Chicago Skyline
East from Ashland down the Lake Street / Green Line El
June 2007
When you fly into Chicago across the prairie you can see the grid of lights becoming more brilliant and more effervescent and it makes sense like synaptic bursts or electricity running through a microchip.
On the ground you look around and raise your eyes and the idiosyncratic expression of design seems less visually rational - except for some views like this that includes the Skidmore "bookends" - the John Hancock Building to the north and the Sears Tower to the south. These two masterpieces provide goalposts for the meat of the city - the loop.
In Skidmore's office there is a gigantic model of the city with hundreds of structures color coded to express their extraordinary dominance over the landscape. It's either shocking or fantastic to see how much work they've done.
But here's the thing - they have never surpassed or attained the excellence of "the bookends" in their work anywhere in the world. And they just seem to slump further with stuff like the Trump Tower Chicago. I would never go so far as to refer to them as Skidmorons - like a recent critic pronounced but I do wonder...
They move toward a big cash design model and they've lost branding and cache. What is SOM's height? When did they decline?
1 comment:
When we lived in Chicago Ernie...after much wine and beer...used to do impressions of different Chicago landmarks. His Hancock was always a highlight.....
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