Building art is a synthesis of life in materialised form. We should try to bring in under the same hat not a splintered way of thinking, but all in harmony together.
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Hot on the heels of the opening of a smash revival of South Pacificon Broadway, 2007 Pritzker Prize-winning architect Richard Rogers will be coming to Chicago for a May 15th lecture at the Art Institute. Rogers gained fame with the Pompidou Centre in Paris, co-designed with Renzo Piano. His 71-story Three World Trade Center, currently under construction at the WTC site, is expected to achieve Gold LEED status. The lecture begins at 6:00 P.M. Tickets are $5.00 for students, $10.00 for members of the Architecture and Design Society of the Art Institute of Chicago, and $15.00 for the general public. You're urged to go to the A&DS website to make reservations, but I wouldn't recommend it, as the only thing you'll find when you click on "Events" or "News" is the same Microsoft "Server does not exist or access denied" error code that has appeared there for the better part of a year. How such a prestigious organization can allow its web presence to exist month after month in the internet equivalent of leaving your fly open is beyond me.
But I digress. You can also go all retro and call 312.443.3631 to make reservations.
This weekend, if you're patient and can stay awake long enough, you may get to see a key section of Renzo Piano's Nichols Bridgeway being put in place above Monroe Street. The street will be closed from 6:00 P.M. Friday through 5:00 A.M. Monday for both cars and pedestrians.
If you're planning to camp out, a good way to start your evening is to check out Chicago Opera Theater's sexy, well-reviewed production of Mozart's Don Giovanni, which will be simulcast live Friday evening, May 9th from the Harris Theater to a giant 18' x 32' foot screen above the Pritzker Pavilion stage. There's only room for 11,000 people, so get there early. Curtain rises at 7:30 P.M.
Elsewhere in news shorts:
Environmental activist Wendy Abrams, founder and president of Cool Globes, will be honored at an Honorary Diploma at Archeworks' 2008 Graduation ceremony this Sunday, May 11th. More information here.
ULI Chicago's breakfast program, The Credit Crunch - Nine Months Later: When Will it End and How is it Impacting Commercial Real Estate? has a new location at the Grand Ballroom of the Renaissance Chicago Hotel. More information here.
War monuments are in many ways the most captivating structures mankind creates. Perhaps they catch our attention because they symbolize our most violent moments or the extremes of victory and defeat that transcend everyday reality. Some of these structures commemorate turning points in history, wins and losses that changed the courses of countries or even entire continents. Others are simply awesome architectural designs worthy of appreciation in their own right. From around the world, here are twelve of the most memorable, unique and extraordinary war monuments and memorials in military history.
The Motherland Calls was the tallest building in the world when it was constructed, measuring 279 feet from the plinth to the tip of the sword. The monument commemorates the Battle of Stalingrad and was built by Yevgeny Vuchetich in Volgograd, Russia in 1967. The figure, which is 170 feet tall, is Valentina Izotova, a native of the city, who posed for Mother Motherland. The result is both impressive and imposing.
El Alamein is a city west of Alexandria and north of Cairo that played a major role during World War II including the November 1942 battle when Montgomery’s forces routed Rommel’s Afrika Korps and Winston Churchill said of this, “This is not the end, nor is it even the beginning of the end, but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” Shown above is the war monument that the Italian state built on a hill 5 miles west of the city to commemorate the thousands of Italian soldiers that died in Africa during WWII. There is also a German Military Cemetery situated on the Tel el-Eisa hill and a Commonwealth War Cemetery with graves of soldiers from various countries that fought from the side of Britain.
The Korean War Veterans Memorial was built in 1986 in Washington D.C. to honor members of the U.S. armed forces who served in the Korean War and viewed from the above it looks like a circle intersected by a triangle. The Field of Service (the triangle) is where visitors approach the monument for the first time and see the 19 stainless-steel statues representing ground troops on patrol. There is also a granite curb on the north side with the 22 countries of the United Nations that helped in South Korea, while on the south side there is a black granite polished wall.
