ARCH 358 Excursion to METROPOLIS PhD Emre Altürk
In this course, a different metropolis is selected and studied everysemester and then visited at the end of the semester. Transformations in the built and the cultural landscape of the selected city are studied in a historical perspective and in relation to its various contexts. The modern period of the city, the urban transformations triggered by industrialization and the influx of masses are examined in more detail. Specific urban forms and architectural types are discussed through the ordinary building stock as well as the architectural highlights. The course comprises lectures by the instructor, screenings, group discussions on the assigned readings, and student presentations. The selected city for this semester is Chicago. Week 1 Introduction Week 2 URBAN MASS or how there have never been so many people and so much stuff Week 3 PIG CITY or the logic of capitalist modernization Week 4 TRAIN FEVER or the spatial consequences of modern transport infrastrcuture Week 5 FIRE Chicago’s urban and architectural scene immediately before and after the great of 1871. Week 6 guest lecturer Emrah Altınok PLAN of Chicago Week 7 “Chicago School of Architecture” and the invention of the SKYSCRAPER Week 8 guest lecturer Burcu Kütükçüoğlu FRANK LLYOD WRIGHT Praire School, Broadacre Week 9 Roaring 20s, Art Deco, Century Progress STREAMLINE Week 10 MIES Mid-century modernism Week 11 EXODUS Chicago in the second half of the 20th century
3
Plan of Chicago Plan of Chicago Plan of street and boulevard system
Reflection of the progress made by the Industrial Revolution in Europe in geography covering America, the transportation opportunities and economic developments in the USA have been mutually feeding each other. As a result of the process, the city of Chicago has become the city with the longest railway network in America. The uncontrollable growth of Chicago has transformed its social qualities. The settlements of immigrants who came to work and live in better conditions were quite unhealthy in many respects, and these settlements, which were built very quickly, were also the source of new problems. Many researchers had to work and produce solutions to solve these problems. With these features, Chicago is in the interest of researchers and scientists from many disciplines.
Plan of Chicago View looking west over city
Civic Centre Plaza
A new plan proposal was requested as a solution to these and this plan drawn by Daniel Burnham, which started out by saying “no little plans” more than 100 years ago, has survived to the present day. He matched the balance and harmony of neoclassical and Baroque architecture with the aesthetics of Chicago’s buildings and the city center. To help not only improve the look of the city but also help flow the vehicle and pedestrian traffic, the City Beautiful concept focused on combining a city center, parks, and large boulevards. In addition to making cities more livable and orderly, the City Beautiful movement was to shape the American urban landscape as it was in Europe, designed primarily in Beaux-Arts aesthetics. Within the framework of this movement, many American cities, primarily Washington DC, Cleveland, and Chicago, were redesigned. We can observe many similarities in these cities. The Civic Center planned but not built in Chicago, and Capitol in Washington DC have similar monumentality. Capitol is intertwined with the city’s most important public space, the National Mall. Civic Plaza, which is planned to be built in front of Civic Center, was expected to carry a similar function. Frank Lloyd Wright wanted to avoid borrowing and direct reproduction of European design and instead of inventing a new and true American style. Broadacre City has emerged with this idea. The Burnham plan had 6 important principles. These are the principles that still apply today. Burnham’s plan has been in effect for over a hundred years, as opposed to the twenty or thirty-year plans made these days. The reason for this is that instead of producing daily solutions, certain principles are determined and this plan is drawn with them. Within the framework of the established strategies, the expansion of the city has helped the city not to lose its established texture and to grow without spoiling until today.
4
City Beautiful Movement Aerial view of the grounds and buildings of the World’s Columbian Exposition
Daniel Burnham made great studies on the problems of urban planning and how to overcome these problems and these works were later called the “City Beautiful” movement. The main philosophy of the City Beautiful movement was that the form would be followed by functionality. In other words, it was the principle that an attractive city is more functional than an unattractive city. As Burnham said, beauty came from municipal art, gorgeous parks, elaborately designed buildings, wide streets and plazas decorated with sculptures. Although these small touches to the cities did not eliminate social problems directly, they would help produce solutions according to Burnham and enrich the urban area. Burnham City Beautiful first applied its principles in World’s Columbian Exposition, which was organized in Chicago in 1893.
