Still, meh.  This has me thinking about the top 10 things for an architectural tourist to do in Chicago, and in the hopes of creating a stats-bending, vitriolic, all-in argument, I’ll suggest the following, in no particular order.  Disagree away.

1. Mourn at the wailing wall(s).  The Art Institute has one of the great architectural reliquaries anywhere in the city—or the world.  Stand next to the entry arch from Adler and Sullivan’s Stock Exchange, walk around its surgically excised trading floor, and browse through the fragments of lost buildings in the main stairwell.
2. Have a drink.  The three best architectural bars?  The top of the Hancock Building serves overpriced drinks that amortize out well if you count the view.  Atwood’s, in the first floor of the Reliance Building, is the only bar in town named for a compositionally gifted opium addict.  And the roof of the Wit, if you can stand the crowd and the prices, has the best view of the neighborhood skyscrapers—including a loomingly intimate one of Giaver and Dinkelberg’s 1926 Jeweler’s Building.
3. Loiter.  A handful of great historic interiors are semi-open to the public.  The Rookery tolerates architectural gawkers who want to see the layering of Frank Lloyd Wright’s lobby and John Root’s courtyard.  If you stand in line to send a postcard, do it at Mies’ Post Office in the Federal Center.  Wander through the old Chicago Library on Michigan, which is now the Chicago Cultural Center but still maintains the nicely pretentious 1896 interiors—including the historical curiosity of the Grand Army of the Republic Hall.
4. Visit some architects.  Graceland Cemetery is full of them.  Burnham, Mies, Fazlur Khan, and Louis Sullivan are easy to find.  William Le Baron Jenney is a bit off the beaten path.  And for bonus points?  Find Peirce Anderson, of Graham, Anderson, Probst, and White.  (Hint: you can see him from the El).
5. Take the train.  Ride the Loop El and get off at each platform.  Every single downtown stop gives you a good angle on at least a couple of historic buildings.  Wabash Ave. is particularly rich, and the Library stop gives you a view up Dearborn that’s unparalleled.
6. Take a boat.  The Chicago Architecture Foundation’s River Tour is designed for laypersons, but it offers the best possible views of the city.  Aqua is particularly good from the low angle.  Of course, if your brother-in-law has a bass boat, you can make your own River Tour.
7. Take a walk.  The CAF Walking Tours are led by inspiring docents who know their stuff.  But even a walk down Michigan Avenue and back up Dearborn and State Street will tell you more about 19^th and early 20^th century commercial architecture than any book out there (yet).
8. Go South.  The University of Chicago was largely designed by Henry Ives Cobb to replicate the feeling of eastern colleges.  IIT was largely designed by Mies van der Rohe to not replicate anything.  You can see them both on the same bus line, throw in the Robie House and the best used bookstores in town, and end up catching that ballgame at Comiskey after you see IIT.
9. See Burnham’s best design.  The Reliance?  The Railway Exchange?  The Rookery?  Nope.  Chicago’s lakefront.  OK, it wasn’t all him, but he was the major design force behind the amazing jogging path—with a rather nice string of parks attached—that makes up the Chicago shoreline.  From downtown to Bryn Mawr Ave. and back is 14 miles, and you can go a similar distance south and see almost nothing that isn’t beautiful.  Paris, Rome, New York all have a lot of nice things, but this is the one thing that Chicago has that no other city does.
10. Go to church.  Or, really, temple.  I think Unity Temple is—hands down—the best thing Frank Lloyd Wright ever did, and it’s easy to tour.  But to really see it in action you can check out the annual series of concerts that take place within the sanctuary.  Tickets support the building fund, which is obviously needed.

When I was finishing up work here on Louis I. Kahn: Building Art, Building Science, I was fortunate to have an afternoon with Anne Tyng, who was Kahn’s most important collaborator during the 1950s.  Tyng died last week, at age 91, and she was actively lecturing in support of a traveling retrospective of her work over the last couple of months.

