity to make a bold architectural statement," said Brian Steele, spokesman for the city's Department of Transportation, which sponsored the competition. "The purpose of this design competition was to really push the envelope."
Other winning plans include a curving, single-tower suspension bridge at 35th Street, by Teng & Associates; a pair of double-curved bridges, each shaped like the letter "S," at 41st and 43rd Streets, by Cordogan, Clark & Associates; and a Lake Shore Drive bridge across the Chicago River that strives to be a modern variation of the muscular, truss-supported bridges across the river. It is by Wight & Company with Edward Windhorst Architects.
"This was much more than a beauty contest," said city transportation commissioner Miguel d'Escoto, who joined with city bridge engineers and designers to select the winners. "It was a chance to come up with some creative and visually interesting ways to improve people's access to the lakefront."
The bridges are expected to cost between $5 million and $20 million apiece. The price tag for the Chicago River bridge occupies the high end of that spectrum because it is the lone bridge among the five that will open and close, allowing tall-masted sailboats and other craft to pass beneath it.
Work on the South Side bridges could start as soon as next year or in 2007, city officials said, adding that they have obtained more than $4 million in federal money to pay for design of the 35th and 41st Street bridges. They are seeking design funds for the 43rd Street Bridge.
Access to the lakefront is particularly difficult south of McCormick Place, where the Metra railroad tracks and Lake Shore Drive present a barrier several hundred feet wide, and ramrod-straight pedestrian bridges at 35th and 43rd Streets are crumbling and uninviting. Those bridges are to be replaced.
The new North Avenue Bridge, which city officials say must be built because the existing bridge is in poor condition and does not meet federal accessibility standards, might be built by 2010 or earlier, Steele said.
There is no timetable for the Chicago River bridge, which would rise just east of the existing Art Deco-style Lake Shore Drive Bridge and provide an improved link in the lakefront bike path. Cyclists and pedestrians can use the lower level of the existing bridge, but they are dangerously close to cars and other vehicles.
The design competition attracted 67 entries from such renowned architects as Chicago's Helmut Jahn and the Richard Rogers Partnership of London.
A jury of experts, including curators from the Art Institute of Chicago, historic preservationists, engineers and community leaders selected the finalists. Mayor Daley saw the finalists, but transportation officials made the final selection, Steele said.
Speaking of the jury deliberations about the North Avenue Bridge, one of the jurors, Sidney Guralnick, an engineering professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology, said: "There was an awful lot of comment from neighbors who basically said they wanted to keep the North Avenue Bridge. . . . They considered it an icon, and the jury was very sensitive to that." The Lohan plan, he said, was expected to have "the greatest community acceptance."
But transportation officials went with the Phillips Swager Associates plan, Steele said, for several reasons in addition to its bold form: Its solar panels would provide electricity for the city power grid and could light the bridge at night. The western landing of the bridge would take up less space in Lincoln Park than the Lohan plan. And the eastern landing of the bridge would have a terrace with bench seating that might prove popular to the crowds at North Avenue Beach.
The city will hold public hearings before proceeding to build all the designs, Steele said. He added that construction hinges on the passage of a federal transportation bill this spring, but the city will seek other funding sources if the bill does not pass
7 Comments
Eat your hearts out your undergrad design students!! this is great stuff! what lightness....what proportions...thank god for transportation engineers! trees nice too! nice representation of the lakefront in the background. [if you squint!]
Once again, Bland mistakenly claims Swager is 'a Little Known architect' [not in tigermans book of who's who's in stanleys world!] Good God!, kamin needs to get out more and realize this is one of the mayors politically connected firms. thats the story here. who cares if helmut jahn, richard rogers and alsop entered! why not speak out about this piece of shit and the selections /de-selection process!
the model photo directly above is the submission for the north avenue bridge winning site by swager. the drawing at the top of this news thread is in fact the 35th street bridge entry by Swager, [Teng, another very politcally connected engineering / arch practice won the this site]
kamin writes more in todays trib [he must have felt he didnt know the projects enough although they have been exhibited for over a month] article copied here [in mutlple comments] as the tribune now charges archive fees for pieces 2 days or older.
Calatrava hovers over bridge plans
Winners react against attitude that every span must be an icon
By Blair Kamin
Tribune architecture critic
Published January 16, 2005
The winners of Chicago's lakefront pedestrian bridge competition, announced Friday, are a mixed bag -- some wonderfully forward-looking, others decidedly less so, still others promising but in need of refinement. Whatever one thinks of them individually, they have a certain heft as a group, not just because they should greatly improve access to the lakefront but also because they challenge the new orthodoxy in bridge design: A bridge must be a knock-your-eyes-out icon.
That attitude is a byproduct of the brilliant bridges of Zurich-based architect and engineer Santiago Calatrava, whose glistening, high-tech spans have profoundly influenced contemporary bridge design. Calatrava chose not to enter this competition but he nevertheless hovered over it. In many respects, the winning entries react against his approach, or, more accurately, against his legions of imitators, who lack his artistic mastery and seem to think that the drive for icons gives them license to overwhelm their surroundings.
There is a difference, of course, between bridges that meekly blend in and bridges that manage to be sensitive to their environs while still making a strong aesthetic statement. Frank Gehry's snaking BP Bridge in Millennium Park successfully walks that tightrope. So do the better designs in this competition while also resolving the often-competing demands of architecture and engineering, place and passageway.
kamin, 16 jan, 2 of 3
What follows are detailed observations about the winners in the competition, which was sponsored by the Chicago Department of Transportation and drew 67 entries from such noted firms as London's Richard Rogers Partnership. City transportation officials selected the winners from a group of finalists picked by a distinguished jury. The bridges, which will be for cyclists and people in wheelchairs as well as pedestrians, are expected to cost anywhere from $5 million to $20 million apiece.
