Sea of Foam at Maggie Daley; Matt Urbanski explains it at the Art Institute Tonight

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When it's finished, sometime next spring, Maggie Daley Park will be something.  Everything from open meadow, to a climbing wall and skating ribbon.  You can find out all about it tonight, Monday, May 12th, at 6:30 p.m. in Fullerton Hall at the Art Institute, as Matthew Urbanski of the park's designer, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, talks about Chicago Parks: Landscape, Imagination, and the Livable City.

For now, however, the site is something completely different, but just as a remarkable. Looking out from the viewing platform that Frank Gehry's closed-off BP Bridge has become, you now encounter, as far as the eye can sea, a vast ocean of white, pillow-like dominoes.  These are the legos that will form the foundation for Maggie Daley's varied landscape.

They're made of of �Foam-Control EPS Geofoam� a lightweight polysystrene that will form the foundation for the varying-level landscaping.

According to a story by Tina Sfondeles in the Chicago Sun-Times, the material has already been used at Soldier Field and Daley Plaza, and it never dematerializes.  It's claimed to be waterproof, which is a big deal, as the previous park on the site Daley Bi-Centennial, including beautiful mature trees was torn up and thrown away because was water was leaking into the garage on which the park was built, necessitating everything being removed for a new sealing to be installed.

This will be the last time you can see them, the great waves of dominoes surging across the site, awaiting careful placement before they disappear before the earth.

The sea even has its own serpent coursing through it, in the person of the winding contours of the BP Bridge.

It's one of the great shows of the summer.  Enjoy it while you can.

Read More:

Valkenburgh on Daley Bi, North Grant Park (with video)

Reinventing Daley Bi

Goodbye Daley Bi; Hello Maggie Daley Park  - stripping North Grant Park bare

(Better) Performing Seals fine new home at Maggie Daley Park

(Better) Performing Seals find new home at Maggie Daley Park

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It all ties into one of Richard M. Daley's patented 99-year privitization deals. In 2006, a consortium led by Morgan Stanley paid Chicago $563 million for a 99 year lease of the four parking garages along the city's lakefront.  $208 million went to paying off the bonds for Millennium Park, and $65 million  was earmarked for rebuilding the East Monroe Street garage.

The East Monroe Street garage is important because it's beneath what was Daley Bicentennial plaza, completed in 1976, a 20-acre park south of Randolph and east of Columbus constructed over former Illinois Central railyards.   The rebuilding of garage included fixing leaks that threatened to inundate the parked cars with water.  The reported cause of those leaks was the deterioration of the old membrane that separated Daley Bi from the roof the garage beneath.  The only solution?  Tearing out the park - removing every flower, ever lawn, every tree, every last inch of earth in order to be able to replace the membrane. 

That event was seen by Richard M. Daley as the perfect opportunity to jam a new building for the Chicago Children's Museum onto the site.  After that effort collapsed, the city turned to noted designer Michael Van Valkenburgh to come up with a new design for the replacement park, now renamed to honor the late Maggie Daley.

We're at the midpoint of that project.  Right now, the new membrane is being put down over the concrete roof of the garage, and it's expected it will result in longer-lasting, better performing seals.  According to Grant Park Conservancy's Bob O'Neill . .  .

The new waterproofing is a hot applied monolithic membrane system that has a series of protection layers and drainage layers above it.  The benefit of this system is that it has minimal seams because of its hot-applied installation.  There are several drainage measures in place to convey water off of the roof before it even comes in contact with the membrane itself.  As a result, a much longer lifespan is anticipated from this system than the previous installation.

rendering: Michael Van Valkenburgh

Which would be really good, because it would be a scandalous loss to have to rip out Van Valkenburgh's new park after only a few decades. 

Maggie Daley Park is now scheduled to open in October of next year.  The Tribune recently reported that the city was about to award a $42.5 million contract to Walsh Construction to construct the park, which now has an estimated cost of $55 million.  That compares to the roughly $35 million Chicago Park District Director of Development Gia Biagi said was available from the lease proceeds. Biagi talked about private funding making up the difference.

The Park District has given Maggie Daley Park its own website.  It includes regular updates, and two cool webcams that give wide-angle views of the site, letting you follow the progress of construction in real time.

