September 2010
9 posts
Virtuous Object
Just about everything at Pavilion is pretty wonderful — mostly midcentury European furniture and lighting — but a little crazy when you look at the tickets. [Actually, there are no tickets — as with most places like this, you’ve got to ask for numbers.] The shop does actually carry a few newly manufactured items, and they’re not outrageously priced. I was particularly...
3 tags
One of these things is not like the other
At the still-unfinished Jewel on Southport Ave, they’ve put up the signage, including the traffic indicators for the parking garage.
If one sign says “in,” shouldn’t the other say “out?” Or if one is “exit,” shouldn’t its companion be “entrance?”
No doubt Edwin Newman [of blessed memory] is already spinning.
3 tags
Hit and run: WWTT?
You’ve got to wonder if this mess in Bucktown was a spec builder’s house or if somebody actually commissioned it as a custom job. Mostly, you just wonder: What Were They Thinking?
I try to appreciate anybody’s attempt to do anything different from the typical, numbingly banal kind of infill housing that’s infested Chicago in the past couple of decades. But whoever put...
4 tags
The public will definitely notice this
I am dazzled by Public Notice #3, Jitish Kallat’s site specific installation at the Art Institute’s Grand Staircase, and not simply because it’s composed of thousands of LED lights.
The lights spell out the text of a speech calling for widespread acceptance of all religious beliefs that a Hindu cleric named Swami Vivekananda delivered before the World’s Parliament of Religions on...
6 tags
Pop-up downer
I was pretty excited to hear about Nick Cave’s Soundsuit pop-up shop.
In general, I’m all for pop-ups. No, they don’t really address the enormous problem of retail vacancies, but usually they’re clever and amusing enough — either in their design or the merch they’re selling — to draw people to them, even if it’s only temporarily. They are particularly valuable if they offer an...
Building typology
When this building was under construction this winter, I wasn’t sure what it was.
Its sleek, dynamic sculptural geometry, white metal panel cladding and long horizontal window walls, subtle use of color [although I don’t get the peacock blue portal at the entrance] and artfully concealed rooftop parking — all strongly suggest a modernist institutional project. Except for its...
2 tags
To the Pointe
No one seems to have covered Burnham Pointe, the apartment tower in the Printer’s Row area completed last year. [By “no one,” of course, I mean The Great Sage of Archi-criticism]. DeStefano + Partners doesn’t even include it among its projects on its website. Maybe it’s because the building went belly-up on its investors, and converted from a condo to a rental before it was...
4 tags
Monumentalism
When you pass by a place on a regular basis, it eventually becomes invisible; you barely look at it and you certainly don’t “see” it anymore. This is generally a bad thing.
A close examination of the Abraham Lincoln monument in its eponymous Chicago park is an object lesson in the virtues of looking more carefully.
I’m guessing most people don’t even think about the fact that Lincoln Park is...
Moderate Makeover: Pennsylvania Ave Edition →
I’ve gotta chime in on the NYT’s crit session re the re-tooled Oval Office: big yawn. I think I saw a La-Z-Boy sofa at the White Elephant thrift this week that looked just like the pair in the office, down to what looks like the same cotton/rayon chenille upholstery. And somehow, throw pillows in the POTUS’s office just seem wrong. Also, is that faux greenery on the mantle? Come...