CHICAGO | The Elysian | 686 FT / 209 M | 60 FLOORS | COM

[Alliance]

^^^ That was the first reason I mentioned.

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by CGII

The Elysian is a total piece of excrement not because it is applying a style to a place where it 'shouldn't be' but because it is a skimpy cop out replication of that style. The materials are bad,

^ What is so bad about the materials?

the proportions are bad,

^ Everybody keeps saying that, but without elaborating. Maybe its proportions are bad because, oh I don't know, it's almost 700 feet tall and it's in a style that existed long before 700 foot buildings were built?

Is that what makes the proportions so "bad"?

the details are bad (the thing has friggin balconies)...nothing matches up with the style it is supposed to follow.

^ Well, people do like balconies, do they not? So are we in a make-believe world or are we actually trying to sell units here? Is the style that this building follows so rigid that it cannot accommodate newer forms that serve the needs of a newer generation? If not, who says so?

If it were done in the right materials, with the right massing and the right details, it could be a beautiful building (architecturally regressive, but beautiful nonetheless).

^ Okay, so you basically disagreed with Alliance's reasoning, only to end up saying pretty much the same thing he did.

I don't get you people with your "classic style X isn't 'supposed' to have such and such feature because style X was not meant to be expressed in such a manner" argument because it's silly.

One guy I knew used to criticize classicly designed houses that had neat little adornments over a garage door, saying "that garage door is a medium that style X wasn't designed for, it's a cop-out and an insult...yada yada"......Yeah, okay--I guess not having CARS in the late 19th century has nothing to do with why we don't associate garage doors with such a style

[Tom Servo]

Originally Posted by CGII

Mind you every building (save Sullivan's Transportation Building) at the Columbian Exposition was revivalist, but nobody flipped shit because it was done right.

first, WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT???? that's not even CLOSE to the truth!!! who told you that?

second, the exposition was a COMPLETE and UTTER architectural FAILURE. and it made a lot of people and architects HATE burnham.

[xraymikek]

Hello all.

Sorry to interrupt the discussion on style, but I have a quick question for anyone who is familiar with skyscraper construction and the specifics of this building.

Long story short, I have a purchase agreement from Nov 2005 for a unit in the building. The contract says that I can walk away if construction is not finished in 3 years from the date it was signed. I would like to walk away. I just got notice that they just finished floor 28, the halfway point.

QUESTION: What are the chances that they finish construction by the end of the year and start closing on units? 100%? 80%? 50%?

Any insight would be helpful as I need to decide on a course of action regarding the purchase agreement.

[VivaLFuego]

It's conceivable they could begin closings on only the lowest floors by the end of the year. The building will probably be topped out by year's end, but interior finishes will take some time thereafter. I'd put money on the top half not closing until mid 2009.

[Tom Servo]

Originally Posted by CGII

The Elysian is a total piece of excrement not because it is applying a style to a place where it 'shouldn't be' but because it is a skimpy cop out replication of that style. The materials are bad, the proportions are bad, the details are bad (the thing has friggin balconies)...nothing matches up with the style it is supposed to follow. If it were done in the right materials, with the right massing and the right details, it could be a beautiful building (architecturally regressive, but beautiful nonetheless).

the elysian could be clad in italian marble and gold and it'd still be a piece of trash. it could be a historically accurate to ugly french architecture and it's still be a piece of trash. the only thing that could ever make this building look nice is if it were stripped of its design entirely and redesigned in the spirt of modern architecture in chicago today.

it's not a question of the materials or the proportions or the street interaction or anything like that... the problem here and so often with architecture lately is the fact that it's a form of delineative architecture! architectural design should reflect what is happening right now, and should be relevant only to right here. this isn't greece, france, england, italy, or wherever. it should derive NOTHING, especially not from fucking europe; we shouldn't adopt there ugly 'styles'. god, it seems like everyone on this forum is either crazy or missing the point... jesus

[Tom Servo]

...

[CenIL_LA]

I am getting tired of the bashing. Chicago may be a modern mecca but it has never been even 10 percent done in only one style historically. There isnt even a historical precident to show that this should actually exist in Chicago. There is nothing beyond a unrealistic dream ignoring economics or desires of what the buying public actually want. One cant even ignore that boxes arent necessarily now, but generally harder to design "outside the box" because it is a static unchanging form. Since its hard to change a box, if they are your eye candy, its even harder to say it is done horribly. Boxes were the thing 40 years ago but just like pomo, they still hold a good place in current design for a reason.