Read More:

Maggie Daley Park (official website)

Forever Open Clear and Free (except when it comes to me) -The Battle Against Building a new Chicago Children's Museum in Grant Park

A Portrait of Mayor Daley's "Nowhere"

Goodbye Daley Bi: Hello Maggie Daley Park - stripping North Grant Park bare

BP Gehry Now Actually Bridge to Nowhere (Temporarily)

Reinventing Daley Bi

Van Valkenburgh on Daley Bi, North Grant Park

Privatization and the Public Interest (a report from Illinois PIRG)

The Chicago Parking Garage Leases (Civic Federation Report)

Sour Disposition Friday: Vue53 and The 606

OK, I apologize in advance, but I just have to get it out of my system . . .

Valerio Dewalt Train does good work.  I've recently posted on their Earl Shapiro Hall, at the U of C Lab Schools, and I'm quite fond of EnV, across Wells from the Merchandise Mart.

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However, with apologies to the Infinite Monkey Theorem, I'm thinking that if you combined a roomful of architects with a roomful of community activists and let them loose on 3D rendering software for an infinite amount of time, the result would look something like this . . .

rendering:  Valerio Dewalt Train

This is Vue53, the end product of a lot of iterations and consultations with the Hyde Park community.  It replaces a Mobil gas station and car wash at 53rd, between Kenwood and Kimbark.  As you can see in this presentation, Vue53 meets all kinds of desirable metrics on affordable housing, minority participation, transit-oriented development and the avoidance of TIF funding.  Everyone appears to agree it's a wonderful thing.

Am I the only who finds this design, especially compared to the new construction in and around Harper Court, numbingly banal?  It looks like the alley end of a big-box store, spit up into the sky. 

rendering: Valerio Dewalt Train

My bet is this is the kind of building that, only a few decades from now, will keep a new generation of community activists very busy trying to figure out a way to get it torn down.

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Meanwhile, on the near northwest side, another hardy group of community activists is about to see their decade-long dream realized.  Work has begun on The Bloomingdale Trail, the conversion of an abandoned 2.7 stretch of rail line into a raised public park modeled after the wildly successful High Line that's revitalized New York City's meatpacking district.  A design team led by ARUP and including Ross Barney Architects, ARUP and Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, has created a striking vision . . .

It will be a great thing.  Even the name - roll it around on your tongue: Bloooooooomingdale.  Just that long vowel sound carries the promise of something wonderful.  The very word - Blooming - evokes images of all the wonderful landscaping, �Dale� the way it flows through the neighborhoods like a valley on a viaduct, and �Trail� the spirit of adventure that invites you to explore it.

Well, we can't have that, can we?

Members of the project's advisory board emitted the bureaucrat's native cry, �Bring on the consultants!� and a consultant appeared, charged with creating a new name for the project,  encompassing both the reconstructed viaduct and the five parks to be aligned with it.

And what was the  product of all their labors?  (Wait for it):

No, I'm not making this up.  It was unveiled this past June, and far more interesting than the name itself is the enterprise with which various participants began spinning, spinning, spinning the Emperor's New Clothes to convince themselves this wasn't a nakedly bone-headed idea.

�When it was first presented, we all sort of went, �huh?� one participant told The Huffington Post. �And then when it�s explained to you, it makes an enormous amount of sense.� New Rule: If you need a personal briefing to even begin to figure out what a name means, it's probably not a good name.

The consultants said people didn't understand what the Bloomingdale Trail referred to.  And when we say �people�, we mean out-of-town donors.  Apparently it was felt it will be easier to raise money for �The 606�.  (Which, in case you haven't guessed, refers to the three-digit prefix of the zip codes used, not just in the vicinity of the Bloomingdale Trail, but across every last one of Chicago's 234 square miles.)

The new name is the work of the usually highly capable Branding Agency Landor Associates, which somehow didn't seem to notice the tenuous relationship between �The 606� and the firm's own Eight Principles of Naming.

1.  Make it memorable.
�The 606� is about as memorable as the serial number on the ticket you get from the dispenser at the deli counter.
2.  Fill it with meaning.  
�The 606� - Is it a highway designation? An area code?  A sign of demonic possession that lost its nerve?
3.  Say it out loud.
Watch people stare and wait for the men with the big nets to take you away.
4.  Don't wait to fall in love.
Fast forward right to the loathing
5.  Listen to your fear.
�I wrote a big fat check for this?�
6.  Stand out in a crowd
Right next to The 202, The 64, The 8 1/2 x ll, and The �You are number six . . .�

7.  Too much is never enough.
And �The 606� is the day you went home early because you didn't want to miss Jersey Shore.
8.  Expect its story to evolve.
Some day, Timmy, you could become The 606-A!

�The 606�,  devoid of meaning and belligerently generic, will stand with �We are Beatrice,� in the Pantheon of stupid naming tricks.

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OK.  That's done.  I'm going to go lie down now.