We consulted the experts for their venerable opinions: “I like the one with the pulleys and things because (the windows and flaps) go up and down,” says Henry Konker, age 7, “almost 8,” almost unable to keep his gym shoes planted on the stone floor.
“I like that one,” says his buddy Nick Phillips, 8 1/2, pointing to a structure that looks like a glass-enclosed carousel, minus the painted horses, “because you can get in it and you can put your bed in it. You can get a lot of stuff in it.”
He goes on, whirling the other direction and aiming his index finger at a spiffy little cottage, with all sorts of built-in furniture: “I also like that one because of the shutters and the ladder inside.”
Little boys and forts-need we say more?
In this case, we do.
These are no ordinary expressions in scrap wood. They are fantastic pieces of kid-size architecture, designed by 10 esteemed (and primarily Chicago) practitioners–Helmut Jahn, Thomas Beeby, Laurence Booth, Gerald Horn, Ralph Johnson, Dirk Lohan, James Nagle, Christopher Rudolph, Peter Eisenman (of New York) and Ricardo Legorreta (of Mexico City).
The full-scale playhouses are destined for auction, to benefit SOS Children’s Village Illinois, a not-for-profit organization located in southwest suburban Lockport. It provides long-term foster care for abused and abandoned children.
Through Monday, the houses can be viewed in the lobby of the American Medical Association building, where Henry and Nick wandered in one recent afternoon with Henry’s mother in tow. After that, they will be moved to the lobby of Sears Tower, where they will remain until Thursday. Sotheby’s will officiate the live auction of the houses on that night, which also includes a black-tie dinner-dance.
“We have been thinking about doing this for over two years,” says Dirk Lohan, who rallied his fellow, big-name architects for the SOS cause and has long been instrumental in bringing funding to the children’s organization.
Lohan, who is on the board of both the national SOS organization and the SOS village in Lockport, contributed one of the more unusual designs, which is set about 2 1/2 feet off the ground on a pole. It is the one that looks vaguely like a carousel.
He insists otherwise: “It’s a mast with these cables,” explains Lohan, a sailor. “The hardware is actually from boating hardware. We bought it at a boating store.”
The idea was to create a “playhouse/observatory,” continues the Chicago architect, whose namesake firm is better known for another, bigger playhouse/observatory: the Oceanarium at the John G. Shedd Aquarium. “My idea was to put this (house) in the woods somewhere,” says Lohan. Kids can shimmy up into it, close the door behind them like a drawbridge and then lie in there, watching nature go by.
Lohan wasn’t the only one who made a reference to sailing.
Gerald Horn, senior partner, director of design at Holabird & Root, attached high-strength nautical lines to a series of flaps in his house with “the pulleys and things”–the one favored by our expert Henry. Tug a line and something opens or closes.
The rest of the design–primarily the lightness of the steel structure–“stays in my vocabulary of architecture,” says Horn.
In other words, the playhouse looks a lot like the real buildings (Chicago Historical Society, for one) he creates.
True to their school
It was the case with a number of the other playhouses submitted by the architects.
Christopher Rudolph contributed a woodsy-looking cedar fort with a flat, cantilevered roof, typical of the Prairie School aesthetic he likes to invoke in his buildings.
Thomas Beeby created the nifty little cottage, again typical of his penchant for mixing classical and vernacular elements.
Helmut Jahn delivered something big and tall in painted wood and galvanized steel mesh and as quizzical as his (in)famous State of Illinois building.
“It is abstract,” explains Jahn. “It leaves a lot of room for the imagination.”
Jahn’s imagination reads it this way: “It is all about transparency. It is very open, a layering of different, translucent parts (the louvers and the steel mesh). . . . This obviously relates to things we do not only in playhouses but in big buildings.”
Still, Jahn’s wasn’t the oddest design out. That distinction goes to Peter Eisenman.
The New York architect/Deconstructivist, who no doubt has answered to the word “odd” before, offered up a big, white, geometric blob.
“I like the words `oblique’ and `acute,’ myself,” chuckles Joe Trungale, a superintendent at Morse Diesel, the Chicago construction firm that brought Eisenman’s design to life.
Comparing the looks of it to a giant chip off an iceberg, Trungale says it took eight, headaching days to decipher all of the angles and miters specified by Eisenman in computer-generated isometric pictures, and then build the darn thing.
“You know how your muscles ache after you lift weights? That’s how my brain hurt after this thing,” says Trungale, admitting, though, that the victory was sweet for him and his crew.
Pro bono buildings
All of the architects and the 10 Chicago contractors that executed their designs, donated their labor and resources. The contractors shouldered the building expenses–and they were significant.
These playhouses cost anywhere from $2,000 to $17,000 to build, according to Kathleen Buck, co-chair of the SOS gala/auction, which carries the theme “Every Child Deserves a Home.”
The theme is appropriate.
Unlike traditional orphanages, SOS Children’s Village Illinois is designed to look like a traditional neighborhood with traditional homes and traditional families living in them.
Full-time SOS “parents” head nine Prairie-style houses here (selection of a 10th set of parents is in the works to fill a 10th house) and are committed to raising five to seven children until they reach adulthood. Currently, 45 children live in the community, which opened in May 1994.
“The idea is to provide a sense of permanency and stability for kids who are unlikely to go back to their biological parents and are unlikely to be adopted,” explains Bill Mathis, village director, noting that a special effort is made to (re)unite siblings.
State funding does not cover all of the village’s costs, says Mathis. The auction, he continues, will play a “major role in our local funding effort.”
Minimum bids for the playhouses will start at about $1,000. Seven smaller doll houses also will be auctioned off; minimum bids start at about $300. All proceeds will go to SOS Children’s Village Illinois.
THE FACTS
Every Child Deserves a Home
What: A black-tie dinner-dance gala and live auction, conducted by Sotheby’s, of 10 children’s playhouses designed by 10 renowned architects, most from Chicago. Seven doll houses also will be auctioned. All to benefit SOS Children’s Village Illinois.
Where: Sears Tower, atrium lobby, 232 S. Franklin St. entrance.
When: 7 p.m. Thursday.
Cost: $250 a person.
Viewing: Through Monday, view the playhouses in the lobby of the American Medical Association building, 515 N. State St. Then, at Sears Tower. Doll houses can be viewed at Sears Tower on the day of the event only.
Bidding: Minimum bids for a playhouse is about $1,000; about $300 for a doll house. Bids can be made in absentia by calling the Chicago office of SOS Children’s Village Illinois, 312-541-8173.
