OD'ed on Outrage: The Donald's Sign is Very Bad. The Circus of Distraction is Worse.

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Call it the Facebook syndrome.  The noxious flower, originally cultivated on television by Fox News, has exploded, through social media, into a blanketing culture of perpetual outrage.  No topic is too fallacious or inconsequential to inspire a tsunami of angry screeds - Obama's birth certificate, vocal fry in young women, lap dancing squirrels . . .

And what is Chicago really, really mad about right now?  A set of five 20-foot-high letters that Donald Trump is affixing to the riverward side of his elegant 1,170-foot-high telescoping tower, designed by Adrian Smith when he was at SOM.

 And it's true, the sign scars a handsome building.  You normally don't want to bring attention to the continuous strip of metal louvers of a service floor interrupting a sleek glass curtain wall facade but that's exactly what the 141-foot-strip of letters does, drawing your eye to a visual interruption that would otherwise be subsumed into the larger mass of the building.  We still have to see how the sign will be affected by the LED back-lighting that's part of the design.  It might soften the blow.  It might make it worse.

Update:  Get out your sunglasses.  I'm going for worse . . .

What's evident even now, however, is that the actual letters look astoundingly cheap, like those you'd find in a child's magnetic letter set, bleached of color.

Controversy over the sign has been building ever since it was announced this past February,  but once the actual letters appeared in a couple stacks on the lower level of the Trump Tower riverwalk early in May, the topic has built to a viral meme of increasingly hyperventilating outrage.  Everybody has to get their two cents in.   Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin has taken on a Bob Green-like obsession with the topic, writing column after column and making himself the star in an epic battle with the irascible  developer, who has taken the bait by referring to Kamin as a third-rate architecture critic who he thought had been fired.   The Sun-Times's Neil Steinberg felt compelled to enter the fray with his own lengthy screed, calling the sign �noxious� and comparing Trump to Oxymandias.  You get the idea. 


Although it took several weeks after the sign going up for him to finally notice it, Chicago Mayor Emanuel has �smelled the meat a'cookin� and moved himself to the front of the anti-Trump line, pre-empting the battle into a �faceoff" between billionaire and scrappy mayor that has taken the media carnival national.   It's send-in-the-clowns time, with idiots of all stripe appropriating the Trump sign as a piece of evidence certifying whatever's their personal scandal-du-jour, with a special Looney Tunes award to right wing pundit Jeffrey Lord, who blithely proclaims �This is about zapping Donald Trump the Obama opponent who dares to intrude on the private political preserve that is the President�s hometown.  There�s nothing more to this little if telling episode than that. �

Trump has responded in kind claiming what he's doing is no different than the beloved Hollywood sign, only better.  He compared his sign to the one on the old Chicago Sun-Times building, which Trump Tower replaced, referring it to �the ugliest sign Chicago has ever seen�, echoing a tweet 42nd ward alderman Brendan Reilly issued to defend his own non-action on the sign . . .

They're both banking on everyone's lack of memory.  In fact, the Chicago Sun-Times sign was actually a not-inelegant relief from what was essentially a metal-faced services bunker at the top of a unfairly-maligned structure that was a showcase building of its day . . .

photo courtesy The Chuckman Collection

The unending commentary on Trump's sign has become like one of those amusement park attractions where you poke your head into a hole in a wooden flat imprinted with the images of various celebrities so you can have a picture taken of yourself inserted into the scene.  As important as they may be to those in the frame, there's only so many of those pictures you can see before wanting to shoot yourself.

And what does it all accomplish?  To send Donald Trump into a seventh heaven.  Once again he gets his inane observations and sour visage plastered across media stories throughout the world.  He's the
the idiot-King whose empire is kept flourishing by a capable staff who have mastered how to work around their boss and and extract the random good ideas from the daily mound of egomaniacal manure.

Trump is little different from the street performers you see on Michigan avenue, soliciting spare change from  passersby by dancing, pounding on plastic bucket drums, or painting themselves gray and posing as statues. He just does it on a far larger stage, a trash-talking, cuckoo's nest-crowned living billboard, running on hyperdrive 24/7,  a king-of-all-media busker trolling for attention.  Attacking Donald Trump is like whipping a masochist - the intended victim winds up enjoying it far more than you ever could.

While social media is an infinitely expandable resource, newspaper space and television time are not, and it is a sign of our bread-and-circuses time how so many outrages and problems of much greater import than Trump's stupid sign are thrust into invisibility by our self-gratifying orgy of disapproval.  If you ever wanted a demonstration of how the culture distraction works, this is it.