McMillian Plan, Washington DC
Burnham’s dream city was an urban utopia with a massive public transport network, quiet with gigantic sculptures, and could serve an average of 27 million tourists. It involved the application of the compact structure of European cities to the industrial skeleton of American cities. It was believed that the urban texture planned to take place in the world stage of American cities without art, would increase the quality of life of the local people. Burnham’s utopian work will inspire Athens Charter, which was later organized by the CIAM organization, and counter-currents will be created against this dream. About 20 years after the Chicago World Fair, Le Corbusier, who wants to make a “modern” make-up to Paris, will take his first steps into the urban design scene, although the Radiant City project has not been accepted.
A proposed civic centre for Vancouver (part of the Bartholomew Plan, 1928)
5
Chicago School of Architecture and the invention of the William Le Baron Jenney, Leiter Building I
Skyscraper
The city of Chicago, which was destroyed as a result of a big fire, was rebuilt. The Chicago School, where the forged and cast iron was first used in architecture, has a great technological and commercial place in the history of architecture. It played a leading role not only in Chicago’s multi-story building construction that reflects modern technology and program but also with social models and reform ideas that reorganize modern society. The story of the Chicago School skyscrapers cannot be separated from the story of general contracting companies that take full responsibility for the work and carry out the construction with their firm or distribute certain parts to subcontractors. It can be said that the buildings built in Chicago during this period were not just a single style, so it was more correct to call this period Commercial Style.
Burnham & Root, Monadnock Building, 1891.
We can see the Chicago School as the herald of the modern movement twenty-thirty years earlier with architecture. The expertise required by buildings above a certain height, cost and complexity have also transformed the practice of architecture, leading to the emergence of architectural partnership models and large firms far beyond the designer architect working with himself and a few assistants. In this period when building components were no longer built on-site but were selected from commercial building catalogs, every part of the construction process became a separate industry independent of the construction site, while the architect became the central expert, who coordinated them within the framework of design. Some typical features of the Chicago School buildings include the steel skeleton bearing system, masonry stone cladding, large glass windows, and distinctive exterior design. The buildings resembling ancient Greek columns had three different parts in terms of appearance. The parts sitting on the ground prevented people from losing the scale at street level. The Home Insurance Building, designed by William Le Baron Jenney in 1884, is considered the world’s first skyscraper. It also gained importance as the first step for the modern architecture of Chicago after the big fire. This structure is the first structure where a steel frame was used as the carrier element. This 10-story skyscraper is 55 meters high. Some typical features of the Chicago School buildings include the steel skeleton bearing system, masonry stone cladding, large glass windows, and distinctive exterior design. The buildings resembling ancient Greek columns had three different parts in terms of appearance. The parts sitting on the ground prevented people from losing the scale at street level.
6
The Home Insurance Building, designed by William Le Baron Jenney in 1884, is considered the world’s first skyscraper. It also gained importance as the first step for the modern architecture of Chicago after the big fire. This structure is the first structure where a steel frame was used as the carrier element. This 10-story skyscraper is 55 meters high.
Adler & Sullivan, Chicago Stock Exchange, 1894
William Le Baron Jenney, Daniel Burnham, John W. Root, Louis Sullivan, and Dankmar Adler are among the prominent architects of this period. Besides, Louis Sullivan argues that America should have its style. From the Sullivan forms follow function statement, we understand that neoclassical ready forms should not be used in which the purpose of the building should be determined. Sullivan’s approach to architecture has inspired Wright’s organic architecture. Chicago was undoubtedly a modern metropolis where many firsts emerged and became widespread: the first steel skeleton construction, the first professional efforts, the first large-scale architectural offices. On the other hand, this modernity is modernity that must be fully understood in its own time and its own cultural, social and political conditions. The most progressive and creative solutions of the Chicago School are not perceived as a new modern movement that breaks all the connections with the past, and this new technology and construction systems are tried to be created with classical aesthetic understandings at every opportunity by applying them as a practice arising from the need. How important and pioneering role Chicago has in the profession and rationalization of architectural practice in architecture in terms of space, construction and aesthetics. We can see that many early modern Chicago structures that have passed into history cannot be understood in the same way from the historical, social, economic and cultural processes that reveal them.
