Daniel Burnham’s ghost and his much-quoted exhortation to “make no little plans” haunt the just-released, utterly underwhelming design for a vertical expansion of Chicago’s Union Station.
To put things in Burnham-speak, these plans are little — very little.
There’s nothing wrong with the idea of putting a 330-room hotel in the upper floors [...] The trouble is a planned apartment addition that would plunk a squat modernist box atop the existing structure’s neo-classical pedestal.
— Chicago Tribune
Tribune critic Blair Kamin comments on the latest expansion plans by Riverside Investment & Development for Chicago's iconic Union Station, which were unveiled Monday night. "The juxtaposition of past and present isn’t as violent as the spaceship-like seating bowl that’s plopped atop the classical colonnades of Soldier Field," writes Kamin. "It’s just banal, which Burnham buildings never are."
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Anybody can see this is a horrible addition. Imagine if building on what's there where the norm, how much more pleasant the final design might be. The building was even designed as a base to a larger tower. I guess we might call that sustainable design. How do you screw this up?
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