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Chicago, Illinois
Is Chicago, is not Chicago
Once a year, possibly as part of a fiendish attempt to confuse migratory birds, the Chicago River is actually dyed green. The result is mesmerizing enough to attract hundreds of thousands of people wearing glittery, green plastic hats away from the St Patrick's Day Parade route in Grant Park and right to the banks of the Chicago River for yet another opportunity to stare into the green.
At least the Wrigley Building and the Tribune Tower have each other to keep them company. In the coming years, a monstrous SOM Trump tower is scheduled to be built where the Sun Times Building currently stands, on the river just to the left of the Wrigley Tower. The new Trump building is supposed to be a lone five feet shorter than the 100 story Hancock Tower, making these two look completely out of scale.
A (magnificent) mile north of the Tribune Tower, it's just another day at the water tower where nothing visible is dyed green.
A train runs through Rem Koolhaas' new building at the Illinois Institute of Technology, the one time home to Mies van der Rohe. Across the street from Crown Hall itself and right next to a new residential complex designed by Helmut Jahn, the McCormick Campus Center is part of a redefined I.I.T., one that is trying to emerge from the shadows of a man who has been dead for over thirty years, a man who will probably always haunt that part of Chicago.
The glass (and orange spandrel glass) not only reflect the Mies van der Rohe I.I.T. buildings across State Street, they also give you a ghostly glimpse of Mies himself, allowing scared freshmen the chance to regularly walk right through Mies' open mouth.