Adler & Sullivan, Auditorium, Longtitutal Section
7
Frank Lloyd Wright Robie House
Praire School, Broadacre
Frank Lloyd Wright often spent time with “Froebel Blocks” in his childhood because of his mother, which can be interpreted as early foundations of compositional masterpieces in his architectural character. While designing the structures of Frank Lloyd Wright, he made designs for the table, chair and door handles with the idea of “gesamtkunstwerk”. We can associate Wright’s behavior with the Arts & Crafts movement. While trying to establish a new language with machine aesthetics by seeing the alienation of the modern, we see that this is not possible and it is forcing. Frank W. Thomas House, Oak Park
The Larkin Administration Building
Like Le Corbusier and Loos, Wright was against tabula rasa. Therefore, traditional Prairie Houses space organization, material and structure systems became the founding factor that disciplines its architecture. The mass is determined according to the function of the interior and the façade revealed itself. Horizontal lines usually dominate their masses. Wright also emphasized that the structure’s grids, consisting of columns and beams, are based on the nature of the material. The cross-shaped form of Prairie Houses is a design that starts with the fire put in the center and is shaped according to the wooden opening. It is also worth noting that it creates a layout on the front and a picturesque appearance on the back. While Wright was drawing a T-plan for better lighting, his offices were designed to receive light from an enclosed roof atrium, on the contrary. The image of a man who has devoted his life to his work is like a place of worship. “Ho-o-ken Temple”, which was established at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1895, deeply influencesh Frank Lloyd Wright with the structural lightness and prolonged inviting fringes of Japanese architecture. It is possible to see these traces in the works of Wright who was in Japan for a while. With the idea of “flowing spaces”, the d esire to create spaces that flow together can be perceived very clearly.
Broadacre City
Wright has also worked on urbanism. He thought cars would liberate people. He would say that the new city produced by mechanization needs the touch of the artist. As a result of this idea, the Broadacre City project emerged. It is possible to see the effects of Garden City in this city plan. Sedad Hakkı Eldem “Turkish House” and Frank Lloyd Wright “Prairie Houses” similarities are not overlooked as two architects working in two completely different geographies. In fact, they were both building a new architectural character of their nation. Perhaps what both led to the same conclusion was that they both thought about residential architecture, tried to reinvent the tradition, believed in the correctness of their voices rather than hearing different voices.
8
Johnson Wax Administration Building Frank Llyod Wright
Great Workroom
Johnson Wax Headquarters was constructed from 1936 to 1939. Its distinctive “lily pad” columns and other innovations revived Wright’s career at a point when he was losing influence.This structure can be defined as a revolution point for it is for open office. In a break with Wright’s earlier Prairie School structures, the building features many curvilinear forms and subsequently required over 200 different curved “Cherokee red” bricks to create the sweeping curves of the interior and exterior. All of the furniture, manufactured by Steelcase, was designed for the building by Wright and it mirrored many of the building’s unique design features. Throughout the “Great Workroom,” a series of the thin, white dendriform columns rise to spread out at the top, forming a ceiling, the spaces in between the circles are set with skylights made of Pyrex glass tubing. At the corners, where the walls usually meet the ceiling, the glass tubes continue up, over and connect to the skylights creating a clerestory effect and letting in a pleasant soft light. The construction of the Johnson Wax building created controversies for the architect. In the Great Workroom, the dendriform columns are 23 cm in diameter at the bottom and 18 feet 550 cm in diameter at the top, on a wide, round platform that Wright termed the “lily pad.” This difference in diameter between the bottom and top of the column did not accord with building codes at the time; they deemed the pillar’s dimensions too slender at the base to support the weight. Building inspectors required that a test column be built and loaded with twelve tons of material. The test column, once it was built, was not only tough enough to support the requested weight but Wright insisted that it be loaded with fivefold the weight. It took sixty tons of materials before the “calyx,” the part of the column that meets the lily pad, cracked. After this demonstration, a vindicated Wright was given his building permit.
Nearly 200 special brick shapes were created to achieve the curves Wright envisioned
Lily pad columns held ten times the required load in a structural test, construction was approved
Additionally, it was very difficult to properly seal the glass tubing of the clerestories and roof, thus causing leaks. This problem was not solved until the company replaced the top layers of tubes with skylights of angled sheets of fiberglass and specially molded sheets of Plexiglas with painted dark lines to resemble in a ‘trompe l’oeil’ the original joints when viewed from the ground. And finally, Wright’s chair design for Johnson Wax originally had only three legs, supposedly to encourage better posture (because one would have to keep both feet on the ground at all times to sit in it). However, the chair design proved too unstable, tipping very easily. Herbert Johnson, needing a new chair design, purportedly asked Wright to sit in one of the three-legged chairs and, after Wright fell from the chair, the architect agreed to design new chairs for Johnson Wax with four legs; these chairs, and the other office furniture designed by Wright, are still in use to this day.