The World War II Memorial is a national memorial to all Americans that fought the World War II and is located in Washington D.C. on the former site of Rainbow Pool between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. It all started in 1987 with a proposal to build a WWII memorial that took about seven years to receive federal approval for construction. Out of more than 600 design submissions, a proposal by Friedrich St. Florian in 1997 and work on the monument began. The structure consists of 56 pillars (each one is 17 feet tall) and two arches, the “Atlantic” and the “Pacific”. Each of the 56 pillars is inscribed with one of the 48 US states from 1945 and the District of Columbia, the Alaska Territory and Territory of Hawaii, the Commonwealth of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. It opened to the public on April 29, 2004.
The USS Arizona Memorial recalls the Japanese imperial forces attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, which became the starting point of the United States’ involvement in World War II. It was the worst naval disaster in American History, no less than 1,177 sailors died on the USS Arizona during the attack. The remains of the sunken battleship were turned into a memorial which is now the final resting place for 1,102 of the crewmen. There is an approximately 75-minute tour that includes a 23-minutes film on the history of Pearl Harbor and then a trip on the Memorial.
The Arc de Triomphe is a quintessential symbol of Paris that lies at the western end of the Champs Elysees in the center of the Place Charles de Gaulle also known as the Place de l`Etoile. It has been designed by Jean Chalgrin in 1806 and was dedicated to all those that fought in the name of France, especially in the Napolenian Wars. On the underside of the arc are the names of the Generals and the wars they fought in, while beneath lies the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Charles Godfroy flew a biplane through the Arc de Triomphe after the Victory Parade of 1919 that celebrated the end of World War I.
Tugu Negara is Malaysia’s National Monument (that’s what Tugu Negara stands for) and was built in Kuala Lumpur just near the House of the Parliament. The monument is dedicated to the heroic fighters who died for the country’s peace and freedom, against the Japanese occupation during the World War II and after. There are seven bronze figures that symbolize leadership, suffering, unity, vigilance, strength, courage and sacrifice. The “Tugu Negara” also symbolizes that it will preserve traditions (the left side) and will build the future (the right side).
The Women of World War II is an unusual monument in one critical regard. Most people think of war as a male-dominated phenomenon but there are some monuments that are dedicated to the role of women in wartime. The sculpture by John W Mills is located in Whitehall London to the north of Cenotaph and consists of 17 different clothes and uniforms that women during World War II had to wear at their jobs.
The Merchant Seafarers War Memorial is a sculpture by Brian Fell from 1996 dedicated to the Merchant Seamen of Cardiff Bay and Butetown. This work includes both a beached hull of a ship and a timeless face, along with an interpretative mosaic with inscriptions and portraits of local wartime seafarers by Louise Shenstone and Adrian Butler.
TheFortress of Brest is the second largest war monument in the former Soviet Union. Located in the city of Brest in Belarus the sculpture is a tribute to the famous “courage” defense against Germany that attacked the Soviet Union during the first days of World War II. Its size is impressive and the figure display a palpable toughness.
The Sydney War Memorial is located in the southern extremity of Hyde Park. Also known as the ANZAC War Memorial, this complex was designed by Bruce Dellit and Rayner Hoff to commemorate the Australian Imperial Force that fought during World War I. It was completed in 1934 and is supposed to be Australia’s finest Art Deco structure. You may want to visit it at night because the colors and the reflection in the nearby lake makes it even more beautiful in the evening. On the exterior the building has a cladding of pink granite and consists of a massed square superstructure punctuated on each side by a large arched window of yellow stainless glass.
The Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument lies in the center of Indianapolis, Indiana, lies a 284-feet tall monument built from gray limestone and bronze in a neoclassical style. The structure commemorates Hoosiers who were veterans of the Indiana war (1776 to 1865). The Colonel Eli Lilly Civil War Museum is located in the monument’s lower level while a 30-foot statue of “Victory” tops the obelisk. The view of the surrounding area from the 250-foot high observation deck is simply spectacular.
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When you listen to Mayor Richard M. Daley's increasingly desperate attempts to vilify opponents of his effort to force the Chicago Children's Museum into Grant Park, you hear the voice of the suave European exile who appears at the beginning of the film Casablanca, cautioning a middle-aged tourist . . .
I beg of you, Monsieur, watch yourself. Be on guard. This place is full of vultures, vultures everywhere, everywhere.
As he delivers this warning and departs, the suave European places a friendly hand on the shoulder of the tourist, who will soon discover that his wallet is missing.