North Avenue Bridge: Whatever design was selected for this location was sure to face intense scrutiny because it is supposed to replace the existing bridge, a 1940s classic with an elongated steel arch, that city officials say doesn't meet federal disability standards. But the winning design is so intelligently conceived that it should force even the most ardent preservationists to ask: Might we replace the existing bridge with a better one?
Quite possibly, it appears. The winning design by Phillips Swager Associates, with its sweeping, dune-inspired concrete deck, would make an elegantly simple but visually rich transition between the green spaces of Lincoln Park and the sand of North Avenue Beach. Yet it is no one-liner. The lakeside base of the bridge would offer terraces where crowds could sit and a canopy equipped with solar panels that might generate electricity to light the bridge at night. The design would thus be a living embodiment of ecologically sensitive, "green" architecture.
It took courage and vision for city transportation officials to select this plan. The design by Lohan Caprile Goettsch, the jury's apparent favorite because it closely followed the look of the existing bridge, muddled the question of old versus new. This design sharpens the issue: Are we going forward or are we staying put? City officials say this plan won't be built until 2010 or earlier.
Lake Shore Drive at the Chicago River: The winner, by Wight & Company with Edward Windhorst Architects, tries with mixed success to be a modern variation of the seesawlike bascule bridges across the Chicago River. Its single swooping truss would not overshadow the towers of the existing Art Deco Lake Shore Drive Bridge. The span also would have a toylike festiveness appropriate for the lakefront, with glass walls revealing the giant machinery that would make its leaves move up and down.
kamin 3 of 4 16 jan
Even so, there are hard questions about this bridge, the lone one among the five winners that will be moveable. (Expected to cost $20 million, with no timetable for construction set, it needs to be built so pedestrians and cyclists on the lakefront bike path can avoid the dangerously crowded lower level of the current bridge.)
Because the new bridge would be jammed alongside the lower level of the existing bridge, pedestrians and cyclists are likely to be assaulted with noise from cars and other vehicles. And while the design would belong to the family of bascule bridges across the Chicago River, one has to wonder whether its prominent location, so highly visible from the lake, demanded a more assertive visual statement. Another finalist, Annex/5, offered such a plan, calling for a nautically inspired swing bridge with two thin, diagonally raked masts of different height. It would have dazzlingly talked to the skyline without overwhelming the existing bridge.
Sometimes, you have to break the rules to go forward. The Wight-Windhorst design isn't bad. But it shapes up as a missed opportunity.
35th Street: There were some good choices for this bridge, one of three planned south lakefront bridges that will span the daunting barrier of the Metra railroad tracks and Lake Shore Drive. One was a curving, single-tower suspension bridge by Teng & Associates. The other, by the Rogers Partnership, had a more symmetrical arrangement, with a cable-stayed arch that would support a curving deck and act as a gateway to the lakefront.
The Teng plan won, and not without reason. Its unusual, single-tower design is at once based on the laws of physics and the more subjective calculation that a typical, twin-towered suspension bridge would have been too much for this site. The bridge tower and its cables will form a down-the-alley landmark at the end of 35th Street and a gateway for drivers heading downtown. On the lakefront side, the bridge deck will split and land in two places, offering parkgoers welcome flexibility of movement.
kamin 4 of 4 16 jan
Even so, there is cause for concern.On the park side, the large number of supports beneath the deck makes this bridge seem more like the underside of a highway. The Rogers plan would have touched the land more lightly. In addition, its deck was more user-friendly, with benches where people could take in the view. Perhaps some of those features can be incorporated into the Teng plan. Work on this bridge, as well as the others on the south lakefront, could begin next year or in 2007.
41st and 43rd Streets: It was crucial that this pair of bridges be visually in sync not only with each other, but also with the 35th Street Bridge because the trio will appear as a group to parkgoers and drivers. Fortunately, the winning design for a pair of S-shaped bridges, by Cordogan, Clark & Associates, meets that challenge and offers more: It promises to harmonize with the sinuous pathways of Burnham Park and the planned curving geometry of the mixed-income Lake Park Crescent housing development just west of the Metra tracks.
Typifying the sensible, place-over-icon attitude that drove many of the winning plans, Cordogan, Clark & Associates quoted the words of the 19th Century landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, who urged that roads going through parks have softly curving lines that would bring about "happy tranquility." In that spirit, this bridge, while growing out of the Chicago tradition of expressing structure, would be anything but an object dropped into its surroundings.
While the outlines are good, the bridge's handrails are a potential drawback: They're needlessly fussy, nullifying the architects' desire for tranquility. But this fault can be corrected as the design is fleshed out. Now that South Siders are finally going to be able to walk across new pedestrian bridges to the lakefront, they might as well do so in style.
TED -
Thanks for the heads-up. I’ve been on a strict low-Blair diet, so this news would have slipped by me. This was an interesting and important competition for the city, definitely worthy of further conversation. For my part, I used to work at Cordogan Clark & Associates as a wee intern and am very happy to see them get a win. John Clark is a genuinely good guy and deserves some recognition. His approach to design is more thoughtful than flashy, and in that respect constitutes a more genuine “Chicago†approach, if such a thing exists. And they are not politically connected either, as far as I know.
So should we be disappointed that the lakefront won’t be adorned with starchitectural tokens? And should we question the political connectivity of the winners? Unless the mayor decides to bulldoze one of the bridges in the middle of the night, we’ll never know about what sort of politics we’re involved. Thirty years ago all the bridges would have been handed over to CF Murphy, or some such firm, without any public input until after construction was complete.
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