9
Roaring 20s, Art Deco, Century of Progress
Streamline
Wrigley Building
The 1920s are an important decade for America’s cultural and economic order. With the economy strengthening after the world war, it gains a great production power. There is an increasing consumption to this extent. The ways in which leisure time is used varies. With the economic crisis at the end of this decade, this period is called Roaring 20s. Jazz is also called age. A trend art deco that gets stronger with different variations in almost all areas of visual culture. Streamline is also known as modern. While defining the structures of the period, adjectives such as dizzy, enthusiastic, dazzling, full of life were used. In this period, it is a period when alcohol production and consumption, also called prohibition, is prohibited. It is a period when mafia is on the rise with the illegal production of alcohol. Thus, mafiatic names like Al Capone appear. Howard van Doren Shaw One of the most well-known and well-known architects of the period. Although he adopted the views of Prairie School early in his career, this has changed over time. It is possible to observe historical traces in their structures in general. Among the architects who use these kinds of historical features, perhaps he is one of the architects who have done the closest works to Chicago School principles. Tribune Tower
David Adler One of the most famous architects of his time. Most of the houses that he built are based on historical styles. It can also be considered as a mixture of historical styles. It has produced many structures. There are very large residences produced for the rich. Some of these houses are beyond the scale of the housing we know. Wrigley Building Graham, Anderson. Probst & White, 1924 It is possible to evaluate the structure in two parts. Biris is the main body part of the main office spaces. On the top of this blocka is the tower part loaded with more historical references to make the building more prestigious. For this period, it is a tower that we see more in Chicago. It is located on a commercial band defined as The Magnificent Mile with its Tribune Tower structure. Tribune Tower John M. Howells and Raymond Hood, 1925 Together with Wrigley Building, they look like a door at the very beginning of The Magnificent Mile. The ground and first floor of the building have a significant neo-gothic layout. Similarly, the upper part of the building, which will have an important place in the silhouette of the city, has a neo-gothic layout.
10
The parts that will make up the office part consist of simplified repeating floors. It resembles a cathedral in medieval Europe. There are flying buttresses.
Merchandise Mart
Powhatan Apartments Robert de Golyer and Charles Morgan, 1922 A multi-storey residential building. It is possible to say that it is far from the historical language that dominates the period. We do not come across any historical references. Along with the verticality emphasis, we can say that it is quite close to the art deco style. 1260 & 1301 N Astor St Philip Maher, 1928 It is a completely modern structure with no historical quotes. We can see the feeling of verticality with the windows of the building. The facade of the building is very massive. There are many retreats as you go up. Indiana made the whole structure almost monochrome with limestone.
Chicago Board of Trade
Carbide & Carbon Building Daniel Burnham Jr. Hubert Burnham, 1929 An exceptional structure in terms of material. It has classical art deco features in terms of mass. These structures are also related to the belief in the economic situation of the period. It has ornaments that reflect the spirit of the period. Merchandise Mart Graham, Anderson, Probst & White, 1930 The largest structure of the period and art deco style in Chicago. The largest building in the world at the time of its construction has a construction area of ​​400,000 square meters. Until 2008, there was even a special postal code for the building. A sense of verticality is created with the tower in the corners and the center. Field Building Graham, Anderson, Probst & White, 1931 It is a very large building covering several plots. One of these parcels was the Home Insurance Building, also known as the first skyscraper. It has 45 floors and a height of about 160 meters. It has the general expression of the American skyscrapers of the period. Chicago Board of Trade Holabird & Root, 1930 It is one of the most iconic art deco structures of Chicago. It contains many things with art deco. The plentiful gray Indiana limestone piers, dark windows and spandrels so recessed they practically disappear work together to give the building a striking vertical emphasis.