You want outrage?  Start with this, right beneath that sign.  When Trump Tower opened, it gave the city a superb new riverwalk, featured truly outstanding and unique landscaping by Hoerr Schaudt featuring plants native to our area.  Little more than a year later, Trump ripped it all out for a cheap generic replacement featured large swatches of rocks.

Want more?  Go down two levels and look at all the Trump Riverwalk's storefronts.  None of them have ever had a tenant, nor, does it appear, are they likely to anytime in the future.  In 2012, Trump told Alby Gallun of Crain's Chicago Business that he basically intended to keep everything empty until the kind of upscale retailers who could meet his rent fell into his lap. �I'm in no rush,� he proclaimed, and now, two years later, nothing has changed.  While the Wrigley Building plaza has undergone a stunning restoration that has made it a magnet for new retail, Trump's stores remain empty.  Trump seems willfully blind that his Riverwalk's primary users are not the Portofino crowd he imagines, but normal people like you and me boarding a water taxi or tour boat.  God forbid we have a place where we could sip a cappuccino on the terrace or get a (gasp!) ice cream.

Rahm and Forrest Claypool are pleased as punch that we're exhausting ourselves in a frenzy of disapproval over Trump's sign, so we won't notice how they're about to decimate the Lakeview neighborhood around the Belmont �L� stop with a wide-swatch demolition of buildings for an ill-conceived roller-coast overpass.  Could we slice off just a bit of the Trump outrage for this?

This week's Chicago Reader has a great report by Maya Dukmasova on how the CHA is pushing redevelopment of the landmark-quality Lathrop Homes to push out the poor and make the area safe for affluent developers.  I wrote about it two years ago, and nothing has changed.  If not actual outage, could we at least peel off a modicum of interest amidst our all-consuming obsession with really big letters?

Then there's the way that Rahm, facing potentially bankrupting pension costs, is assiduously emptying out Chicago's TIF accounts for things like sports stadiums, city-owned hotels, and still another $60 million selective-enrollment high school to make sure not a penny is left to help us out on the city's financial crisis.   A little outrage might be in order here, but you can be sure Rahm is more than happy if we prefer, instead, to be watching him and the Donald slug it out.

Or how about the fact that Chicago is on the cusp of a new residential tower construction boom that's awash in architectural mediocrity, with not a single one of the buildings looking to add anything to Chicago's global reputation.  Couldn't we get mad about that?  Just a little?

I'd write more, but I have to stop to check out Facebook and Twitter for the latest on the Trump brouhaha.  I suppose I should be outraged, but mostly it just leaves me a little sad.

NeoCon and AIA National Convention - Smith, Gang, Gates, Lai, Tigerman, Happy City and more - Lots still to come on the June calendar

 June is a big double-header for the Chicago Calendar of Architectural Events.

While NeoCon is wrapping up, the big news is the national convention of the American Institute of Architects 2014 meeting here in Chicago at the end of the month, not just in McCormick Place, but in a wide range of convention-related events that we're still getting a handle on.

By the time you're reading this, Adrian Smith and Tom Eich have probably already delivered their early-Wednesday morning NeoCon keynotes, but tomorrow at the Chicago Architecture Foundation, Charles Montgomery will be talking about his book, Happy City, while at the Bridgeport Arts Center, Friends of the Parks 2014 Benefit honoring Richard Hunt.  This weekend, MAS Context and others is offering a two-day symposium on Our Public Space: Who Owns It, Who Shapes It, and Who Benefits from it, with lectures on Saturday and a workshop at the Lathrop Homes on Sunday.

Next  Tuesday, the 17th, Lane Kendig discusses Walkability: Fact or Myth at APA Chicago, while Wednesday lunchtime at CAF, Anne Sullivan talks about Understanding Historic Building Technology, and in the evening CREW Chicago takes a look at Beautiful and Effective Public Spaces, focusing on Pioneer Court and the recently restored Wrigley Building Plaza. Thursday, the 19th, Larry Booth discusses Trailing Louis Sulivan: The Restoration of Ganz Hall at the Auditorium, while over at the Second Presbyterian Church, William Tyre offers A Look Back: Chicago and the World in 1874, at CAF, Jimenez Lai is in conversation with Stanley Tigerman, and over at the Pritzker Pavilion you can see a giant-screen showing of the new documentary Jens Jensen The Living Green (which airs on WTTW at the exact same time.)

