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Chicago, Illinois
The hardest to learn was the least complicated
We start in the heart of the Loop (or thereabout) at Federal Plaza, where you can see right through to the other side and get reflections of Alexander Calder’s Flamingo at the same time. The buildings here were designed by ChicAIAgo’s favorite son and world famous architect Mies van der Rohe. Technically Mies is German and was the last director of the Bauhaus, but he was lucky enough to get out of Germany and away from all those Nazis and ended up settling here, in a city that still appreciates Modernism.
Mies settled in ChicAIAgo (then just called Chicago) where he became head of the architecture program at IIT (the Illinois Institute of Technology), where he was also allowed to design the campus. At the center of the campus is Crown Hall, the school of architecture, which is considered Mies’ best building by a lot of people not including me- I’m personally partial to the Farnsworth House and the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. That’s not to say that Crown Hall’s glory and fame is not well deserved, and historically its influence on architecture is hard to overemphasize.
One of my friends (Toby- I’m talking about you) attended architecture school at IIT and even had lunch as a freshman with Mies himself. When I asked this unnamed mystery friend about his experience inside Crown Hall, he mentioned a few things that now seem pretty obvious. First off, everything is a hard surface and the acoustics suffered accordingly. And then there was all that glass. Crown Hall was built well before insulated glass became available, meaning that hot days in Chicago were even hotter inside and cold days in Chicago were equally brutal. And Mies wasn’t into shades or curtains, so between the sound, the temperature and the sun glare, life inside Crown Hall was not especially easy for all those architecture students.
The McCormick Tribune Campus Center designed by Rem Koolhaas has sat underneath the Green Line at IIT for just over ten years now, but each time I make a pilgrimage to Bronzeville, it still seems brand new. Here, circular icons reveal a giant ghostly head of Mies himself, where automatic glass doors open up making it look like giant ghostly Mies is eating the students. How can you not love that?
ET 210: Mies and Modernism took us all around the IIT campus and into Crown Hall before ending inside Rem Koolhaas’ campus center building, which, as you would expect from Rem Koolhaas, is extremely clever, extremely well designed and more fun than it should be. Even just a deep dive into a close up of all of those circular icons is more fun than it should be. I mean, what the hell are some of those people supposed to be doing? Sure, I understand two people sharing headphones and three people in a short chorus line, but seriously what is up with the upside down decapitated guy?
Most AIA Conventions that I have attended follow a similar schedule. I will usually arrive on Tuesday or Tuesday night (depending on an almost incalculable number or other factors) and stop by registration if it’s still open. Wednesday is considered a pre-conference day, is usually a lot less busy, and usually has the best tours. Thursday and Friday are busy- the trade show is open, everyone is there, there’s usually keynote presentations and a lot of the same tours are available both days. On Saturday morning, everything is a lot quieter with morning tours available and not that much else. This leaves me most of Saturday and some of Sunday to get out and see something on my own, depending on an almost incalculable number or other factors including flights, rental cars, work pressures and actual things to see. Luckily for me, there is no shortage of things to see in and outside Chicago.
I have been to Racine, Wisconsin before to see this, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Johnson Wax Building, and chose to use my extra time for a return trip. First, Racine isn’t all that far from Chicago, maybe an hour and a half, less from the airport. Second, the main office building (where interior photography is strictly prohibited) is Frank Lloyd Wright’s prettiest interior space (take that, Guggenheim Museum) and any chance to see it is work the trip. And third, and most importantly, the tour now included another brand new area of the campus to see.
After lots of discussion with safety experts, the research tower at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Johnson Wax Building was finally open for public tours. And the wait was worth it. The tower includes double height labs with open mezzanines above wrapped in a beautifully crafted translucent shell. The interiors (where again, interior photography is strictly prohibited) were definitely worth the trip.
The reason the tower was closed for so long (and is still not regularly used or occupied) is that it’s incredibly unsafe. No, the tower is not in danger of collapsing or falling down, instead it is unsafe because it was designed that way. All public spaces require two ways out, and this building only has a single, central, twisting, way to narrow staircase that legally wouldn’t even count as one way out. There is no way to add these staircases without destroying the design, so there’s no way the building can be legally occupied. Even on the tours, groups are kept especially small so that in the event of an emergency, there’s a chance they can actually get out.
So after visiting Marina City, the Aqua Tower, the South Pond Pavilion, Edgar Miller’s studio, the Tribune Tower, the Mansueto Library, the Art Institute, Crown Hall and surviving the research tower at the Johnson Wax Building (where visitors are lucky to get out alive), we’re ending another trip to ChicAIAgo with a nice, panorama overview of the skyline from Lake Michigan. As a CAF (Chicago Architecture Foundation) member, I get annual free tickets to their popular boat rides and, somehow, my schedule allowed for me to actually take one this time. So until next year’s AIA Convention in Atlanta (which may be spelled AIAtlanta or AtlAIAnta or AtlantAIA I guess), I hope you enjoy this one last view of the city and the lake and all those people doing their best to block the view.