11
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Seagram Building
Mies in Windy City
Seagram Building 1958 It has a typical neutral plan. It has a geometric discipline, unlike its business in Germany now. Indoor and outdoor, like other Mies’ businesses, it has a smooth front. To provide the technical infrastructure and structure as the technology that establishes the expression of the structure depends on the development of the Chicago School. The walls are starting to become completely material-free. Lake Shore Drive Apartments 860-880 1951
Farnsworth House
860-880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments
Frank Lloyd Wright demolished box architecture with Distraction of the Box. Here, he has perfection. These houses are not a home that protects, hides and makes them feel safe: they are always under threat. Just like the modern individual himself. On the other hand, anonymous lives are free, the city that looks out of glass is brilliant and exciting, the modern apartment is a symbol of transience, movement, lightness. Even in the conventional residence, the space is fluent, of course, adding the relationship between the facade and interior and exterior spaces. Deutscher Werkbund exhibition Stuttgart Siedlung am Weissenhof has a lot of flexibility and we can see its traces in the housing plans. Plus-shaped columns make the structure independent from each other and surfaces and construction are separated from each other. It is one of the requirements of a clear construction free plan. This necessity is separated from the facade and the structure. The fact that the wall and column do not match each other in Barcelona Pavilion may indicate that it is similar to De Stilj. Farnsworth House 1945 Unlike the Barcelona Pavilion, the column and roof held each other. Gesamtkunstwerk or part of the Total Work of Art movement. The problem with Clear Span and setting up the space is completely independent from the scale and the program becomes an obsession. IIT Crown Hall 1956 Mies van der Rohe is a masterpiece that shows why architecture is described as both modern and classic. The glass box, which houses the studio spaces of IIT Crown Hall, is hung on four giant beams on the roof. The raised entrance platform in the middle of the symmetrical facade and the low steps to this platform strengthen the feelings of hanging, lightness and transparency in this air.
12
All services, offices, toilets such as toilets were taken to the basement and a clear span was created inside the glass box, which was emptied.
The Chicago Federal Center designed by Mies van der Rohe, includes the Kluczynski Federal Building, at right
Neue Nationalgalerie 1968 It has a floating giant roof. The platform goes to cartesian gray with the platform, this time the platform is provided with jeans. For Mies, architecture is turning the desire of time into space. If we say that IIT is an improved version of Crown Hall, we would not be wrong. Federal Center 1974 Scales that were not seen in The Loop before came together high rise-plaza-clearspan and pavilion. Although a building should have its own character, a universal character may be minimal changes to solve that problem. It does not occupy the void, it installs its wall and provides the void. The Flamingo statue is the critical element that transforms the gap between the height of two buildings and the lowness of the third and the gap between the three Mies faรงade.
S. R. Crown Hall
13
Exodus Inland Steel Building
Chicago in the second half of the 20th Century Inland Steel Building SOM, 1957 When talking about the skyscrapers of Mid-Century company modernism, we are most confident to be sleek. In previous periods, adjectives like dazzling - dazzling - enthusiastic - full of life were often used for skyscrapers. A mass shaped by its function. Its structural features are readable on the front. Holabird & Roche’s plans have a slightly updated status. 19-story office tower and a 25-story service tower. an office building where you can see anywhere in the world can call this reason, International Style. The language of the building and the language of the interior are largely in continuity. Exxon Building Wallace Harrison New York , 1972 It is lean but it is one of the buildings that have become very monotonous in the city. These structures cover the American city centers. They meet the office needs that arise with the increasing commercial and financial sectors with such structures.
John Hancock Center
Brunswick Building SOM (Myron Goldsmith, Bruce Graham, and Fazlur Khan.) , 1965 One of the important structures that can be considered as an early period. Engineers and architects working that make it so special. These names take place in many important structures of the period. A new structure system has been established in which the kernel has been revealed. Carriers have been taken into the wall. Tube-within-a-tube structural system. Rigid, hollow tubes make up the core and perimeter, bracing the building and allowing column-free interiors. Variations of this system would later give rise to the John Hancock Center and Sears Tower. Widely spaced columns at the building’s base create a large, open space, which connects the building to the streetscape and gestures toward the Chicago Civic Center’s open plaza across the street. John Hancock Center SOM, 1968 World’s first mixed-use tower, locally as “Big John“. 97 stories efficient. Initially gave rise to the idea of building a 70-story apartment tower and a 45-story office tower. But the two towers would have occupied most of the site and would have impaired each other’s privacy and daylight conditions. Moreover, the lower-level apartments would have suffered from noise nuisance from the street. It was therefore decided to construct a single tower where the offices would be on the lower floors and the apartments on the higher levels.