Heading into AIA convention week, the Royal Institute of British Architects is sponsoring a series of lectures at the Apple store on Michigan Avenue, AIA keynotes are delivered by Jeanne Gang, Theaster Gates, Stephen Chung, and Tony Hsieh, with Architecture 2030's Ed Mazria offering a panel.  There's a special Design + Dining Pecha Kucha at Martyr's, a lecture by futurist Melissa Sterry on Learning from Life: The Biologically Informed City, and a AIADIV/Chicago Women in Architecture Global Inclusion Reception with a keynote by former Ambassador John F. Maisto, at Hafele Chicago.
Resiliency Dream Team

And that's just scratching the surface of the dozens of great events still to come this month.  Check them all out on the June Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

Frank Lloyd Wright at 147: Still dead, still omnipresent

Evans House, Chicago, Frank Lloyd Wright, architect

Sunday is his birthday.  Still another year has passed, and Frank Lloyd Wright is still undiminished in fame, reputation, controversy and commercial viability.  Did you know . . .

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 - That it was just two years ago that we demolished the house on east Cedar where Wright lived after Taliesen had been burned down by an insane servant who axed to death Wright's mistress and five others?

 - That the mistress who lived with Wright on the house on Cedar would become his second wife, and would eventually cause Wright to be jailed in Minnesota on charges of infidelity?

 - That Wright, as a nipper of an architect in the employ of Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler, was said to have chosen the names of the composers on the panels on either side of the Auditorium Theater's proscenium?  (Which of these things don't belong with the hours? Hint: Alfred Hitchcock)

 - That Wright's collection of Japanese prints, in many of which you can seen some of the origins of his style, formed the foundation of the Art Institute's own holdings?

 - That Wright's first employee was the talented but largely forgotten Marion Mahony, who created the signature rendering style that would serve as a trademark and poster for Wright's work?

We've written a lot about Wright - it's the law - and we've republished the links below, but for now, here's a reminder that the Prairie Style wasn't Wright's exclusive personal possession, as evidenced in the above photograph of the 1915 Miller House in the South Shore community, the only surviving Chicago commission by the immensely talented architect, John van Bergen.

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�I.K�, [Frank Lloyd Wright] said with almost no prelude. �I.K, I have been conventional too long! I am a genius, I know no conventions, a genius knows no law. A genius must and will live his own life. From today I cast aside conventions; from today I live my own life!� That was the gist of a ten or fifteen minute prattle, in which the words 'genius', 'life', 'conventions' were flung about like confetti at a carnival. At first, I thought that as usual architecture was on his mind . . . but the next day the papers carried as an item of news that our genius had 'eloped with the wife of a client.'

- from The Autobiography of Irving K. Pond: The Sons of Mary and Elihu

It's been said that Frank Lloyd Wright's greatest creation may have been himself.  Through many rocky decades, he clung to his self-image of �world's greatest architect�, and by the time he died at 91 in 1959, he had convinced most of the rest of us, as well.  On this day, June 8th, that would have been Wright's 146th birthday, the old scoundrel's sorcery remains as potent and inspiring as ever, so what better time than provide this highly selective, impromptu portrait from our writings down through the years . . .

The Night Frank Lloyd Wright Spent in Hennepin County Jail was a direct consequence of Wright's willful liberation from his second wife.

Frank Lloyd Wright and the Japanese Print - The Art Institute had a great show last fall displaying many of the Japanese prints Wright had collected early on and sold to sustain himself during the lean times.  Among the prints were some of the original spectacular Japanese-influence renderings that had helped made his work world famous, many of which came not from Wright's hand, but from that of his employee, the richly talented Marion Mahony . . .

Frank Lloyd Wright's Right-Hand Woman

Also last year, the indispensable Tim Samuelson, who currently has another great show, Modernism's Messengers: The Art of Alfonso and Margaret Iannelli, up at the Cultural Center, curated an overview of Frank Lloyd Wright's early work, centered on the time he spent as an employee of Dankmar Adler and Louis Sulivan.

Wright's Roots

 

Wrights Roots: Garrick Theater colors seen for first time in over a century

In May, a joint campaign was announced in which the Alphawood Foundation would contribute up to $10 million in matching funds towards the restoration of Wright's 1908 Unity Temple in Oak Park,, which, if successful, could also see ownership transferred from the Unitarian Universalist

congregation which originally commissioned the building to ownership by a new, endowed foundation.

Frank Lloyd Wright's Unity Temple among National Trust's 11 Most Endangered 

See Frank Lloyd Wright's Boiler!

Back in 2006, actor Peter Weller brought his own stamp to Wright in his portrayal in Richard Nelson's play at the Goodman Theatre, an interesting effort to capture Wright at his point of exile, the long, lean years between his early triumphs as his re-emergence as an architectural powerhouse in the 1930's.