There is no reason why there cant be a mixture of styles, things always change and should change. Elysian may not be historically accurate but in the history of early skyscrapers, when were they ever? Architecture can be whatever it wants to be, it just depends on personal preference, not definable terms. We arent an autocracy, architecture reflects people, and no two people are even alike. So even if someone hates this building, it is their right to do so, but forumers dont need to feel ignorant for thier opinions when they are far from it. They are just people, to which many, are trained in architecture and design related fields. Thier opinions dont come from a rube living in a rusted ford truck. If one doesnt like the styles here I would imagine he or she would be hard pressed to find enough in any other city globally that could significantly meet thier desires. Earth is not heaven, its reality. Wouldnt we all love it if the average Chicagoan could afford the best architecture? I think we all do, and Chicago is no different from any other global city. It is only a front runner in certain styles because of a select small group of individuals that studied them here by chance, often not a guided principal of an overall community. We are gifted in that respect but every city has an environment built for all social levels and economic needs.

Globally Chicago is far from replicating the old world. Other cities such as Buenos Aires and even Mexico City copied these designs to a T and in many ways have trouble distinguishing themselves from thier old world counterparts. Chicago is recognizable as unique and is no danger of going down the lemming pathway. Elysian isnt trying to be Paris, its only taking an idea. Everyone knows its different from the original styles. I guess if this is an issue we have many years of completely horrible architecture going back several hundred years all over our country. Even modernism is reflected in Europe though. Bauhaus started in Europe before it ever started another revolution here. Art Nouveau helped inspire much of our early Prairie Style architecture as well. The end result is nothing is ever truly that unique in the culture of mankind, something always precedes and inspires ideas to another stage. We are also all the same world, in the same place, trying to change for the future. We base our future on our past so similarities are hardly coincidence.

[honte]

Originally Posted by VivaLFuego

(as do the many mansions in Gold Coast, Lincoln Park etc that have been clad in the same stone-like material)

You keep mentioning these... I'd love to see photos or get addresses, in another thread, of course.

[pip]

Originally Posted by CGII

Now, I agree with you that the Elysian is entirely ugly and innapropriate, but your reasoning is wrong.

The Elysian is a total piece of excrement not because it is applying a style to a place where it 'shouldn't be' but because it is a skimpy cop out replication of that style. The materials are bad, the proportions are bad, the details are bad e thing has friggin balconies)othing matches up with the style it is supposed to follow. If it were done in the right materials, with the right massing and the right details, it could be a beautiful building (architecturally regressive, but beautiful nonetheless).

This is the Ansonia, in New York. It is a spectacular high rise done up like a French Chateau that suceeds brilliantly because the architects paid attention to detail and the developers paid pretty penny.




Mind you every building (save Sullivan's Transportation Building) at the Columbian Exposition was revivalist, but nobody flipped shit because it was done right. It's ironic that architectural styles seen today as being unique to a time period and taboo to replicate were actually replicas themselves. If you're going to building something revivalist, DO IT RIGHT. Because if you don't, you get 60 storey towers of precast concrete with little carved in lines to give the impression of limestone the developers didn't want to spend money on.

The horror, the building has balconies. Hmmmm..... if I were buying a condo I know I would want a balcony and guess what so do most people. Condo development is not a charity it is market driven. You gotta build what the public wants.

The Ansonia in NY the developers paid a pretty penny. And there in lies the problem. Not everyone has millions for a condo.

Your people are so into you your stuff its like you think everyone has millions for a condo. As you post from not these buildings but much cheaper places. If you don't like these buildings go pay for some highrise without balconies, clad in super expensive materials and inverterted at 55 degree angles yourself. Then try to sell them and see people run to pay. Just build more expensive, people will be lined up for miles. Maybe one or two buildings can be like that but do you honestly think that hundreds of highrises, 150+ in downtown since 2000, can be ultra expensive? They gotta sell and part of selling is making them WHAT people want and part of that is making them so the market can afford them.

[Jibba]

Aesthetics and economics are not inextricably linked. They certainly do have influence over each other in the grand scheme of development, but just because balconies help sell a building does not mean that aesthetic judgments about them are somehow irrelevant or unwarranted.

However, as far as balconies go, the ones on the Elysian aren't that bad, and they at least take into consideration the form of the building. Their design will at least look like a logical extension or continuation (depending on how one chooses to perceive them) of the building's shape. The same can't be said for the Park Tower, which is still a design I enjoy anyway in spite of all of its faux representations of classical architectural elements.

