Chicago Christmas Tree Lighting Night 2013

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Great Architecture is Fleeting, Ugly Garages Forever

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Even as Curbed Chicago is showing the scaffolding going up around the concrete cloverleafs of Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital,  a 500-car urban cockroach of a parking garage at Randolph and Wells is getting a reprieve.

We had written back in May about the new 23-story tower by Lothan Van Hook DeStefano Architecture that was set to replace the raw-boned garage.

151 North Franklin, John Ronan Architects

Last week, however, Ryan Ori of Crain's Chicago Business reported that the garage was sold out from under the tower's developer, J. Paul Beitler.  Competing developer John Buck has purchased air rights above the garage to stop any construction from blocking the views from Buck's proposed new 36-story 151 North Franklin, just next door.  151 North Franklin tenants and the apartment dwellers of Randolph Tower, just across the L tracks, will now be able to amuse themselves observing each other's behavior patterns without obstruction.  According to Crain's, Buck still needs city approval and an anchor tenant to get his 825,000 square-foot project off the drawing board, but that hasn't stopped him from creating a 151 North Franklin website which includes this video walkthrough . . .

151 North Franklin from REA on Vimeo.

The design, which would be the first skyscraper by John Ronan Architects,  includes this deep dish lobby space . . .

151 North Franklin, John Ronan Architects

The tower will replace a nondescript Walgreen's on the corner of Randolph and Franklin that was previously home to the legendary �Max the Hat's� Zimmerman's Liquors, in it's time proclaimed to be the largest wine and spirits store in the world.

In addition to its own plaza . . .

151 will share the park across the street separating it from Buck's 155 North Wacker tower to the west.  The project will be presented to the community at a public meeting next Monday.

According to Crain's, Beitler is scouting another location for his tower.  The garage's new owner, InterPark Holdings - which �parks over 20 million cars annually� - is expected to undertake some renovations at the nearly high-century old garage.  Let's hope its intrinsic charm survives.

Light and Shade at Polish Triangle: Wheeler Kearns' 1611 West Division

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Except for the required shadow analysis, how often do architects study the effect of light on their buildings.  You could argue, �What's the point?�  The sun comes, the sun goes, hour to hour, day to day, season to season.  There's not much you can do about it.  It is what it is.

Still, sunlight makes dramatic differences not only in how we see buildings and, quite possibly, but how they affect our psychological balance.  This is the landmark former Home Bank and Trust at Polish Triangle on a overcast day.

And this is how it looked a couple weeks ago in full sunlight.  The heavy stone takes on a mimicking lightness, becoming almost luminous.

The day I stopped by, it was well into afternoon, and so the shot you see at the top of this post of Wheeler Kearns Architects ' 1611 West Division, which began welcoming tenants last month, was on the shadow side of the sun, tending to flatten the contours of its jagged facades, just as it does with classically-styled bank building under similar conditions.

Walking back to the western side of the building, the impression was quite different . . .

The building goes full-up 3-D.  The metallic metal jigsaw pieces pop, stressing a verticality held together by the black spandrels.  The windows become cool blue streams of reflected sky.  The tall concrete service core at the corner becomes the anchor that holds all the lightness in place.  What appears in shade as a monolithic metal box with perforations, becomes, in sunlight, an articulated facade of discrete elements in lively conterpoint.

Clearly, Wheeler Kearns was looking for a new way for designing an anchor building at a major intersection, something between the heavy stone massing of traditional design, and the generic  sameness of the modernist glass box . . .

A page on the projects website discussing the architecture refers to �an expressed circulation core pulls away to clearly read as a separate public entry to a mix use of offices, exercise and bicycle storage above." 

Holding the Corner, Framing a Gateway.
Responding to the pivotal location on the park and the communities expressed desire for a major building/gateway to and from Division Street, 99? apartments are built above, with easy access to public transport and the city. The perfect opportunity to use Transit Oriented Design strategies.

Folded Facades Give Back.
The two street facades are pushed back, creating an enigmatic profile from the street, the facets catching light in subtle ways, emphasizing verticality. The sidewalk experience benefits from these widened pedestrian ways, around the bus shelter and puts the retail more in view.

A Woven Fa�ade. Thought of as a mass wrapped by fabric, the fa�ade is created by luminous, vertical metal panels and deeply recessed windows, more open where living occurs, more closed where sleeping does. Implicitly acknowledging the varying characters within, each fa�ade varies in composition as it rises, making each apartment a unique experience.'