For better or worse, many architects know more about Tyng’s personal relationship with Kahn than about her influence on him.  She arrived at his office in the late 1940s after working for Konrad Wachsmann, and she brought what would be a life long interest in geometry, organic form, and structural efficiency with her.  Her tetrahedral competition scheme for an elementary school formed the conceptual basis for the Yale Art Gallery and the City Tower projects, and she was a key influence on the deceptively simple Trenton Bath House, which Kahn regarded as the foundation for later, more sophisticated projects such as the Salk Institute and the Kimbell.  After winning two major grant awards in the early 1960s, she forged her own career as an architect and teacher, continuing her obsessive interest in mathematics and gently reminding subsequent generations of Kahn scholars of her influence and the importance of natural geometry and mathematics to his development.

My afternoon with her was spent talking about Yale.  Fifty years after its construction, she was able to elaborate on its complex tetrahedral structure and its detailing.  She was delighted when I pulled out the time cards from its time in the office, which showed that she had indeed spent nearly twice as much time as anyone else (except, of course, for Kahn himself) working on its development.  And while she complained about being slowed down by age, her mind was ferociously sharp.  It was easy to see what Kahn had seen in her as an architect and as a partner, and the afternoon was–by far–one of the most rewarding moments on that project.

Not available in the U.S., at least not yet, but if you want to get your recommended daily allowance of causation and architecture en francais, you can find it on nouveautes-editeurs.bnf.fr.

Via the Architect’s Newsletter, here’s a provocative take on facade restoration…

Gensler is re-habbing a 1913 building at 618 South Michigan Ave. for Columbia College.  The original building, by William Zimmerman, had a fairly standard-issue expressed frame facade with tripartite windows and a robust (if somewhat clunky) program of classical ornament.  By 1913, this was practically the Chicago commercial vernacular, and it was being eclipsed rapidly by heavier stone facades.

Apparently the existing fabric is still more or less intact, but the facade got the blue-glass and metal mullion treatment in the 1950s.  As part of the renovation, Gensler has proposed a new glass curtain wall with the original elevation etched into the glass surface, which will show a ghostly image of Zimmerman’s original.  Gensler’s project architect (Elva Rubio, who gave a fantastic lecture at ISU a couple of years ago) came right out and said that the design team felt some pressure from Krueck & Sexton’s Spertus Institute next door, and that this was as bold a statement as the budget allowed.

It raises some interesting questions, of course.  First, Zimmerman’s facade was hardly missed–a classic case of “historic” without really being “historical.”  On the one hand, a graphic treatment of, say, some Sullivania would be downright insulting, so maybe it’s proper to deploy this strategy on a facade with little real historic baggage.  On the other, though, part of the richness of the old expressed frames is, surely, the depth of the skin, and the resulting heavy shadow lines and articulation between vertical and horizontal elements, which obviously get eliminated with this approach.

Still, almost any nod to the history of Chicago’s commercial blocks is welcome, and while a whole row of these would probably be numbing, as a one-off this seems kind of fresh.  And it certainly plays off the brilliant glazing details of Spertus while recalling the classic post-1909 Plan facades that still dot this end of Michigan Ave.  And the best part–I think–is that there’s another kind of conservation going on here.  In addition to reproducing Zimmerman’s rather heavy-handed detailing, Gensler have also included etched bird silhouettes that are designed to keep shorebirds from flying in to the glass wall.  That alone makes me want to give it the benefit of the doubt.

Comprehensive Design is a requirement for NAAB accreditation–students have to demonstrate knowledge of building systems such as structures, cladding, services, and circulation through a design project.  We have always taken this a step beyond, asking that students also show they can fluently integrate these systems into coherent, legible buildings in a difficult urban site.  We’ve based versions of this project in Montreal, San Francisco and Seattle, but for the last few years we’ve found that Boston presents a huge challenge to midwesterners accustomed to nice, even city grids.

