Just mentioning the name of architect Bertrand Goldberg, who is undergoing lionization this fall in Chicago with several exhibitions about him and his work, more or less demands a reference to Marina City, his most famous design — and, inevitably, its description as “iconic.”
“Icon” — applied variously to objects, people and even places — is one of those words that has been rendered virtually meaningless through overuse. At best it’s now a wastebasket synonym for anything with strong and symbolic imagery, usually visual [like the ones on a computer screen].
That said, there are instances in which using it is unavoidable. And if what makes something an “icon” are equal parts of fame, influence and uniqueness, it’s hard to call Marina City anything but.
Although it has offered spectacular subject matter for legions of architectural photographers [like this one from Hiroshi Sugimoto]
and this one from Hedrich Blessing
But it’s hard to think of Marina City as an actual icon of architectural design excellence, primarily because its will probably never shake off its cylindrical identity, which has always situated it dangerously close to kitsch
[like its close cousin, the 1954 Capitol Records building in Los Angeles]
I would call Marina City a conceptual icon — the embodiment of a futuristic, idealist notion of modernism, and a new hope for urbanism at a time [the late-1950s] when times looked bleak for American cities. Really, it was more about the Jetsons
than any then-prevailing contemporary ideas about city life.
The Art Institute’s retrospective of Goldberg’s work uses Marina City as a jumping off point. It’s reverent and scholarly, and convincingly argues that he deserves more respect as an innovative force in planning and technology, and not just as a designer of one very familiar landmark.
What’s maybe most interesting about reconsidering Marina City at 50+ is that everyone seems to avoid the elephant in the parlor situation: while back in the day, this was the grooviest address in town, the apartments are not what you’d call user friendly. Although the circular format was something that would be highly functional in the hospital projects that brought Goldberg huge success later in his career, the combination of pie-shaped spaces and the continuous band of terraces around the periphery make for dark, oddly configured units.
It’s also appropriate to consider Goldberg’s work now, as the mania for design elements of the Mad Men era grows [the estimable Lee Bey covered this in a blog post last year] and also as the fate of Prentice Hospital
remains in doubt.
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abitlate reblogged this from visualculturist and added:
All true: some icons
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