Chicago`s design competition for a new ”world class” main library is on track and slowly moving toward its expected climax next summer. Yet there are those who want competition procedures changed before matters proceed any further, lest the city wind up with a second-rate building.
What fears have led to challenging the design contest ground rules? Is Chicago in danger of getting a mediocre new library after 12 years of
”temporarily” housing its books in a warehouse while squabbling over a permanent facility?
So far, most Chicagoans have little notion of what`s going on, for the subject has received minimal exposure at public forums or in the news media. Still, the stakes are high, for the library to be built on urban renewal land at the corner of State and Van Buren streets will cost about $140 million. It will also be an important symbol of commitment to distinguished civic architecture in a city that thinks of itself as the architectural capital of America.
The chronology of the competition goes like this:
Nov. 30-”Design-build” teams of architects, contractors and developers meet the deadline for submitting their qualifications to participate in the contest. Each team gives the city evidence of its experience, staff expertise, commitment to equal-opportunity employment and other routine assurances. No design work begins at this point.
Jan. 15-The competition jury selects up to five teams to submit designs and gives each one a copy of a 1,000-page document spelling out the library`s functional needs. Each of the teams gets a $100,000 honorarium to help defray the cost of preparing entries and calculating how to meet the budget of $140 million, which covers the library`s construction and $9 million in
furnishings.
Selecting only five teams without knowing any of their ideas about the library design is an arbitrary procedure justified by a perceived need to move as swiftly as possible in the simplest manner.
May 23-At an open public meeting, the five competitors present elaborate drawings, photographs, scale models and slide shows revealing their designs for the building.
June 4-Having studied each design and conferred with the city`s technical experts, the competition jury selects a winner and recommends it to the Library Policy Review Committee, comprising top City Hall officials and chaired by Elizabeth Hollander, planning commissioner.
June 8-The Review Committee approves or rejects the winner (rejection is unlikely).
July 1-The city signs a contract with the winning team, which agrees to construct and partly furnish the library for no more than $140 million. The team pays for any cost overruns arising from unforeseen circumstances or flaws in its own cost estimates.
January, 1991-The library is completed, and within six months all furnishings and books are moved in.
On paper, this procedure appears reasonable enough. Some of the teams trying to qualify are likely to include well-known Chicago architects, developers and contractors who have worked together successfully in the past on office skyscrapers and other major projects. Other would-be qualifiers are expected from out of town and even abroad. With luck, there will be some first-rate competitors.
Yet even if events follow this chronological course, the new library may not be world class at all. At worst, it could turn out to be a seriously flawed work of functional or esthetic mediocrity.
That, at least, is the fear of the American Institute of Architects, whose Chicago chapter has for the last two months been quietly but
persistently trying to make changes in competition procedures. The AIA is most disturbed by aspects of the ”design-build” process chosen by the city.
Under the usual design-build formula, the architect works for the contractor or the developer who is leading the team-not the client, which in this case is the city. The contractor has great power in such a relationship, and may cut corners or force changes that do not necessarily make architectural sense.
Design-build was specified for the library for political reasons. The main library has been an embarrassment since it moved into shabby
”temporary” headquarters at 425 N. Michigan Ave. a dozen years ago. A proposal to move it permanently into the former Goldblatt`s department store on State Street caused a controversy and was finally dumped.
When the city finally decided to fund a brand-new library building at State and Van Buren, Mayor Washington and his City Hall colleagues decided not to take any chances. They were leery about the sort of cost overruns that plagued the McCormick Place annex and the expansion of O`Hare International Airport.
Paul Karas, Chicago`s public works commissioner, explained the city`s decision to use design-build at a Sept. 10 conference organized by the AIA.
”(We thought) this might be an opportunity to give the private sector a chance to see if they can do things more quickly and at less cost than we in the public sector can,” said Karas.
”A project of this nature will have a lot of starts and stops associated with it,” said Karas. ”With every one of those starts and stops and changes . . . you have too many cost increases and too many schedule delays.”
The AIA is not against the notion of the team concept, or design-build per se. But it argues that sidestepping the orthodox give-and-take procedure described by Karas eliminates the kind of fine tuning needed to produce a building that serves its users well and also makes an appropriately important esthetic gesture. It wants to develop with the city a means of maintaining frequent interaction between the winning architects and municipal officials responsible for the library until the building is completed.
”The city is abdicating its role as client in the construction of this building,” the AIA said in a recent position paper. ”The client, whether he be Pope, king or high-rise office developer, plays a key role in the success of a building-esthetically, programmatically and economically. The city must take its responsibility as a client seriously.”
A library architect may argue with a developer or contractor, but does not have the last word. He cannot necessarily appeal to the city, because the city is interested only in meeting the cost limit and the completion deadline. It would probably not become involved in an architect-contractor disagreement except under critical circumstances.
What sort of poor judgment might a design-build team exercise while preparing a competition entry, or even after winning the construction contract?
The team must make countless major and minor decisions about whether to spend a given budget dollar to the benefit of how well a thing looks, or works (keeping in mind that the team`s profit must come out of the $140 million).
Is it better to have a marble library furnished with second-hand furniture, or a painted concrete library full of high-fashion chairs purchased in Milan? One may cite such absurd extremes to make the AIA`s fears clear.
”In effect, the fox is being asked to guard the chickens,” said the AIA. ”In the traditional building process, the architect is employed by the owner and is the owner`s representative during construction. In design-build . . . quality control is in the hands of the contractor; his interpretation of how the building is to be finished is binding. This can create many surprises in the finished product.”
Design-build is routinely used in the construction of technically simple buildings, such as generic office structures that merely provide a lot of open office space.
On the other hand, a huge, electronically equipped main library serving many kinds of users is extremely complex, the AIA points out. It argues that design-build is inappropriate for such a highly specialized structure where design quality is critical. One huge agency that respects this principle is the General Services Administration, which supervises federal construction projects of many kinds.
Among those who support the Chicago AIA`s position is Michael J. Pittas, a Los Angeles consultant who for six years served as director of design arts for the National Endowment for the Arts. Pittas provided grants for more than 30 design competitions around the nation and helped produce several books on the subject.
In a recent letter to the AIA, Pittas said the National Endowment found that design-build was a ”seriously flawed procedure” when applied to competitions because it gave contractors too much power and greatly diminished the chances for good design.
The national AIA board of directors, the Metropolitan Planning Council, the Chicago Building Congress and the Structural Engineers Association of Illinois have similarly endorsed the Chicago AIA`s position.
City officials have flatly rejected an AIA proposal to have the jury first select 10 designs, then narrow them down to a lesser number for final judging. The AIA`s chief victory has been talking the city into increasing the honorariums to $100,000 from $50,000. A few other, smaller concessions have also been offered by the city unofficially.
Clearly, however, it is unlikely that the city will budge in its dedication to the basic design-build procedure. It does not want to spend much time arguing with the winning architect about what constitutes a great library.
The city`s tactical advantage right now, so far as public attention is concerned, is that the nuances of the AIA argument carry little emotional impact and are in part rather complex and technical.
Still, the people in City Hall-particularly Mayor Washington and Elizabeth Hollander-cannot avoid responsibility because they are maintaining distance from the nitty-gritty of constructing a repository for several million books.
”God is in the details,” Mies van der Rohe once said about the fine points of design.
And if library design details fall short of excellence, city officials will have to share the blame.