In direct response to the neighborhood and city, the project eliminates parking for residents, creating a development marketed entirely towards mass transit goers, bicyclists and pedestrians. It also addresses the larger environmental goal of providing higher density housing and services without adding un-desired traffic. The project is a rare example of cooperation and collaboration between community, municipality, developer and architect that embodies the vision and mission of Wheeler Kearns Architects.

As discussed by Chris Bentley in his report for the  Architects Newspaper's Chris Bentley, the community's campaign for something more ambitious than the usual Walgreen's with surface parking dates back to 2007.

Served by three major bus lines and the Division stop on the CTA Blue Line, 1611 actually walks the TOD talk.  Although the building includes retail on the first floor, offices and studio space on the second, and 99 apartments on the top eight floors, the only parking is nine spaces for the retailers, first-come/first-served, at the adjacent Wendy's parking lot.  

Known as the Tower of Pizza Hut after the site's previous tenant, 1611's design has inspired spirited discussion, which is welcome.  The great banks and department stores that anchored our neighborhoods for most of the 20th century are long gone; the proud buildings they constructed survive as historical artifacts often starving for viable re-use.  We need new ways for larger-scale structures to visually anchor the �town squares� that channel the character of the city's neighborhoods.  Wheeler-Kearns 1611 is a bold calling card in that debate. 

On a related note  . . .

From Drugs to Dollars to Deli: the story of Walgreens and the Landmark Noel State Bank

A Preview: The new Jones College Prep at Night, plus image updates for the Hilton Garden Inn.

Yesterday, in his newsletter to constituents, 42nd Ward Alderman Brendan Reilly released a link to high-res renderings of the Hilton Garden Inn project on East Wacker, so we've updated our own report from this week,  adding floor plans and the section you see above.  Crain's Chicago Business used our interview with Reilly as the basis for their Thursday story on National Association of Realtors proposal for a new tower on North Michigan..  Read: Alderman Reilly Puts the Brakes on the Realtors, plus What's Up With that Shear Wall at the Hilton Garden Inn?

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Last night, I had an amazing tour of the new William Jones College Preparatory High on South State Street with Perkins+Will's Ralph Johnson and Bryan Schabel, Chicago Public Building Commission Executive Director Erin Lavin Cabonargi, and Jones Principal Dr. Joseph Powers, who were all extremely generous with their time.  The new Jones is the quintessential urban school, with its large expanses of windows and multiple terraces taking often spectacular advantage of the South Loop cityscape that surrounds it.  Dr. Powers provided an especially rich insight into how the building functions in actual day-to-day use.  I hope to be writing an extensive report in the new few weeks, but to whet your appetite, here are just a few photos from last night . . .

 

Our forthcoming overview will be copiously illustrated.  We took a lot of pictures, some of them actually in focus.  You can also see a great timeline photoset of the project in daylight, from drilling caissons to completion, on the PBC website here.

Ronan's Stackables: Erie Elementary Charter School's new addition

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Last Thursday marked the neighborhood open house for a new addition to the Erie Elementary Charter School designed by John Ronan Architects.  The school was founded in 2005 as part of former Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley's Renaissance 2010 project to create 100  new schools.  It's run by the Erie Neighborhood House, a social service agency founded in 1870 to serve what was then the neighborhood's Ukrainian immigrant community.

Erie Elementary Charter opened in 2005 with 80 students in the century-old St. Mark's school building, about half a mile to the south.  In 2010, it moved to its present location at 1405 North Washtenaw.  That building dates back to 1960, when, with 21 classrooms and a 1,000 student capacity, it was constructed as a school for St. Fidelis Church across the street, which had been serving Humboldt Park's blue collar Polish Catholics since its opening in 1926.  In 1960's, the neighborhood began its transition to a Latino community.  Attendance declined, and after structural issues arose with the church building, it was demolished in 1968.  It's still a parking lot today.  Mass was moved to the cafeteria of the school, until  church and school were closed in 2006 and merged with St. Aloysius Parish.

image: Google Earth

An apartment building on the corner site just south of the school was demolished to make way for Erie Elementary's new 16,000 square-foot addition, built with $12 million of funding from the Illinois Jobs Now! program.  Ground was broken in April of last year, and construction completed in about a year and a half.  Ronan's new building packs a lot of program into a constrained site, and is expected to help support an increase in the school's capacity to 400 students. from Kindergarten to 8th grade.

