Visions of Chicago's future, from 'Blade Runner' to George Jetson; an engaging but uneven exhibit marks the Burnham Plan centennial
http://huedoo.notlong.com September 10, 2009 There's more chaff than wheat in a new exhibit about the future of Chicago, but I still recommend that you see it, if only for the sheer fun (or dread) of contemplating some truly out-of-the-box visions of the future. My favorite in the sunny, George Jetson genre of future-casting comes from architects Brad Lynch and David Brininstool (below). They envision public vehicles powered by an umbrella of magnetic energy that would float over the city, freeing CTA land for green space. Sounds like a full-employment act for air-traffic controllers. As for the dark, "Blade Runner" take on tomorrow, the prize goes to architect Joe Valerio (above). He gives us 22nd Century downtown Chicago, most of it covered in a transparent blanket that resembles a giant piece of Glad Wrap. Heat trapped under the skin would be exhausted through massive solar towers. This would make a great stage set for a sci-fi flick. It's just not very useful to us today. And so it goes in this engaging but uneven exhibition, titled "Big. Bold. Visionary. Chicago Architects Consider the Next Century" and curated by Chicago architect Edward Keegan. On view at Chicago's Tourism Center Gallery, the show gives local architects a chance to make their voices heard during the centennial of Daniel Burnham and Edward Bennett's influential Plan of Chicago. Some of the architects, it would be charitable to say, took the opportunity more seriously than others. Keegan has done a nice job organizing the material, which was donated by more than three dozen firms, into six categories: the lakefront, big plans, towers, catalysts, public spaces and transportation. His wall-text is commendably jargon-free. But the exhibit suffers from the presence of a blaring video featuring Mayor Richard Daley (what else would you expect at a city venue?) The video repeats endlessly and makes focusing on the material a challenge. And the stuff itself is all over the map. In the "not worth your time" category are materials that architects seem to have pulled out of their file drawers and model shops, apparently more interested in marketing themselves than in thinking deeply about the future of the city and region. Other plans convey strong ideas -- you just wonder if they're the right ones. Architect Stanley Tigerman would get rid of, or (to use his euphemism) de-accession, some low-density neighborhoods while pushing for higher-density living along Lake Michigan and the Chicago River and making way for urban farming. The architect, presumably, does not live in a neighborhood that would be de-accessioned. Far better are proposals that would plant seeds of rejuvenation in troubled neighborhoods. Architect Linda Searl (left) suggests placing temporary structures housing police annexes, convenience stores and day-care centers on vacant lots. She calls them BIGA (Burnham Ideas Generating Action) after the fermentation starter used in baking bread. Som_chicago_riverwalk3 Such modest interventions make sense and not only because they would address a weakness of the published Burnham Plan (as opposed to drafts, which were more attentive to the city's neighborhoods). One of the reasons the Chicago Plan is celebrated today is that it was carried out piecemeal. We should be grateful that Chicago did not get everything Burnham and Bennett wanted, most notably a gargantuan, domed city hall that anticipated Albert Speer's megalomaniacal visions for Hitler's Berlin. Plans that accept the framework of the existing city, but transform it, are often preferable to sexy, attention-getting drawings that suggest wholesale change. Such intelligent incrementalism is evident in a downtown riverwalk plan by Phil Enquist of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, which would stretch the handsome riverwalk that opened this summer from State Street to a big waterfront public space at Lake Street (above). Smart additive architecture is also on display in a design floated by Keith Campbell of the Chicago office of RTKL for a new pier at 18th Street that would serve as a bookend to Navy Pier (left). Unlike Navy Pier, however, this pier, containing marinas and a farmers market, would be part of the real city, not a tourist trap. Nonetheless, big plans are irresistible to Chicagoans, and the show offers some compelling ones. Robert Benson of 4240 Architecture would replace the elevated tracks with a transit system consisting of green structural supports, equipped with wind turbines, that would extend like croquet wickets throughout the city (below) The trains would be nearly silent, but the system would send a loud message, making its green design visible, the wall text says, "in order to move the souls of the general public through beauty." That's a capital idea, which fulfills Burnham's admonition to make big plans that have the magic to stir men's blood. Now if we could just come up with the billions in capital necessary to turn it into reality. "Big. Bold. Visionary. Chicago Architects Consider the Next Century" appears at the Chicago Tourism Center Gallery, 72 E. Randolph St., through Oct. 4. The exhibit is a collaborative effort of Chicago's Department of Cultural Affairs and the Burnham Plan Centennial Committee.
