architecture

It's hopefully an established fact by now that when you want a Mies van der Rohe fix, you head straight to all around good guy, Edward Lifson. We've certainly posted our fair share of links to his writing about the brilliant architect, and have always enjoyed running into him around town and hearing what new things he has to say about van der Rohe's work. So again we make the leap over to Hello Beautiful for this recent look at all the finished restoration to 860-880 Lake Shore Drive, one of the architect's most beautiful high rises. We drive by the two towers nearly every morning on our way into the office and had seen the construction for what seems like years, but now it's apparently all done and ready to be fawned over, which Lifson does in spades, sharing not only some great photos of the newly improved structures, but a rundown of what was fixed as well. Here's a sampling:

All the stainless steel around the lower eight feet of the building was replaced. Much of the rest of the stainless steel was spot repaired and polished. Doors on the south elevation of 880 that had been moved to the center were restored to their original positions.

We also wanted to post this so we could remind you of what we called back in August, "The End All-Be-All of Architecture Critics Panels." The Chicago Architecture Foundation has their program A Conversation with the Critics: Imagining the Future of the City tomorrow night at 6pm. It looks like Jonathan Glancey won't be there, as was first announced, but he's been replaced by the LA Times' Christopher Hawthorne, so that isn't a bad trade at all. Plus, you'll still get to see Paul Goldberger, Blair Kamin, and Sarah Williams Goldhagen. And to pull this all together, full circle, it's hosted by Lifson. We'll be there and we've heard there are tickets still available, so what are you waiting for?!

Leaving school but staying in the same place, we turn to this great story in New York about David Burney, an architect many people might not know, but whose work is helping transform New York one small project at a time. Burney is the commissioner of the Department of Design and Construction, and in his past half-decade on the job, he's been actively trying to update and modernize (in a design sense) many of the new building projects the city decides to push through. With new procedures like altering the hunt for architects so that the best plans are chosen, not who can do it the cheapest, and convincing firms that building for the city isn't always a painful, fruitless endeavor. And it appears, at least through the lens of this piece, that he's finding success (the included slideshow of new buildings he's been involved with are beautiful, modern, and don't read at all as "government designed"). It's a great read, particularly if you've never heard of Burney and had wondered how it happens with the city (any city really) decides to build something not horrible to look at.

Beautiful as our architecture is here in Chicago, a lot of it wasn't built with the green, LEED-happy practices we use today. Fortunately, there's been movement toward revising some of those negatives, as Julie Wernau reports in her piece about architect Sara Beardsley's efforts to turn the Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower) totally green. The project, which would make the US's tallest building energy efficient, is through local super firm Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture and is expected to run somewhere between $200 to $300 million, doing things like replacing all of its windows and adding all sorts of green rooftop additions some hundred stories above the ground. It's an ambitious project, to be sure, and hasn't picked up full steam yet, with plans for funding this massive endeavor still in the works, but here's to hoping it all works out and inspires other older buildings to do the same. Here are some of the details on the changes:

In design plans, the "green roof" project would be expanded to the building's multiple roofs, along with wind turbines and solar panels. But those rooftops would be more symbolic than anything else. The real energy savings will be culled from the 16,000 windows that will be replaced and from lighting automation and reduction.

The window project is estimated to be enough to cut heating needs by 50 percent and allow for new, smaller mechanical systems with a significantly lower environmental impact. A plumbing upgrade is expected to reduce water usage by 24 million gallons a year.

Despite the hopefully-misguided beliefs of apparently a lot of people in China that starchitect Rem Koolhaas wants nothing more than to mock them with his buildings' designs, there's some positive news coming from the neighbor to his "controversial" CCTV Tower, the badly charred Mandarin Oriental hotel he also designed. It was one of the big architecture tragedies at the start of this year, when an errant firework found its way inside the building, setting it totally ablaze almost instantly, taking with it a firefighter's life and nearly $800 million poured into the about-to-open project (here's our report on personally seeing the damage up close back in May). But now Koolhaas' firm, Office for Metropolitan Architecture, has been back to the scene and have announced that despite its utterly-apocalyptic appearance, the building still seems structurally sound and that the damage might all be fixable. OMA hasn't said that they will for sure be working to rebuild, plans to move forward do seem likely, and that means that maybe the worst option has been diverted, that the Mandarin would have to be demolished completely.

"The preliminary findings are that the building can be repaired," said architect Ole Scheeren, the building project's leader. "It's still intact and safe. There will mainly be a repair effort, but not a complete rebuilding."