14
The tower’s tapered shape was chosen in order to match the different floor space requirements that decrease from bottom to top. About 145 kg of steel per square meter. With the cross support elements of the structure, it becomes more resistant to winds. This building is one of the most ironic features of the building. It is an architecturally important structure not only in appearance but also in the program and structure it contains.
Willis Towers Watson took over naming rights to the building in 2009
Onterie Center SOM, 1986 60 storey Concrete structure less columns due to trusses on the façade concrete infill panels which act together to form a truss tube. There are no steel beams behind them. Completed after khan’s death in 1982. Sears Tower SOM, 1973 One of the most important buildings in Chicago. 110 floors and about 442 meters. It is the tallest building in the world at the time of its construction and it has been preserved for 25 years. The first fifty floors of the building rise as a full frame, and then thinning begins. These thinning facilitates the building in terms of wind and zoning laws. Lake Point Tower John Heinrich, 1968
Lake Point Tower
It is located in one of the most important arteries in the center of the city. This feature ensures that this structure remains an exception. The structure is similar to Glass Skyscraper, which Mies has made before. There was a plan with 3 arms, which is similar to Price Tower designed by Frank Llyod Wright. River City Bertrand Goldberg, 1986 Originally envisioned a high-density site of mixed-use skyscrapers 72-stories tall, with the towers uniquely linked in “triads”, connected by skybridges and containing everything from schools to shopping centers. Bending to political pressure about density and unable to get the zoning variance needed to proceed, the design was modified extensively over a ten-year planning period and resulted in a “snake” like structure (River City II), described by Goldberg as unfolding the towers and laid them on their end.
15
Crown Hall Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, 1956 IIT McCormick Tribune Campus Ceter
Onterie Center
The glassbox, which depicts the studio spaces of the Faculty of Architecture, which shows that Mies architecture is both new and ancient, considered modern and classic, is hung on four giant beams on the roof. The elevated entrance platform of the symmetrical facade and the low steps to this platform strengthen this feeling of hanging, lightness and transparency in the air. Functions such as all services, offices, toilets, workshops are taken into the basement and form the pure space emptied inside the glass box above. The same concept will be repeated in Neue Nationalgallerie, a work he will make in Berlin about a decade later. IIT McCormick Tribune Campus Center OMA, 2003 The L, Chicago’s elevated train line, divides the campus both physically and psychologically by separating the residential area from the academic buildings. In an attempt to rejuvenate the school and join the two parts of the campus, an international competition was held in 1998 to build a campus center explosion of color and material. Koolhaas’ original design imagined the incorporation of the commons building into the Campus Center. The proposal program envisaged a multi-storey structure that lifted the main places on the train line. It challenges the sterile fiction that carefully separates every element of modernism. It is shaped not with prestigious and flamboyant materials, but with ordinary industrial products and details that we are accustomed to using on top. The difference with the outside world is getting faded. Chicago Seven Emulating the name of those symbolized in anti-Vietnam war demonstrations. One Hundred Years of Architecture in Chicago is about to be shown in 1976 at the Museum of Contemporary Art. They do not have a group homogeneity, they try to make room for themselves on the architectural agenda, the replicas of the Mies buildings and the glass box are anti-modernism. Chicago Seven architects were looking for new forms, a semantic content and historical references in their buildings.
Jay Pritzker Pavilion
Jay Pritzker Pavilion Frank Gehry, 2000 Central Chicago, consisting of roads, building islands and tall buildings. The public space, which could not make room for itself between the buildings and roads, is established in a filling area left between the lake and the grid to compensate for the possibility of encounter and idleness. Millenium Park’s focus, designed by Frank Gehry, is a gigantic and well-equipped concert stage and the huge grass amphitheater in front of it. Locals and foreigners take their places to listen to concerts in the evenings. They sit where they find. Music was listening and lying on the grass.
