Modernism is back. Architecture is back.
Architecture never went away, of course, even during the darkest days of the building bust that followed the overbuilding of the ’80s. It just may have seemed that way because developers weren’t putting up postmodern office towers, encrusted with superfluous ornament, one right after the other.
But now, as evidenced by all the cranes on the Chicago skyline, large-scale building has resumed and while some of it appears little changed from the historicism of the last decade, there are undeniable signs that the crisp, abstract forms of modernism have returned.
Exhibit A, at least locally, is the 30-story office building that Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Illinois has raised at 300 E. Randolph St. The first commercial tower completed in downtown Chicago since 1992, it’s a flat-topped, blue-glass wedge that could not be more different from such ’80s predecessors as the neighboring Two Prudential Plaza, a Chrysler Building wannabe.
Blue-Cross/Blue Shield, designed by Lohan Associates of Chicago, will get its first occupants on Sept. 12. Both here and around the globe, it is hardly the only example of modernism’s resurgence.
Topping the list of upcoming buildings: a branch of New York City’s Guggenheim Museum, by Frank Gehry, that opens in the Spanish ship-building city of Bilbao in October. The Santa Monica, Calif., architect likens his spectacular, titanium-clad structure to a “metallic flower.” Almost undoubtedly, it ranks as the decade’s most eagerly awaited work of architecture.
Yet in scale, even the Bilbao Guggenheim seems small in contrast to Richard Meier’s new Getty Center, a 110-acre arts and cultural complex opening in December in the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains in Los Angeles.
With its traditional modernist language of grids and nautical imagery, the six-building Getty complex inevitably will inspire comparisons with Gehry’s free-form geometry, particularly because it’s being built in Gehry’s backyard.
Chicago is a citadel of modernism, of course, and the Illinois Institute of Technology, which has named five finalists to design a campus center across State Street from Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Crown Hall, also will have something to say about the architecture of the next century.
The finalists–Peter Eisenman of New York City, Zaha Hadid of London, Rem Koolhaas of Rotterdam, along with two-person teams Helmut Jahn of Chicago and Werner Sobek of Stuttgart, as well as Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of Tokyo–will submit their proposals for the building in January, with the winner to be selected in February.
In River North, another academic institution–Archeworks, the socially conscious design school headed by Stanley Tigerman and Eva Maddox–will move into a simple, shed-like building by Tigerman this fall.
Modernism also will be a force in two significant cultural complexes, one in downtown Elmhurst, the other on Michigan Avenue.
The new Elmhurst Art Museum, which opened to the public Saturday and was designed by DeStefano + Partners of Chicago, incorporates a house Mies designed for Robert McCormick in the Du Page County suburb. The house was moved from its original site to a park where the museum sits.
Meanwhile, a renovation and expansion of venerable Orchestra Hall will debut in October.
Shaped by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill of Chicago, the project adds new staff and rehearsal space, as well as an enclosed galleria between Michigan and Wabash Avenues. As part of the project, to be known as Chicago Symphony Center, a modern canopy is being suspended over the stage to improve acoustics. The big question: What sort of visual counterpoint will it create with the hall’s traditional design?
Not every new building is sleek and covered in steel and glass, of course. If modernism is back, pluralism still reigns, and there are plenty of buildings on the horizon that strive to achieve a blend of traditional and contemporary influences.
The most prominent of them is a retail development at the southwest corner of Chicago and North Michigan avenues that tries to recreate the human scale of the old Mag Mile, before graceless giants like Water Tower Place shoved their way onto the street.
Designed by Elkus Manfredi Architects of Boston, the project is one building designed to look like four, with facades that are variations of modernism and classicism. Its first tenants are expected to open their doors in November.
Another building that melds modernism and classicism, the new Chicago Sinai Congregation, is clad in a light gold limestone. Designed by Lohan Associates, it will be dedicated on Sept. 26-28, in time for the Jewish New Year. The building, at 15 W. Delaware Place, is the first synagogue constructed in downtown Chicago in 30 years.
Chicago also will offer its typically rich assortment of lectures and exhibitions. Among the latter, the Chicago Architecture Foundation presents “Skidmore, Owings & Merrill at Sixty,” which examines one of Chicago’s best-known architectural firms.
Once recognized as a vigorous champion of modernism, with such icons of steel and glass as Sears Tower and the John Hancock Center to its credit, SOM in recent years has moved to the pluralist camp, using tradition as much as structural expressionism to guide such popular projects as the NBC Tower. With more than 200 models, the SOM show appears at the foundation, 224 S. Michigan Ave., from Sept. 10 through Nov. 21.
