While it’s true that no skyscrapers are popping out of the ground because of a glut of office space, the next few months promise a plethora of architectural activity, including the first American building by distinguished British architect Norman Foster and the debut of a socially conscious design school headed by Chicago architect Stanley Tigerman and interior designer Eva Maddox.
The public also will get its first look at museums in Kansas City, Mo., and San Francisco, sports arenas in Cleveland and Chicago, and libraries in Evanston and on the Near West Side.
Foster, the acclaimed modernist best known for the high-tech Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corp. tower in Hong Kong, has designed a $15.9 million addition to the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, scheduled to open Nov. 19. The museum, an austere Art Deco temple clad in Georgian pink marble, sits on a hill west of the modern office towers of downtown Omaha.
For the addition, Foster has shaped a highly deferential box sheathed in pink marble cut from the same quarry as the original; the old and new are joined by a new glass atrium. Galleries housing the museum’s 20th Century collection and temporary exhibits will be located in barrel-vaulted spaces with indirect natural lighting. Foster will speak on his current work on Nov. 10 at the Chicago Athenaeum, an architecture and design museum that is moving to 6 N. Michigan Ave. from 1165 N. Clark St.
The Joslyn isn’t the only museum on the grow. The $6.6 million Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, by Gunnar Birkerts of Birmingham, Mich., opens in Kansas City, Mo., on Oct 2. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art will dedicate an $85 million building by the Swiss modernist Mario Botta, his first American commission, on Jan. 18. Just east of Chicago’s historic Water Tower, a late fall ceremony will celebrate the raising of the final piece of steel for the Museum of Contemporary Art by Josef Paul Kleihues of Berlin. The $55 million project is scheduled for completion in spring 1996.
At the opposite end of downtown, Tigerman, Maddox and 10 students last week began an extraordinary experiment in design education, a think tank called Archeworks (pronounced AR-key-works). Housed in a loft building at 1727 S. Indiana Ave., the school aims to put architecture at the disposal of those who rarely enjoy its benefits: battered women and children, AIDS patients, the homeless and the disabled.
Teams of students will research the needs of the disadvantaged and develop new products to help them. The school will offer the equivalent of a one-year graduate degree. It will be closely watched nationally-a barometer of whether gritty social activism can be infused into the rarefied realm of design education.
A socially conscious streak runs through other forthcoming work. A $3.5 million Chicago Public Library branch on the Near West Side, by Ross Barney Jankowski of Chicago, is said by the architects “to reflect the special needs of inner-city patrons.” The library opens in October. On the Near North Side, townhouses by Pappageorge-Haymes of Chicago will rise this fall in the shadow of the public-housing high rises at Cabrini-Green. They will be the first realization of Chicago Housing Authority chairman Vincent Lane’s vision for low-rise, mixed-income housing. On Sept. 18, the Spertus Museum of Chicago will open an exhibition timed to coincide with the onset of the Jewish fall festival of Sukkot. The show will explore a link between the tradition of building temporary outdoor booths for the holiday and contemporary conditions of the homeless. Nine Chicago architects have designed full-sized booths for the show, which runs through February at the museum, 618 S. Michigan Ave.
Elsewhere, the public sector, private institutions and the sports world are powering construction forward during the commercial building slump. In Evanston, a $17 million public library by Philadelphia architect Joseph Powell with Nagle-Hartray of Chicago, opens Oct. 10. The building’s form has been strongly influenced by the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright.
With the start of the fall semester, students are parading through Loyola University’s $36 million, 16-story building at 25 E. Pearson St. The tower, by Chicago architects Holabird & Root, contains classrooms, a law library and the library of Loyola’s Water Tower campus.
In Cleveland, the basketball Cavaliers will move into the $118 million Gateway Arena, by Ellerbe-Beckett of Kansas City, Mo., while on Chicago’s Near West Side, the Bulls and Blackhawks play for the first time in the $175 million United Center, by the Hellmuth, Obata and Kassabaum Sports Facilities Group, also of Kansas City, Mo.
Several significant exhibitions are in the works. The Art Institute of Chicago will present a major show about the distinguished 18th and 19th Century German architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel. The show, which runs from Oct. 29 to Jan. 2, will feature 100 drawings and prints from the Schinkel archive in Berlin and will focus on the theme of architectural drama.
The great Chicago architect Louis Sullivan will be featured from Feb. 18 to May 8 as the Art Institute showcases its collection of Sullivan architectural drawings, fragments, manuscripts and memorabilia.
Other upcoming exhibitions include: Catholic churches and Chicago neighborhoods, at the Chicago Historical Society, Clark Street at North Avenue, Sept. 17 to April 30; sculptors and architects in Chicago, at the Arts Club of Chicago, Sept. 20 to Oct. 22; new Chicago interior architecture, at the Athenaeum’s 515 N. State St. gallery, Sept. 22 to Nov. 19; innovations in the structural design of skyscrapers, at the Chicago Architecture Foundation, 224 S. Michigan Ave., Oct. 17 to Jan. 25; contemporary Hong Kong architecture, at the Athenaeum, Oct. 19 through Dec. 10; grand American avenues, including Chicago’s Prairie Avenue, at the Harold Washington Library Center, 400 S. State St., Jan. 21 through March 18.
Notable lectures on the calendar: Wright scholar Anthony Alofsin, at Unity Temple in Oak Park, Oct. 19; architect Ivan Chermayeff, Oct. 26, at the Graham Foundation, 4 W. Burton Pl.; architect Paul Rudolph, Oct. 27 at the Athenaeum; and author Peter Blake, Nov. 14 at the Graham Foundation.
The publishing event of the season is sure to be a biography of the reigning tastemaker of American architecture, Philip Johnson, by Franz Schulze, who previously produced a crackling look at the life of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. The Johnson book is due for publication, by Alfred A. Knopf, in mid-November.
