CHICAGO SCHOOL

VACATION RAMBLINGS.

Re-reading Donald Hoffman's JOHN WELLBORN ROOT while travelling I-15 north from Las Vegas to Cedar City...... Contemplating those elegant drawings. Yesterday's visit to Gehry's Center for Brain Health much on my mind. And Libeskind's shopping mall at City Center. The Arbiteurs of good taste had said that Vegas needed those accoutrements to be taken seriously. To be World Class. The desert, the mountains, and the neon alone, apparently, couldn't do that.

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Hoffman says that Chicago School Architects did not "express structure" in some deep-seated philosophical statement. Structure was simply exposed when unnecessary skin and ornament was removed from it -- to make it lighter -- to allow tall buildings to be built on the swamped onion fields of Chicago. The School did not channel the mystic aura of some future Mies. In fact all they really wanted (even John Root -- look at the Boatman's Bank, below) was to design something in the style of Francis I. Or Romanesque, maybe. Or Georgian. (Yes, Georgian). But they needed something lighter. (Damned engineers. And damned foundations.)

Chicago architects -- forced to "reason" by the Chicago swamp.

JOHN ROOT.  Boatman's Bank

STUDIO LIBESKIND. Crystals. Las Vegas, Nev.

FRANK GEHRY. Center for Brain Research. Las Vegas, Nev.

Forced to reason.

So that the same mutant flower of Bilbao might not rebloom in Las Vegas. Or LA. So that the "metaphysics of presence" is, at least, contextually confrontational. Not idealogically static in its manifestations. Heaven knows that even Studio Libeskind can't compete in status with Louis Vuitton. Now, so does Daniel.  I'll refrain from commenting re: convoluted logic. Or the appropriateness of a Frankish reincarnation in Cook County.

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The product of the Chicago School, those "bridgebuilders", cliffdwellers, (and Daniel Burnham foremost) was neither the product of an undisciplined hand nor unlimited resources. It was the product of a problem and a problem solved.

A remarkable creativity born of reason.

That simple. That durable. That inspiring. Reason. Found.  Speeding north. Past Moapa. In the desert heat of a Nevada Fourth of July. 2010.

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Credit due Donald Hoffman, ARCHITECTURE OF JOHN WELLBORN ROOT, p 138.  This is a great little volume produced by Johns Hopkins Studies in 19th Century Architecture.

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Next Stop. Union Station

In 1901, as construction proceeded on Marshall Field & Company at State and Randolph, Louis Sullivan wrote "It seems that not so long ago, in fact I might say quite recently, a group of ancient Romans by some miracle of cadaverous introspection became resurect and incarnate as of yore in the very proper form itself." (From Kindergarten Chats, available from Dover Press. Universally and highly recommended). Our beloved Sullivan found himself suffocating in the Glory of Rome. (See Post dated February 27. MARSHALL FIELD.Columns!)

It seems that Chicago has two hearts. One that holds close the traditions and philosophy of the Chicago School of Architecture and another that allows Classicism a very special place in the City. Icons of downtown Chicago are the Field Museum and its axis on Lake Shore Drive; the foot of LaSalle Street where identical Roman Temples flank the Board of Trade Building, Union Station, the Strauss Building, the great Michigan Avenue Wall, and Marshall Field and Co. The White City still stirs imagination. And yet, what loss is more regretted than Sullivan's Stock Exchange?

My next several posts will be Observations on Chicago's UNION STATION. My only regret is that it is only half there. Like Sullivan, Anderson's architecture has seen the effect of time. I intend, when my work at the Station is complete, to walk across the Loop, sit on the veranda of the Auditorium, ponder how Gehry affects Burnham, if Mestrovic's Indians are friend or foe, and if the Bridge, over there, on the other side of the Art Institute will find itself a graceful end.

Even an Architect needs a sense of humor.