Similarly, on Monday Daley was telling reporters the museum was going to be built in an underground parking garage because "the community didn’t want to see the children. " He knows, of course, this is a shameless lie. He knows that from the very beginning, the museum proposed building their new structure below ground as part of a calculated effort to evade and subvert the A. Montgomery Ward rulings that have protected Grant Park for over a century. But what's to be gained from honesty, when an angry rant guarantees prime placement on the evening news?
This is the same Mayor that tried to smear those wanting to protect Grant Park as racists. It didn't stick. He tried to portray them as child-haters. People laughed.
He said the only reason 42nd ward alderman Brendan Reilly opposed the museum was that he didn't have children. Anyone with children, the mayor said in an avuncular tone, knows the museum can't be built anywhere other than Grant Park. And when a coalition of opponents stepped forward to say no, as fathers and mothers of small children they, too, didn't want Gigi Pritzker's pet project in Grant Park, the Mayor seemed to be suggesting that their children would grow up to hate them. As quoted in the Sun-Times, he said of the museum opponents, "They'll go start petition drives. They're threatening everybody — your political life. They're gonna defeat all aldermen. They're gonna beat everybody in the world. But, one thing. Those children grow up and remember them," the mayor said.
And, of course, the Mayor said this knowing that his administration, from the start, has been strong-arming alderman to keep them in the pro-museum fold, pressuring them to commit political suicide by voting to override the long-standing principle of supporting each other's veto's of projects within their ward boundaries, a bedrock source of their power that the Mayor seeks to dilute and consolidate into his own hands.
Power isn't pretty, and you'll find no better portrait of it than in Al Podgorski's page 18 photo in Tuesday's (May 6th) Chicago Sun-Times. Understand, everyone can take a bad picture - I'm proof of that. But Podgorski's portrait of the Mayor isn't a gotcha moment; it's a remarkable Picture of Dorian Gray-like reveal of the mayor, his face contorted into a snarl, a sneering mask of contempt towards anyone who would dare to dissent from his judgment. This is the face that strikes terror into the hearts of alderman, commissioners and staff. This is the face that says, I own this city - get on board or you're less than nothing. (You have to pick up a hard copy of Tuesday's Sun-Times; the web version of the story uses a more conventional photo.)
Museum proponents, taking their cue from the mayor, have become firm adherents to the idea that any statement, however ludicrous, can be put over if you just say it with deadpan conviction. Children's Museum President Jennifer Farrington apparently believes she can make 100,000 square feet of construction disappear by telling ABC7, "We are not talking about bringing a new building, we are talking about a new resource to the park." Or, as Jimmy Durante once said, "What elephant?"
At a Tuesday morning debate with Alderman Reilly at the Union League Club, as reported by Medill Reports, Farrington again said that the Grant Park site was the only place for her museum. “No other location met our four requirements: A central downtown location, easy access to public transportation from all corners of the city, access to green space, and plentiful adjacent covered parking.” I can think of a lot of places that meet the first three requirements - I'll talk about my own choice later this week, but the fourth - covered parking - is simply bizarre. The Field Museum - no covered parking. Adler Planetarium, Shedd Aquarium - no covered parking. Altogether, they attract millions of parents and children each year. Do all those children somehow become enfeebled mutants when they visit the CCM? At Grant Park, won't many, if not most, disembark from buses on covered lower Randolph? No matter. Devise your clout-empowered whims in haste, come up with rationalizations at leisure. Last week, the museum issued still another revision of its design, which again claims to reduce the structure's presence in the park. It doesn't really. The high sculptural skylights of the previous proposal aren't really gone; they're just stuffed underneath a maze-like series of ramps and terraces stepping down from Upper Randolph. As you can see in the rendering below, the glass is still several times human height. A landscaped terrace off of Upper Randolph would become a narrow strip leading to the ramp entrance. Current ramps leading down to the park from Upper Randolph in both the east and west corners of the site would be replaced with a single entrance. The easternmost ramp is eliminated entirely. In the latest design, you can see the shadow of still another structure just north of the current tennis courts nearest Columbus Drive. To get from Upper Randolph down to the park, you have to keep doubling-back on ramp segments that are almost all about a half a block or more long. The museum's Randolph Street entrance has been cut in size by 3/4, and moved off the site and onto the sidewalk, the better to evade the A. Montgomery Ward protections. The latest revision is less a design than a legal stratagem. Check it out for yourself. Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin has posted six drawings here.