Frank Lloyd Wright's Pacific Overture
Robocop channels Frank Lloyd Wright

The play also featured Harris Yulin as an alcoholic and exhausted Louis Sullivan, but when, during the play's run, a major American magazine created a list of 100 Influential Americans, Sullivan had a bit of revenge, coming in at position 59 to Wright's 76.

Koolhaas, Wright, Sullivan score in Overnights

Wright continues to be influential, as can be seen in Hyde Park, where Wright's Robie House . . .

. . . is both subtly mirrored and re imagined in Rafael Vi�oly's Graduate School of Business for the U of C.

Rafael Vi�oly talks Wright, new hospital, at the Logan Center for the Arts

And for dessert, a small Wrightian miscellany . . .

Frank Lloyd Wright archives won't be bleeding Art Institute Red

Frank Lloyd Wright Hits the Wall

Wright's dog house

 Let's Get Small - Frank Lloyd Wright's American System-Built Homes in Beverly

Psssst, hey - buddy!  Wanna buy the Larkin Building?

From the Balcony, Dusk

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This is an International Competition? Chicago issues Bid Documents for proposals to create "North America's City of Lights"

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It was last January that  Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced his idea to boost tourism by turning Chicago through an international competition to turn the Chicago into �North America's City of Lights"  Now, the Sun-Times'  Fran Spielman has uncovered the fact that the "competition" consists of what is basically an RFP for a �City-wide Lighting Framework Plan�.

This is no competition.  No jury is referenced.  Proposals will go through The Department of Fleet and Facility Management Department.  The deadline for any questions is only two weeks away, with a "pre-submittal conference" at City Hall on June 13th, with July 7th the deadline for submissions, with the winning bid to be announced in �late summer�.  There will be no compensation for the first two phases.  Up to four finalists will receive $25,000.

At first glance, this doesn't seem like the way to get great design, and the officially unheralded release of the RFP, coupled with the extremely tight deadlines - it took four months to announce the project, but participants get only a month to prepare, and only 10 days to ask questions - indicates the fix may already be in.  Still, there's a lot of study here, which I'll be doing, and you can also look at the official documents on the city's website here.  You can also read our original report from January . . .

Chicago: City of Light? Mayor Rahm Sees Luminous Future for his Town's Architecture 

Official proposal documents on City of Chicago  Bids, RFP, RFQ, RFI, Small Order

Tarot to Tacos - Upscaling of State north of Viagra starts small, with velvet

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It was back in January that we wrote about the big changes coming to Rush and State Streets just north of Viagra Triangle.  So far, though, it's pretty much been the sound of crickets, as a number of ambitious projects seem to be going nowhere.

At the start of the year, bulldozers made quick work of the 1919 Regina Court apartments at Elm and State, to make way for Solomon Cordwell Buenz's 4 East Elm, a 25-story, 335-foot-high tower to hold all of 40 units.  Are we running out of rich people?  Regina Court was nothing but remnant debris all the way back in March, but three months later, the site remains strangely somnolent, clean as a whistle but with no signs of life . . .

Other nearby projects, lingering for years, remain unrealized.  Despite announcements of everything from tearing it down for a new Hotel Mondrian to other upscale rehabs, the Cedar Hotel, with its rich terra cotta ornament, remains empty, the only occupant the seasonal open air bar, formerly best known as Man vs. Margarita, which has survived as an popular and often packed singles hangout for still one more summer.

Just a block to the south, the site where the Hunt Club once stood also appears to continue, despite a succession of development proposals, to be uncontaminated by any signs of life.  (Although the townhouse next store that once was home to the Waterfront restaurant either has or is about to be demolished.)

Surprisingly, it's what's in between the Hunt Club and Cedar Hotel that's winning the first-to-the-finish-line sweepstakes, in a modest (and much to be modest about) structure that had been the only Subway sandwich shop with its own astrologer, Mrs. Devon.

Within the last couple weeks, workers have been assiduously scraping all signs of Subway's identify from the building.

According to a story by Micah Maidenberg in today's Crain's Chicago Business, the structure is to rehabbed into the two-story Chicago outpost of Velvet Taco, the Texas-based chain that serves up 21 different kinds of tacos with distinctive fillings such as calamari, kimchi, and farm-raised mammoth meat.  No word yet as to whether tufted fabric will be available either as an ingredient or wrapper.

Read More About the Changing Face of Rush (and State) Streets . . . 

Bertrand Goldberg's Walton Gardens: The History of Rush Street through the Eyes of a Single Building.