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

[wrab]

Originally Posted by ardecila

^^ We dodged a bullet on Flair Tower. The old design is on the left, the new design is on the right.

Yikes - no kidding.

My chronology could be off, but seems to me that the mansards really started popping after Daley's big trip to Paris - maybe a misguided effort by developers to curry favor & ensure approval for their projects. Or maybe it's just Lucien's pernicious influence.

[photoLith]

Originally Posted by ardecila

^^ Chicago made the flat-topped skyscraper fashionable, so you'll have to excuse us if we look down on buildings with decorative roofs, cupolas, or spires.

Seriously, though - even before Modernism, Chicago was building bulky box-shaped buildings while New York built slender towers that tapered to a pointy tip.

Yes, I realize that but I was talking about the new apartment buildings going up around the Gold Coast area. They all look terribly cheap and crappy. This building and Park Tower are a welcome change. Dont get me wrong, I love me some flat topped buildings in Chicago but not so much the new crap apartment high rises going up now that are just boxes with glass square window and thats it.

[honte]

Originally Posted by chicubs111

Im not talking about the beigh tower part but that the city need more buildings with ornamental tops...think woolworth building in NY and such...

Your comment interests me because, in general, the revival styles across time have been engendered by people lusting after something they don't already have.

Modern or progressive movements, on the other hand, are typified by people looking to improve upon the past for the future.

This doesn't forbid dynamic roof lines, but it does describe the difference between a sentimental gesture and an act of design.

[cityofblindinglights]

from this morning

[stuntin88]

The main positive for me with this building, is that taller buildings in that area are starting to move west. Hopefully when the economy rebounds, that trend will continue with some stronger designs.

[Jaroslaw]

Originally Posted by honte

Your comment interests me because, in general, the revival styles across time have been engendered by people lusting after something they don't already have.

Modern or progressive movements, on the other hand, are typified by people looking to improve upon the past for the future.

This doesn't forbid dynamic roof lines, but it does describe the difference between a sentimental gesture and an act of design.

Your comment interests me as a good example of the kind of verbal legerdemain practiced so widely by defenders of modernism and modernity. Take the word "revival." Already a negative connotation there: reheating, repeating, redoing. Instead, we could use another word: "celebrating." Or even, "echoing," or "affirming." As in, "Affirming the best elements of Western architecture." Quite different, hm?

I just gave a lecture on British architecture last week, and I found that I couldn't get it started without the Parthenon and the Pantheon. Those two buildings come back again and again, but there is no question of "revival." Something broader and deeper is going on. Tradition.

The description of modernism as "progressive" is also a typical and questionable trope, in architecture just as in other fields. Modernism's roots come just as much from denigration and resentment as they do from any notion of "progress." The notion that "modernism" simply wants to "improve" the past overlooks its historical ambition to abolish history and tradition in the name a of radical rearrangement not only of aesthetics but society and politics as well.

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by Jaroslaw

The notion that "modernism" simply wants to "improve" the past overlooks its historical ambition to abolish history and tradition in the name a of radical rearrangement not only of aesthetics but society and politics as well.

^ Wow. This topic isn't in my area of expertise, but I have to admit this statement partially rings true in some of the discussions I've heard on these forums for the past 4 years

[honte]

Originally Posted by Jaroslaw

Your comment interests me as a good example of the kind of verbal legerdemain practiced so widely by defenders of modernism and modernity. Take the word "revival." Already a negative connotation there: reheating, repeating, redoing. Instead, we could use another word: "celebrating." Or even, "echoing," or "affirming." As in, "Affirming the best elements of Western architecture." Quite different, hm?

...

Well, didn't you just open up a can of worms?

I don't think this is right place to get into this, nor do I think I really want to. However, I will state for the record that "Revival" is an official historical term that has been commonly employed to describe these styles, and even in the 1920s was frequently used by the designers themselves. You will also note that the Revival styles are never very true to the forms they revive, hence the appropriateness of the name. It usually has very little to do with an on-going tradition.

I also might as well be on record that I disagree with most of your other statements. I'll leave it at that.

[Jibba]

Tonight (a little out of focus, but you get the idea):

[Jibba]

This evening:

[Jaroslaw]

Originally Posted by honte

Well, didn't you just open up a can of worms?

I don't think this is right place to get into this, nor do I think I really want to. ...

No, I don't want to get into this either, just providing a corrective to some loaded terminology.

[Ch.G, Ch.G]

Originally Posted by Jaroslaw

No, I don't want to get into this either, just providing a corrective to some loaded terminology.

That's fine, but it cuts both ways. You use terms like "celebrating" to describe the "traditional" architecture of the later 19th and earlier 20th Centuries but it is equally as guilty of imposing a strict worldview, in this case "civilizing" the "boorish" elements of society through classical references which often boiled down to simple Greco-Roman design motifs. If Modernism as it was originally conceived saw the world through a socialist lens (which didn't last long, mind you), then many "traditionalists"/revivalists saw it through a classist one.

[SkokieSwift]

From Clark St...




From Superior St...



Click here for the rest of the photo set...

[honte]

^ The snow shot over the park is quite nice, thanks.

[Ch.G, Ch.G]

^ I agree. It's a shame about all that stuff in the background though.

[jc5680]

12.27

[wrab]

1/2:

[NYC2ATX]

Wow, those balcony railings aren't pretentious at all.

Still, they look good with the building. I'm cautiously pessimistically optimistic.

[ardecila]

^^ We've had the railing debate before... but I'll go on record (again) as saying that I really like them, and I believe they match the rest of the architecture in a harmonious fashion. This is unlike most revivalist buildings that use very simple rectilinear railings which do not square with the rest.

[jc5680]

Originally Posted by ardecila

^^ We've had the railing debate before... but I'll go on record (again) as saying that I really like them, and I believe they match the rest of the architecture in a harmonious fashion. This is unlike most revivalist buildings that use very simple rectilinear railings which do not square with the rest.

I have to agree with you. The dark black adds a necessary element of contrast that seems to be lost in the rest of the building. But seeing them up makes me question again, why are the window panes in the tower portion white. It makes no sense to me at all, the panes in the lower portions are black, the railings are black, and the light fixtures we have seen are black.