Fast-forward a bit. Let's say that it's 2050, since that seems to be a popular year for speculation these days. You're living in a stylish downtown penthouse a few blocks from a gleaming transit station servicing three different high-speed lines. You work in an office building as a Chief Innovation Officer -- not a light title to carry, by any means -- for a major technology firm. One day after work, you take a train a few miles west of the bustling commercial hub where you work to a rapidly-gentrifying neighborhood to meet a friend at a sunny sidewalk cafe on a dense street filled with shops and new condos. You are living the American Dream, with a beautiful home and a fantastic job in the heart of a dynamic urban center with its finger pressed firmly against the pulse of globalized culture. You are a proud resident of one of the world's Great Cities, capital letters required.
Now, imagine that that city is Las Vegas.
It sounds like science-fiction, no? But, in a recent post written from the American Planners Association convention in Sin City, California Planning & Development Report contributor Bill Fulton argues that Vegas is on the track to claiming a spot on the shortlist of the most exciting urban places on our already highly-urbanized planet. While your initial reaction may be something along the lines of "Say whaaaaat?" (mine certainly was), there is something very refreshing -- even inspiring -- about this idea.
Fulton's argument, in a nutshell: "Vegas is a not-too-subtle reminder to planners about how great cities are really created: You stuff vast amounts of money into a tiny space for decade after decade until the mixture of wealth, commerce, entertainment, and culture becomes so combustible that it finally explodes. Paris, London, Tokyo, San Francisco, Chicago, New York – all were built on this model."
There are so many ways to poke holes in this idea, which is oversimplified almost to a fault, and in fact this post was intended to do just that. But soon after the writing began, I realized that Fulton's speculated future for Las Vegas was far more interesting (not to mention uplifting) than much of urbanism discussion today. Contrast the idea of Vegas, one of the least sustainable cities in the country, as changing its tune and reinventing itself with the Die-or-Be-Drowned harping of James Howard Kunstler, a pundit whose bullheaded pessimism and truly shocking lack of imagination have just about made him a caricature of himself. Mr. Kunstler's tireless drumbeat: "Our gigantic metroplex cities will prove to be inconsistent with the energy diet of our future. I think our smaller cities and towns will be reactivated. We are going to be a far less affluent society."
Perhaps what's missing from the debate over how cities will deal with climate change is something as simple and extraordinarily difficult as optimism. After all, the combination of wealth, commerce, entertainment, and culture is, when you boil it down, mostly what accounts for the rises of cities like New York, Paris, London, and Tokyo. But there was more to it than just a healthy skeleton; there was meat on them bones, so to speak. These Great Cities were places that generated potential as much as they generated wealth. Many millions of people moved to these cities not on the promise of a better future, but on the hope thereof.
The city of Indianapolis is easily one of the least-interesting large cities in America, if not the world. But there is a pride of place there nonetheless, and on several occasions I have read or heard discussions about how to make Indiana's capital a "world-class city." What if talking the talk is an effective way to learn how to walk the walk? The verdict is still out on Indy, but look a little to the west for an idea of what could be. After all, a good deal of Chicago's greatness came from early residents, who were famous for their ability to bluster and boast, claiming greatness long before it was actually achieved (which, incidentally, earned Chicago its most famous nickname: The Windy City). These boosters and bright thinkers pushed and shoved their city into greatness, and without them Chicago would likely be a very different place today.
So who says that Vegas can't become, as Fulton suggests "the next New York?" While it would seem like a miracle to most of us living today, stranger things have certainly happened, and in less time. Thomas Friedman wrote in a recent column for the NY Times that "[Americans] want to do nation-building. They really do. But they want to do nation-building in America...They want our country to matter again. They want it to be about building wealth and dignity — big profits and big purposes. When we just do one, we are less than the sum of our parts. When we do both...no one can touch us."
There is a palpable desire in this country for very real and serious change (notably reflected in the presidential candidates' impassioned adoption of that very term in the current election season). Who are we to look to to shape how we think about the future? People like Fulton...or people like Kunstler?
(Photo from Flickr user Christopher Chan. The original full-color version can be viewed by clicking the photo.)
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