The program has also varied, from a digital media library to an olympic velodrome  This year we picked a performing arts center focused on jazz and experimental music.  We suggested that the Boston Symphony Orchestra, looking to expand its audience, was asking for a downtown facility that would focus on newer music while attracting a slightly hipper demographic.  Students did research on the music and on the city, and in September we took our annual field trip so they were able to see first hand the context (and, in the process, some rather amazing buildings).

Each studio nominates two teams to compete for the CSI prize, and this year the two teams from Studio Leslie swept first and second place.  I couldn’t be prouder!  On the left is a section model by Xin Wu and Zijie Cao, who took the top prize.  Their scheme created an urban plaza on top of the main performance hall by pushing most of the building underground.  This led to some tough circulation issues, which they handled beautifully, and it gave them the opportunity to create a second public lobby at the top of the resulting green hill.  The program included a lettable office block, and these two used that as a backdrop to the new urban space.  Their theater was also beautiful–an asymmetrical, slightly jagged space whose acoustics they modeled relentlessly.  The result reflected the productive dissonance of the music they imagined would fill the hall.  A really gorgeous, very subtle project.

Alex Michl and Michael VanderPloeg took second place with a scheme that also combined a strong urban space with relentless but thoughtful execution.  Their auditorium became an urban sculpture, perched above an open plaza and fronting the lettable office space in a dramatic, very modeled composition.  The lobby was pulled back into the center of the site, drawing concert-goers in to the middle of the complex and then sending them back out toward the main street in a gently rising set of ramps and stairs.  Perching 1200 people above an open space presents a set of really tough circulation and fire exiting problems, but they handled these deftly and, again, combined acoustic design with a deft translation of music into interior space.

I felt like we had four or five projects that would have been competitive in the final jury this year–a genuinely extraordinary studio.  These two teams represented the hard work of their colleagues well, though, and with a couple of stellar presentations they made all of us proud.  I’ve endured a fair amount of (good-natured?) ribbing from my colleagues for coaching two winners, but all twelve of the nominated teams were competitive and compelling.  CSI does good work, and we’re profoundly grateful that they continue to sponsor this prize program.  Our students are universally hard-working, diligent, and yet modest, so when we get to celebrate their efforts we’re always thankful.

With the founding of the Construction History Society of America and the global scope of the triennial International Congresses on Construction History, the discipline of Construction History is enjoying its broadest audience yet.  To recognize this wider audience and to support the discipline’s growth in North and South America, Construction History is dedicating a forthcoming issue to the Americas.
The Editors of Construction History and Guest Editor Thomas Leslie, seek a broad range of papers that will reflect the breadth of interest and topics currently active.  Papers that explore previously under-studied examples, or that expand the geography of the Americas beyond the United States are particularly welcome.  Topics may include materials, design, management, engineering, or pure construction.  To be considered for inclusion, abstracts should be submitted by 31 January 2012, with accepted papers to be submitted in full by 31 May 2012. Abstracts and papers are to be submitted to bill.addis@cantab.net with a copy to Thomas Leslie at tleslie@iastate.edu. Notes for contributors will be sent on acceptance of the abstract.  Information on the Journal itself is available online at http://www.constructionhistory.co.uk/; the American branch of the Society is also online at http://www.constructionhistorysociety.org/.

Construction History, the journal of the Construction History Society, is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal which is published annually.  It is the leading international journal in its field, and enjoys a high reputation in the diversity, breadth and detail of its coverage. The journal covers all aspects of construction history and recent papers have ranged from buildings in early China to construction processes in the modern USA, and from nineteenth-century British bridge building to the use

of concrete in India and Mexico.  The scope embraces both technical and non-technical aspects of construction history. Among technical issues covered in Construction History are construction materials and components, buildings, infrastructure, building form, construction processes and plant.

Non-technical aspects of construction include funding, organizations, company history, labor, education and historical sources. The journal does not include papers about the refurbishment of existing buildings or engineering structures.