St. Fidelis Elementary brought a bracing contrast of International Style modernism to its Humboldt Park neighborhood.  Fifty years later, it hasn't had much influence on the neighborhood.  Here and there, you'll new construction in a modern idiom . . .

 . . . but the historic traditionally-styled architecture has proven both resilient and inviting, especially when it's rehabbed and spruced up with a new coat of paint. . .

Now Ronan's more contemporary kind of contrast has nestled its way into this historic working-class community.  In the words of the architects, the exterior's pre-cast concrete panels, with a ground and polished finish, are �stacked like blocks to lend a playful character to this elementary school addition in Chicago that responds to the owner�s modest budget, . . . transforms an otherwise commonplace building component, and offers the institution a simple yet noble character.�

The carefully considered geometrics extend even to the alley entrance . . .

The playfulness of those �stacked blocks� also manage to play fast and loose with what the exterior seems to represent.  It reads as a double-height ground floor, topped by second and third floors and a cornice.

In the interior layout, however, the only double-height component of the ground floor is the reception area . . .

Image courtesy of John Ronan Architects

. . . surrounded by two floors of spaces.  On the first floor, there's a computer lab and an adult education/ large conference room.  On the second floor, a library . . .

Image courtesy of John Ronan Architects

. . . after school lounge, play and conference rooms.  What reads on outside as the second and third floors is, in fact, a double-height gymnasium . . .

Image courtesy of John Ronan Architects

. . . with a rooftop play area at the fourth level . . .

As you can see in these illustrations, one of the great things about Ronan's addition is the way those supersized-windows and rooftop openings bring the historic architecture of the surrounding neighborhood into the very contemporary interiors.  Outside and in, abstracted modern meets ornament-rich tradition to create a bracing, contrapuntal urban fabric interweaving the physical expression of successive moments in time.

Last Three Days for Kickstarter Campaign to Restore Alfonso Iannelli's graveside memorial

Color pencil rendering by Alfonso Iannelli

 2013 has been the year that brought Chicago sculptor, designer and architect Alfonso Iannelli out of the shadows, with both a major exhibition at the Cultural Center curated by Tim Samuelson, and a lavishly illustrated monograph by David Jameson, Alfonso Iannelli: Modern by Design.

Now, there's only only this Saturday to help a Kickstarter campaign to restore Iannelli's monument to Georgia Guard make its $15,000 goal.  Iannelli created the memorial in 1927 in Park Ridge's Town of Maine Cemetery for the child of a close friend. The plot is also Iannelli's own final unmarked resting place.

Richard Nickel photograph

Ultimately, the larger plan includes creating a marker for Iannelli.  For now, the Kickstarter campaign, administered through Preservation Chicago, hopes to begin to restore the cast-concrete monument to Georgia Guard, which, having reached the end of its own natural life, has weathered to the point of near collapse.

The Kickstarter campaign must reach its $15,000 goal by 11:00 a.m. EST, this Saturday, November 23rd, or the funding will be lost.  You can read more and contribute here. 

UPDATE [11/23/2013]:  With 90 minutes to go, the campaign has met and exceeded its goal, with $17,036 in pledges.

Read More:

Artist Rediscovered: Alfonso Iannelli: Modern by Design

Creation and the Politics of Gender:  Modernism's Messengers - the Art of Alfonso and Margaret Iannelli.

Alderman Reilly put the brakes to the Realtors, plus What's Up with that Shear Wall at the new Hilton Garden Inn?

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The Billy Goat Tavern and Benito Ju�rez can rest easy, at least for a while.  According to 42nd ward alderman Brendan Reilly, the bulldozers won't be coming anytime soon to the National Association of Realtors Building just north of the Wrigley Building on.Michigan Avenue.

 �As far as I'm concerned, the project that was described in the paper last week is not real.  I have not reviewed any materials related to massing, design, traffic - any of it.  In fact the first I heard about a Realtor Building demolition was when I read about it in the newspapers.  So if the local alderman's not aware of all these grand plans, it isn't real.  Unfortunately, when leaks like that occur, it scares a lot of people, [Billy Goat owner] Sam Sianis down in the base - a lot of people care about the Plaza of the Americas, especially me, because I'm the one who compelled the Realtors to repair it on their dime.�

42nd ward Alderman Brendan Reilly

Reilly, responding last night to a Chicago Tribune article last week on the Realtors plans for a one-to-two million square foot tower on their site, clarified the situation with the Avenue of Americas plaza, anchored by the statue of Benito Ju�rez, that separates the Realtors building from the Wrigley annex.

