I didn't want to break the article into pieces...
http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/a...,1,497677.story?coll=chi-leisurearts-hed
WINTER '07 PREVIEW: ARCHITECTURE
Excitement is building for new high-rises
By Blair Kamin
Tribune architecture critic
Published January 7, 2007
In the world of architecture, the coming months promise to be anything but dull.
Chicagoans will likely debate Santiago Calatrava's proposed 2,000-foot twisting skyscraper. The legacy of past masters (Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright and Myron Goldsmith) will be examined for future inspiration. And adventurous new buildings, including museum additions in Kansas City, Mo., and Akron, will open in the city and around the Midwest.
- Whither the Twister? Calatrava's latest design for a twisting residential tower on the lakefront, now 160 stories tall, is likely to come before the Chicago Plan Commission for a vote. No hearing date is set, however. After his third version of the skyscraper, a nearly flat-topped design dubbed "The Twizzler," was widely panned in early December, Calatrava and Dublin-based developer Garrett Kelleher shopped a fourth version to Mayor Richard M. Daley, civic groups and leaders of the city's architecture community. This one has a tapering top and a shaft of light extending into the sky. Kelleher wants to break ground by June.
- The ornament of Louis Sullivan. Joseph Rosa, the Art Institute's curator of architecture and design, has a timely offering after the fires that gutted three Louis Sullivan buildings in Chicago last year: A two-part show of drawings from "A System of Architectural Ornament," Sullivan's influential book about nature-inspired decoration. Twenty original pencil drawings will be exhibited in two parts, 10 at a time. The first segment, already on display, runs through Feb. 18; the second from March 4 through June 8. The drawings are in the museum's Gallery 24.
- Helmut Jahn reinvents the SRO. It's been four years since Helmut Jahn had a new building in Chicago, his handsomely streamlined State Street Village dormitory at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Now Jahn is about to unveil a green refinement of that design, the five-story Near North SRO (single-room occupancy) building at 1244 N. Clybourn Ave. Developed by the non-profit Mercy Housing Lakefront, the building will have rooftop wind turbines and other energy-saving features. The opening is scheduled for early February.
- Frank Lloyd Wright meets Mike Wallace. Here's a confrontation architecture fans should find hard to pass up: In 1957, the grand old man of American architecture submitted to questions from the future grand inquisitor of "60 Minutes." The Chicago Architecture Foundation will present "Frank Lloyd Wright: The Mike Wallace Interviews" as part of its lunchtime lecture series Feb. 7. The event at the foundation, 224 S. Michigan Ave., is free and open to the public. Reservations are not required. For more information, call 312-922-3432.
- Waves of concrete at Aqua, faceted glass at Spertus. The Architecture Foundation's lunchtime lecture series will also feature presentations on adventurous new buildings in Chicago. Jan. 24, architect Jeanne Gang, discusses her firm's plans for the 82-story Aqua Tower and its undulating concrete balconies. Feb. 14, Mark Sexton shows his firm's underconstruction Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies, notable for its faceted glass facade. Spertus will mark the first insertion of contemporary architecture in the historic Michigan Boulevard district since the district was created in 2002. Free and open to the public. Call 312-922-3432.
- Memories of Myron Goldsmith. The Arts Club of Chicago will feature large-scale, black-and-white photographs of 10 works by the late Chicago architect Myron Goldsmith, who turned the prose of structure into the poetry of architecture. Goldsmith's works range from the Cook County Administration Building (the former Brunswick Building) at 69 W. Washington St. to the Republic newspaper building in Columbus, Ind., to the unbuilt Ruck-a-Chucky Bridge in northern California. The exhibition, which will also show work by Goldsmith's students, runs from Jan. 31 to April 13. Free and open to the public. Call 312-787-3997.
- A Booth-Hansen sliver on Oak Street. One of the city's more intriguing new residential high-rises is 30 West Oak, a 24-story, 45-unit project by the Chicago firm of Booth Hansen. The slender, sleek tower has a curving south face of floor-to-ceiling glass (for open living spaces) and an angled north side of poured-in-place concrete (for private sleeping spaces). The first residents have moved in, and the tower is set to be completed in June.
- Steven Holl in Kansas City. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Mo., will open Steve Holl's controversial addition June 9. The addition extends roughly 800 feet underground to the east of the museum's 1933 Beaux-Arts building. Five irregularly-spaced glass pavilions pop above the ground, bringing natural light into galleries and major public spaces.
- Coop Himmelb(l)au in Akron. The state of Ohio, already home to radical designs by Peter Eisenman, Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid and Thom Mayne, will get its latest taste of the avant-garde July 17 with the opening of an addition to the Akron Art Museum by the Austrian firm Coop Himmelb(l)au, its first building in the United States. The design juxtaposes modern elements, such as a three-story glass lobby, with the museum's traditional red-brick structure and floats a 300-foot-long cantilevered steel "roof cloud" over the old and new buildings.
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