Helmut Jahn and four other designers of Chicago`s broad-shouldered skyline engaged in some architectural child`s play Friday night, using humble Lego bricks to raise a tower of cash for the Chicago Children`s Museum.
About 320 people paid $175 a ticket to benefit the facility, formerly known as the Express-Ways Children`s Museum. Gathering at the Chicago Public Library Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington St., they partook of hors d`oeuvres such as cucumber canapes, as well as a visual feast: the Lego creations of Jahn and the rest of the blueprint brigade.
”They made me feel whimsical, like a kid,” said Peter Bynoe, president of the Illinois Sports Facility Authority, builder of the new Comiskey Park.
Architect Larry Booth fashioned a Michigan Avenue scene featuring a column of Lego soldiers led by Colin Powell, armed with toy ax and bow and arrow. Jahn designed a Lego skyscraper topped with a statue of Mickey Mouse. Diane Legge`s entry resembled a Mondrian painting. William Brazley constructed a house and control kiosk for a lock tender and his family.
And Joseph Gonzalez created 15 structures, including Sears Tower, a roller-coaster ”L” and a Jahn tower, One South Wacker. Atop it, in a pun on the name Helmut, were Lego men wearing-what else?-green helmets.
”It`s nice,” Jahn said, casting a critical eye on Gonzalez`s imitation. ”They must have left out some bricks.”
As the black-tie crowd gathered under the luminous dome of the Cultural Center`s Preston Bradley Hall, WBBM-TV anchor Bill Kurtis finished auctioning off the five creations. Booth`s fetched the highest price, $4,700, and Kurtis joked, ”I`m ready to go to work for Leslie Hindman,” the Chicago auctioneer. The building blocks for Friday`s benefit are nearly as ubiquitous as McDonald`s hamburgers. More than 110 billion Lego pieces have been sold worldwide since 1949, when the basic Lego brick was introduced by a Danish toymaker. (Lego is a contraction of two Danish words meaning ”Play well,”
according to a Lego spokesman.)
Founded in 1982 and with headquarters in North Pier, the Chicago Children`s Museum enriches the lives of children and their families with exhibits including a Lego Construction Zone, where future Frank Lloyd Wrights can play. Benefit co-chairwomen Desiree Glapion Rogers and Maureen Schulman expected Friday`s event to raise $90,000 for the museum`s general fund.
For the architects, it was a chance to return to childhood. ”They didn`t exist when I was a child,” Jahn said, fiddling with a tiny brick. ”But some people tell me I have never grown up.”