16
Millenium Park Millenium Park
Following Burnham’s ideology, “Make No Little Plans”, Chicago became one of the architecture and public art capitals of the world, where people from all around the world share. Reinvested urban space as a part of Burnham’s lakefront Grant Park of the 20th century is building a bridge between the past and the future of Chicago’s downtown under the name of Millennium Park. The theme and the location were ready to represent the new century. Besides the design of the park, it represents global art in the postindustrial age that avoids modernism’s inclination to emphasize the artist’s self-expression. The artists, on the other hand, through the use of design elements like scale and color invite the inhabitants to react to their pieces. Even though the art encourages the individual expressionism of the modern movement, the observers interprets the art. Located in the heart of downtown Chicago, Millennium Park acts a central public space accessible by numerous modes of public transit. The park is serviced by several major bus lines through the city and is also accessible by the city’s famous L rail lines as well as the heavy rail that extends to the Chicago suburbs. The McDonald’s Cycle Center has 300 monitored bike parking spaces, lockers, and showers that provide an incentive for bicycle commuters. New bike-share stations scattered in and around the park also add options for transportation.
Millenium Park
17
Plazas as Interaction Area The Crown Fountain
The Cown Fountain Jaume Plansa, Millenium Park,2004 The Crown Fountain as “The pool and the towers not only encourage pedestrians to cross the plaza and “walk on water”, but transform the fountain into a downtown piazza and meeting point.” I assume it cannot be explained better why it attracts many people at a time. The inspiration of the artist, Jaume Plensa, is the people of Chicago. The fountain has been taking the attention with its scale, gargoyles, and the pool since the first day of the opening of the Millennium Park. While scale fights against with the other art pieces in the Park to symbolize the 21st century’s Park, the faces referencing to the traditional use of gargoyles in fountains. This combination of past and future is already invites people to discover what this sculpture is besides its natural element, water. Even though the artist hasn’t mentioned anything about the choice of such tall towers, it stands out for another way of building past-future bridge of urban form. In another, its physical form and scale are representatives of a traditional fountain model in the shape of a skyscraper.
Cloud Gate
Cloud Gate The Bean Anish Kapoor, Millenium Park, 2006 Anish Kapoor, designer of the Cloud Gate, is probably one of the most humanistic artists who have an art craft in Millennium Park. The elliptical, mammoth piece of public art is one of the largest outdoor sculptures in the world. The visual bridge it builds between the earth and the sky is what interest people besides the excitement of discovering their funny faces on its concave shape. In addition, the opening along the underside invites observers to interpret with the object; walk under and around the massive object. Kapoor is differentiated for his paradoxical sculptures that simultaneously explore physical and psychological themes.
Flamingo
Flamingo Alexander Calder, Federal Plaza, 1974 One of the exceptional square spaces is The Loop. It is due to an exceptional zoning application, not a plan. The second-generation, skyscraper, 42-storey skyscraper designed by Mies leans aside the building island. Moreover, it reinforces the emphasis by building another 30-storey skyscraper across the street. An exception is the Mies structure that is settled in the remaining space of the island. The post office as a single-storey total venue of a kind that cannot be found in the center of Chicago. The critical element that transformed the gap between the three Mies fronts, the first two of which are the height, and the third with its lowness, is the sculpture of Alexander Calder. It is positioned by participating in the scale game. Steel Flamingo, which shrinks next to the offices and grows near the post office, dancing. It is the only space center that resembles the squares of ancient cities.
18
Chicago Seven Larry Booth, Tom Beeby, Rhona Hoffman, Stanley Tigerman, Jeff Osborne, Helmut Jahn, Robert Stern, James Nagle,
The Chicago Seven was a first-generation postmodern group of architects in Chicago. The original Seven were Stanley Tigerman, Larry Booth, Stuart Cohen, Ben Weese, James Ingo Freed, Tom Beeby and James L. Nagle. In 1976, a group of Chicago architects joined forces to start a postmodern group in protest of a Miesian architectural movement taking over Chicago. Believing an art exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art, One Hundred Years of Architecture in Chicago, distorted reality because of the strong emphasis on Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the architects began planning their own exhibits and shows. This proved to be the impetus for their national recognition. The Exquisite Corpse exhibition showcased the architects’ abandonment of modernist rules and resulted in the production of variations of Chicago townhomes. Rebelling against the oppressive institutionalized predominance of the doctrine of modernism, as represented by the followers of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the Chicago Seven architects were looking for new forms, a semantic content and historical references in their buildings. Nagle commented on the state of affairs that prompted the intervention of the Chicago Seven: “It wasn’t Mies that got boring. It was the copiers that got boring,... You got off an airplane in the 1970s, and you didn’t know where you were.” The Seven brought their ideas to a broader audience through their teaching, exhibitions and symposia.
