It is too early to say anything definitive about the possibility of a Chicago skyscraper where one floor would rotate independently of the other, creating an ever-shifting silhouette. No site-specific plans exist. No site has even been selected. Such a skyscraper promises to be an eye-grabbing exercise in hip-swiveling hoochie-coochie. Sexy? Yes. Yet the thrill could wind up being cheap.
In a broader sense, the idea is disturbing because it encapsulates a trend that has come to define the way buildings are made and marketed these days: Extreme architecture. By that, I do not mean buildings of extreme height or size that win the dubious distinction of an entry in the Guinness World Records.
What I mean, instead, is extreme expression, the ceaseless quest for aesthetic novelty powered by new technologies that help generate new forms, which are always interesting but not so often good. The media, ever hungry for the latest “wow,” is an accessory to the crime. In many cases, one wonders if the designs were meant for magazine covers, newspaper front pages or Web sites rather than real life.
Extreme masterwork
Sometimes, as in the hands of Frank Gehry, extreme architecture has produced masterworks, such as that architect’s Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, whose exuberant mounds of stainless steel were realized with the same computer technology that made possible the complex curves of French Mirage jet fighters.
But Gehry only reached the pinnacle of Disney Hall, where he more satisfactorily resolved the demands of form and function than at his more-celebrated Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, after years of painstakingly refining a neo-Baroque design language that evokes the chaotic quality of modern life.
To hand the Chicago skyline over to a relative novice, the Florence, Italy-based architect David Fisher, who is pushing the idea of a condominium, hotel and office tower here as well as in Dubai, would be akin to turning over the hallowed walls of the Art Institute to a high school art class.
To be sure, Fisher’s idea is not without merit. His use of prefabrication techniques, with units made off-site and then hoisted into place around a concrete core, promises to drag antiquated construction technology into the 21st Century.
The prospect of a perpetually morphing shape would build on Santiago Calatrava’s successful experiments in kinetic architecture, such as the birdlike sunshade of the Milwaukee Art Museum addition.
On the other hand, good luck solving the plumbing stack.
One can imagine — and maybe even cotton to — the prospect of such an attention-getting gesture in Dubai, where the cityscape is still forming and may need new landmarks to give people their physical and psychological bearings. But in Chicago?
On a riverfront parking lot next to NBC Tower, which is among the possible sites? A short walk from the Wrigley Building and the Tribune Tower? Why bother with those two venerable early 20th Century towers as you cruise down the Chicago River when you’ve got twirling pies in the sky within camera range?
rchitects say they “practice” for good reason. Every building is a form of preparation for the next one. Architects even talk of “practice buildings,” the commissions that let an idea germinate and be tested before it is completely realized down the line. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe didn’t simply shake the glorious bronze-clad Seagram Building in New York City out of his sleeve. He did more modest practice buildings, the curtain-walled apartment towers of 900 and 910 N. Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, first.
Calatrava has the edge
For that reason, I have far more faith in Calatrava’s plan for the twisting, 150-story Chicago Spire than Fisher’s notion of a spinning tower, 60 to 90 stories tall. Calatrava’s already got a twisting skyscraper to his credit in Malmo, Sweden, the so-called Turning Torso tower. It’s a dazzling sculpture, but disappointingly detailed. Presumably, he’ll do better next time, drawing on the experience of a long career in which he has taken structures to — and, sometimes, unreasonably beyond — their natural limits.
Presumably.
In the end, Fisher’s proposed rotating tower may be less important for itself than what it says about the extreme architecture of our time: Too few architects are making a dogged, continual search for underlying truths. Too many are giving in to the seductive, superficial allure of a perpetual revolution. It’s a great way to get noticed, to advance careers and to sell real estate. And it gives us spectacle by the bushel. But the real question is whether it is giving us art — and, oh, yes, a decent place to live.
———-
bkamin@tribune.com