�It's not for them to tear down.  Those are all city easements under there.  And by the way, I would never let them take away the Plaza of the Americas.  It's a very important plaza to a lot of people in Chicago.  So whatever plans they want to develop, I'm all ears, but they have not come in to share with me .�

�They have a lot of work to do before they can come in and see me, pitch me on a proposal, but whatever they come up with, whether it involves taking that building down or not, it's going to be subject to a very rigorous public process, and it will be open to the public.  This will be a very deliberative process, so nothing's going to get done in the middle of night over there. �

As we near the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy this Friday, another historic factor of the current building came to light in a column by the Sun-Times' Neil Steinberg.  In 1963, the Realtors building, then the Apollo Savings building, was the headquarters of the broadcast division of United Press International, and it was where the bulletins on the breaking news of the death of the president went out to the world.

Reilly spoke at a meeting he sponsored last night at Harry Weese's 17th Church of Christ Scientist at which plans for a new 25-story Hilton Garden Inn on a small vacant lot next to the church were presented to the community for comments.

unlike what this photograph may imply, architect David Ervin's hands are actually completely normal

Project architect David Ervin of G/R/E/C architects explained that there are no windows along the western facade of the hotel because, according to Chicago's building code, they would require a 12-foot setback that would take up a quarter of the tight, 48-foot wide site.  Instead, the facing of wall behind 17th Church will be what, according to Ervin, 

. . . could best be described as a mosaic of metal panel.  There's five tones of metal panel.  What we did is we worked with a photograph of the Chicago river with a kind of of light reflectance on the river itself .  We digitized that photograph so [the panels] are acting as pixels.  The further away you get , the more you might perceive the idea of light reflecting on water.  We thought it was a really nice way to handle this facade, which though it doesn't have any windows, has a very, very prominent building to the west of it.  We wanted to frame that building .  We wanted to make the composition of the church building and our building one actually working with the other.  So we think that by going from the darker to the lighter tones we  create a frame for the church building. 

Ervin assured the audience that the wall of panels of aluminum with a baked-on finish wouldn't create the kind of death-ray metal facades that have lately been in the news for burning up cars and gardens in London and Dallas.

Our intent was not to have a reflecting building in that sense in any way, shape or form.  It's not going to be a mirror reflectance.  We're going for matte finish tones.  Inherently, it will has some reflectivity, of course, but it's going to be what I would a low level, lower than than the glass.  The glass will actually have a higher reflectivity.  The panels will be selected to be not highly reflective, so we're not creating any glare.

The building will offer 24 floors with guest rooms facing to the north and south, above a lobby floor and two levels beneath.

The building base is clad in limestone.  We selected limestone because it seems very compatible with both neighbors , with the Chicago Motor Club and the travertine of this building. [17th Church]  It's not a very wide facade.  It's only 48 feet, so we have a very modest steel and glass entry canopy.  The real elements of collaboration are the signage.   We originally presented the kind of Hilton Garden Inn standard signage .  It was suggested to us that we kind of make it a little bit more compelling than what you might see on a normal HGI.  We developed a smaller but richer kind of steel on aluminum back-lit [vertical] sign and then a metal sign [on the front] the building.  That's the extent of the signage.  Nothing up high on the building, which would be prevented by ordinance anyway.  

There are no parking spaces for guest.  Hotel planners expect about 40 valet vehicles on an average night for the 191 rooms.  The building would rise next to the landmark Chicago Motor Building, which is also slated for re-use as a hotel.  The two buildings would share a 5-space valet parking space and the small airspace gap between the buildings would be filled by an expansion joint to keep out moisture.  The back-alley northern facade of the building would be covered in charcoal-colored stucco finish, �basically dark gray tones to allow this [west] facade to pop.�

 Lobby and guest floor floor plans.  Note that the only window on the west side of the building (to the left on the drawing is the small one at the back where the building has a setback that meets the 12-foot fire code requirement.

If all goes according plan, construction - with Walsh the contractor - will begin soon, with a best-case opening in spring of 2015.

Read more:

The Realtors Dream of a New Skyscraper

Windows?  We Don't Need No Stinkin' Windows at the Hilton Garden Inn