I’m in California today to review projects and give an in-class lecture at Cal Poly.  Structures and pedagogy guru Kevin Dong is my host–we go back a ways having worked on a major project together in the 1990s and then subsequently entered academia at about the same time.  I’ve made periodic trips out here with studios or to lecture, and he’s returned the favor.  We have to organize things according to weather, of course.

And the weather here is almost always spectacular, which made this morning’s run particularly happy.  I headed up into Poly Canyon, which is the traditional site for an annual design-build project.  Some of these are really spectacular, but there’s one that has genuine historic interest.  The rusting hulk spanning that arroyo is the closest that Craig Ellwood came to building his breathtakingly purist Vacation House, which exists mostly in a well-known rendering.  In the early 1970s he led a group of students in building a version of it–less pure, obviously, but still a typically powerful statement of structure and domesticity.  And, of course, a precursor to his Pasadena Art and Design College, which does the same trick on an unbelievably larger scale.

The pavilion isn’t in great shape, and I keep thinking a small awareness and fund-raising campaign wouldn’t be out of order.  This is one of those monuments that is off the radar for most folks, and it’s a moment of late-modernist structural exuberance that deserves a bit of recognition.  The fact that it’s at the top of a half-mile hill also makes it a good spot to take a running break.  Literally breathtaking.

(C) Esto

[Hat tip to Grant N. for alerting me to this...]

The New York Times this week reported on the landmark battle over Manufacturers Hanover Trust, an iconic work by Gordon Bunshaft of SOM from 1954.  One of the first all-glass curtain walls in the city (and still one of the best), the bank was a completely new idea in retail finance, emphasizing transparency, lightness, and clarity instead of monumentality.  Not only was it technically advanced (note the nearly 60′ tall hanging glass curtain wall?), but it represented an important moment in the rise of the middle class.  Banks no longer marketed themselves as impenetrable fortresses–with this building in particular they began to market themselves as open, available, and friendly.  Nothing could more clearly demonstrate the socio-economic changes in the post-war era.

Among the more important elements of the building’s street presence were a pair of escalators that brought customers up from the ground level to the second floor banking hall–a piano nobile that had more to do with views and efficiency than with procession.  Paired with those escalators, the bank’s vault was located in the corner, with the giant steel door plainly visible from the street.  Security was put in quotation marks, framed by the lightweight glass envelope and plainly visible, but only as part of a larger, more open experience.

Those two elements are in the way of plans to convert the ground floor into retail space.  The escalators aren’t well aligned to divide the street level into the desired pair of lettable spaces, the existing doors are in the wrong places, and the vault takes up valuable space.  Current plans call for the escalators to be rotated 90°, for new doors to be installed, and for the vault to be cut well back.  Apparently, though, the vault door will stay, a nod to the building’s original retail banking function.

(C) Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill

The building was landmarked in 1997, and on the face of it these alterations are the sorts of things that most landmark legislation was designed to prevent.  In this case, the buyer canvassed former and current landmarks staff members about the potential alterations before buying the property, according to the Times article.  That’s ruffled some feathers, and understandably so, as it gives the appearance of insider influence.  Whether or not this was the case, it raises a larger issue about whether preservation efforts need to–or should–allow flexibility to ensure that buildings are not only preserved, but that they can continue to be occupied in viable ways.  In this case, while there are clearly problems with transforming a fifty-year old layout into something that works in 2011, its an open question whether such drastic alterations are really the only option–could there be possibilities for a double level store, perhaps?  Personally, I think it would make a rather nice Apple Store.

One thing that’s always intrigued me about the Ezra Stoller image above–note the carefully drawn curtain along the Fifth Avenue facade.  What’s behind it?  One of the building’s columns.  Stoller always seems to have found ways of including very subtle references to the subject’s structure.

UPDATE:  The World Monuments Fund has included the building on its 2012 Watch List…