[pip]

Aesthetics and economics are not inextricably linked

So I've got to hear. Explain to me how you can build a 60 story building on the cheap but be built with the best materials and design. Also explain to me how you can sell super expensive condos in a building that does not have what the public wants. Not everyone has tons of money for what you want let alone buy what they don't want.

[Atomic Glee]

Originally Posted by AdrianXSands

the problem here and so often with architecture lately is the fact that it's a form of delineative architecture! architectural design should reflect what is happening right now, and should be relevant only to right here.

That statement absolutely terrifies me. I would not want to live in a world where architecture was forced to relate "only to right here." Sorry, but I don't want to wipe hundreds or thousands of years of styles and history off the table just because they're not "right here." History should not be verboten. Anything should be up for use and reinterpretation.

These are the buildings people have to interact with daily as passersby, and live within as condo owners. They shouldn't be forced to live in acute-angled glass & titanium dodecahedrons or glass boxes with wavy balconies just because you think architecture is a form of high art and should never reflect human history. Architecture is something else entirely - thinking of it as some sort of art that must never look back to the dead, useless past and always forge new oddly-shaped paths to the future just seems like a waste.

So a developer wants to build a 70-story French Second Empire-inspired condo tower. So what? Why not? Gothic cathedral designers weren't applying their trade to 57-story office towers, but I'm damn sure glad that the Woolworth Building exists in New York.

(I'd also like to point out that a lot of the much-vaunted ahistorical modernism espoused by people on this forum is, itself, not much more than a pastiche of early modernist forms in many cases.)

[Jibba]

^I decided to take this discussion into the "State of Chicago Architecture" thread in order to not flood this thread any further with my probably too-lengthy dialogue. I think it could be interesting to see where it goes outside of the confines of being off topic.

[honte]

Originally Posted by pip

Aesthetics and economics are not inextricably linked

So I've got to hear. Explain to me how you can build a 60 story building on the cheap but be built with the best materials and design. Also explain to me how you can sell super expensive condos in a building that does not have what the public wants. Not everyone has tons of money for what you want let alone buy what they don't want.

The point here is that, if you don't have the money to achieve the look you want, don't attempt it! Those are hallmarks of class and taste.

There are plenty of wonderful things that can be done on a budget. But if LaGrange wants to do La Grande France Romantique then it had better be done right. Part of what is so trashy about his design is the fact that these people - led on by their architect - are buying into this false mentality of grandeur that simply does not exist.

As I have pointed out before, go look at the lobby of the "Pinnacle" as an example of LaGrange's fantasy worlds. Nothing could be more pathetic. This one is supposed to be Gothic, by some stretch of the imagination. From the exterior, check out the fake library that no one ever enters, and look at the "Great old texts" they have on the shelves. These literally are sappy romance novels that someone bought from a thrift store, collecting dust. They are expecting that no one will ever even take the time to look closely at what is on display, instead just taking comfort in knowing that they live in a "grand" building with a "big grand library" downstairs. This is a microcosmic view of the way people approach this whole type of retro architecture – they think they get the idea, never take the time to really learn what it is or what it stands for, and are simply content to use the Cliff’s Notes. Personally, I would expect far, far more from the high-end of our marketplace. On the other hand, these people are also relying on their architect to deliver something wonderful, to serve as the expert on such matters, and they are being misled.

Jaroslaw might consider this to be a fascinating snapshot of Chicago's cultural sensibility at the moment, but I counter that the artist/architect should never sit idly by. That is not the role of the architect. The job is to please the client and erect a safe structure, while meeting the professional and ethical demands of one’s profession, just as with any highly skilled form of employment. The architect has to put his foot down at some point; otherwise, we'd all be living soulless hovels.

Last, I really don't buy the bit about the buying public really favoring these buildings. People want buildings with character, soul, distinction. But ultimately, it is always, location, location, location. I have talked to many affluent people who live in buildings like this one, and they usually are hardly proud of the architecture. In fact, they often are somewhat embarrassed of it. "But the prices were right, the floor plan was nice, the views were nice, the bay window thingy was nice, I trusted the developer, etc etc." Exterior appearance literally is one of the very last things people consider when making such a purchase; if not exterior appearance, then certainly what historic style is being emulated is not a concern. Consider, they really are just buying off plans anyway, maybe some water-colored "rendition" of the facade.