19
The Loop The Loop
The Loop, 35-block area of downtown Chicago, Illinois, U.S. The name probably derives from a cable-car line that circled the city’s central business district in the 1880s, though the term’s use became most common following the completion in 1897 of the Chicago Union Elevated Railway , which forms a loop around the area. The Loop is bounded by Lake Street (north), Wabash Avenue (east), Van Buren Street (south), and Wells Street (west). The term Loop is now sometimes used to refer to downtown Chicago generally, particularly the area enclosed by the Chicago River, Michigan Avenue, and Congress Parkway.
Elevated train line in the Loop
The Loop includes a portion of State Street, a major shopping district with several large department stores, and LaSalle Street, the location of several large financial institutions, including the Chicago Stock Exchange, the Chicago Board of Trade, and the Chicago Board Options Exchange . The Loop was the site of the Home Insurance Company Building, generally considered to be the first metal-frame building and, at 10 stories, the world’s first skyscraper. Several other buildings constructed during the late 19th and early 20th centuries also introduced innovative techniques, including those by Daniel Burnham, William Holabird, William Le Baron Jenney, and John Wellborn Root. In the second half of the 20th century, the Loop’s architecture became diversified with new International style, Modernist, and postmodern structures. Several steel high-rise buildings were constructed. Just west of the Loop proper is the Willis Tower, which at 1,450 feet is among the world’s tallest buildings. The Loop also contains famed outdoor works by artists such as Alexander Calder, Marc Chagall, Joan Miró, and Pablo Picasso. Several colleges and universities operate campuses in and around the Loop.
20
References Atlasofplaces.com. 2020. Johnson Wax Headquarters By Frank Lloyd Wright (613AR) — Atlas Of Places [online] Available at: <https://www.atlasofplaces.com/architecture/johnson-wax-headquarters/>
Scjohnson.com. 2020. [online] Available at: <https://www.scjohnson.com/en/a-family-company/architecture-and-tours/frank-lloyd-wright/designed-to-inspire-sc-johnsons-frank-lloyd-wright-designed-administration-building>
American Planning Association. 2020. Millennium Park: Chicago, Illinois. [online] Available at: <https://www.planning.org/greatplaces/spaces/2015/millenniumpark.htm>
Chicago.gov. 2020. Millennium Park History. [online] Available at: <https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/dca/supp_info/millennium_park_history.html>
CROWN FOUNTAIN, 2., 2020. CROWN FOUNTAIN, 2004. [online] Jaumeplensa.com. Available at: <https://jaumeplensa.com/works-and-projects/public-space/the-crown-fountain-2004>
Mastropieri, K., 2020. A Brief History Of Chicago’s Flamingo. [online] Culture Trip. Available at: <https://theculturetrip.com/north-america/usa/illinois/articles/a-brief-history-of-chicagos-flamingo/>
Anishkapoor.com. 2020. Cloud Gate. [online] Available at: <http://anishkapoor.com/110/cloud-gate-2>
Chicago Architecture Center - CAC. 2020. William Le Baron Jenney. [online] Available at: <http://www.architecture.org/learn/resources/architecture-dictionary/entry/william-le-baron-jenney/>
SAH ARCHIPEDIA. 2020. Monadnock Building. [online] Available at: <https://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/IL-01-031-0059>
Burnhamplan100.lib.uchicago.edu. 2020. Home Page | The Burnham Plan Centennial. [online] Available at: <http://burnhamplan100.lib.uchicago.edu>
Fairfield, J., 2020. The City Beautiful Movement, 1890–1920.
OMA. 2020. IIT Mccormick Tribune Campus Center. [online] Available at: <https://oma.eu/projects/iit-mccormick-tribune-campus-center>
SOM. 2020. 875 North Michigan Avenue (Formerly John Hancock Center). [online] Available at: <https://www.som.com/projects/875_north_michigan_avenue_formerly_john_hancock_center>
SOM. 2020. Inland Steel Building. [online] Available at: <https://www.som.com/projects/inland_steel_building>
The Museum of Modern Art. 2020. Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe. [online] Available at: <https://www.moma.org/artists/7166>
Orรงun Telci June, 2020