Unfortunately, too many of the modern buildings that were delivered were undistinguished. Glass curtain walls done without care and attention to detail - like anything else - come off looking cheap and unsophisticated, or sterile, or bland, or soulless. But there are other varieties of modernism all around the world, quite successful, that would meet all of the demands / interests of today's buyer without being anachronistic throwbacks.

All of the objections people lob at the derivative, uninspired PoMo stuff like LaGrange's could be applied to the bad Modernism too. If LaGrange tried his own hand (not a hired hand) at Modernism, I don't have much confidence it would be much better – probably worse, really. But the difference is that Modernism is still "of the epoch," to quote Mies.

The overall points I am trying to make: 1) There is no substitute for reality, and the buying public should not be misguided by their architect into a false sense of their possessions (this is analogous to a watch dealer pawning off a plated piece as solid gold). 2) The argument (LaGrange's own) that the public simply doesn't want modernism holds far less weight than one would think.

[aaron38]

Originally Posted by honte

From the exterior, check out the fake library that no one ever enters, and look at the "Great old texts" they have on the shelves. These literally are sappy romance novels that someone bought from a thrift store, collecting dust. They are expecting that no one will ever even take the time to look closely at what is on display, instead just taking comfort in knowing that they live in a "grand" building with a "big grand library" downstairs.

This is hardly new though. Fitzgerald wrote about this in 1925 in The Great Gatsby, referencing Gatsby's library of uncut books - books that have never been read and never will be - that look good on a shelf.
It's a nuevo rich phenomenon - newly rich who aren't going to wait 80 years for a family library to develop or for their building to become an exclusive historic landmark. They want it now. So they buy manufactured history.

People have been chasing history for a long time, and I doubt it will stop any time soon.
But I have to mildly disagree, I do think people care about exterior appearance and there's a market for new buildings that look old.

In Palatine a developer put in a street of rowhomes, and the big selling point was "They'll look like they were built 80 years ago", and the buyers snapped them up.

[Mr Roboto]

Im actually glad this style exists, I just wish it wasnt so damn prevalent in one part of downtown. But, variety is needed, and if not for so much other post modern stuff in this area, I see nothing wrong with this building given the styles of today (which is apparently dictated by the current economic state and lack of skilled labor).

[Dr. Taco]

^ not trying to toot your horn or anything, honte, but that whole entire post was simply amazing. So completely unbiasedly analytical, and I have to agree with it all

But on the subjective side of things, even though I am far from excited about this building, I've still adopted a "good enough" feeling about the building. I mean, plain and simple, its too late for this building, so I might as well convince myself that things aren't so bad. and you know what, in the world of pick-and-choose comparisons, things just aren't so bad. There are buildings in downtown spread around that I'm just embarrassed to look at, and so far Elysian is not one of those buildings

[CenIL_LA]

The only issues that lie with an architect standing up for thier work to the levels of high quality is that, in the end, the architect rarely calls all those shots. Its the architect that is sometimes making the rendering but they are also on the payroll of a developer not vice-versa. Renderings may even be done by a subcontracted source. Renderings taken may not always be the most up to date because budgets are not always set up to show all changes that occur or how the tiny details are being carried out necessarily. As a business expense (architect) of a developer do you want to spend more money than you are getting paid? Developers are the ones ruining good portions of the designs, not the designers.

The only thing an architect can really do is stick up for their designs the best they can. Generally the only thing they can honestly ask for is that legally thier designs are meeting the safety and welfare of the occupants or walk away forfitting costs assumed. A developer will listen to a designer but in the end they are most concerned with thier wallet. They are also concerned that they wont get sued while somewhat meeting the architects vision to thier own standards. If a developer wants to skimp on materials/better details they will certainly do it, and they do. I would agree I would love to see this POMO done with the greatest care but we would need a different class of developer in Chicago to do that. An architect selling thier soul, does it because they need the job/market to keep thier companies or employees afloat. If someone is always willing to completely bend over to get a job, you better be at least willing to put up with a few things you dont like. Few architects honestly want to design crap.

[DCCliff]

This all needs to go to the state-of-architecture thread. But it's a great discussion.

And just a quick note that I'm surprised nobody flashed on 1550 N State. Less ornate than the Ansonia, but less roccoco as well. Actually not a bad adaptation over all for its time, even though there is a generaous use of terra cotta - a material not ever used in the same fashion on the buildings of the era that 1550 emulates.