The lesson here, we believe, is as such: "when in doubt, add some shiny." After all if it works for Jean Nouvel, it might work for you, too. After a month of wrangling, New York's City Council has announced that they have approved the starchitect's plans for the new MoMA tower. You'll recall from earlier this month that Nouvel had answered calls to cut a few floors off the top and shrink the building down a bit, by instead adding reflective fins to the side. That shiny was apparently what did the trick, yet even with the okay from the city, it doesn't sound like the very vocal forces against it being built will be backing down anytime soon. The next step, they've said, "would likely be a legal challenge."

If you're in the business of building, you're probably pretty eager not to have anything start going wrong with your new fancy bit of architecture until at least a few years have passed and a little wear and tear is to be expected. Otherwise, you might start getting nicknames like the one we handed out to Frank "The Leakster" Gehry on not one but two recent occasions. But such is the case over at the swanky new billion-dollar digs the Yankees now call home. Cracks have started to appear in portions of the concrete ramps, something not so good for a building that's less than a year old. Now fingers are being pointed to try and figure out who is to blame. While the Kansas City-based mega-firm Populous was behind the design of the structure, including these now-troublesome ramps, it's looking like the they'll be just fine, given some of the other potential parties involved:

The ramps were built by a company accused of having links to the mob, and the concrete mix was designed and tested by a company under indictment on charges that it failed to perform some tests and falsified the results of others. But it is unclear whether work performed by either firm contributed to the deteriorating conditions of the ramps.

Update: Daniel Libeskind's also been having some similar troubles recently in Denver.

Getting out of the Midwest for a moment, we turn to the first major review of the new Los Angeles Police Department's headquarters by local top critic, Christopher Hawthorne. If you've seen any film or television show involving any sort of policing in the past half-century (like Dragnet for example), you're likely familiar with the previous headquarters, the iconic Parker Center in downtown Los Angeles. This weekend marked the move from that building to one just down the street, a new "Parker Center" (though that name transfer hasn't been entirely agreed upon just yet), marking as LA Times writer Ruben Vives says "ends an era." Critic Hawthorne likes the building more than he'd expected to, finding portions of it occasionally interesting and functional, but beyond that doesn't seem overly thrilled with the new headquarters, designed by architects Paul Danna and Jose Palacios. He pines a bit for the old Center, yet admits that's likely because it's "freighted with symbolism." Outside of Hawthorne's review, the most controversial portion of the new building thus far seems to be the sculptures lining its exterior, designed by local artist Peter Shelton, which the city's police chief has said "looks like 'some kind of cow splat'" and others have asked "What kind of stupid thing is this?" So there's your proof that one project can't please everyone in every capacity.

When it comes to sacred spaces in Soho, we think of the Mercer Hotel and Deitch Projects, but a hip, young rabbi has other ideas. Dovi Scheiner recently signed a 12-year lease on a five-story Crosby Street building that he intends to transform into the home of his hipster house of worship, the Soho Synagogue. According to The New York Observer's Dana Rubinstein (in an article that appears in the paper's October 12 issue but not online), the 32-year-old rabbi "employs a modern aesthetic to attract [Soho]'s hip, and often lapsed, Jewish set." The Soho Synagogue has called a series of temporary locations home since its founding in 2005, and settling down means thinking big. Tel Aviv-born, Eindhoven-educated, and New York-based Dror Benshetrit (pictured at right) is designing the new space, which is expected to open this spring. Rubinstein describes his design for the temple as calling for "one space that can transition into several different uses: prayer, lecture, lounge, dinner, movie, gallery, and family." Sounds like a job for the Dror for Target modular shelving unit!

Previously on UnBeige:

Just a couple of weeks back, we told you that Jean Nouvel's proposed MoMA-adjacent tower looked like it would get chopped down a few stories and was to be discussed and voted upon by New York's City Planning Commission. That meeting went on this week and instead of cutting, Nouvel and MoMA representatives came with a similar-but-new design, adding reflective fins to the sides of its top. No vote by the Commission has been taken yet, but this television spot currently running in the New York area (along with an associated, very lo-fi site), is hoping to sway its members toward the negative:

Last Thursday, we told you that the Kansas City-based Populous, the firm who designs and builds almost every sports stadium anywhere anymore, had set a record by landing the commission to create the main 2014 Winter Olympics stadium (this on top of the other main stadium they're building for 2012). As if that weren't enough, despite having helped Chicago with their unfortunately unsuccessful bid, Populous now has its eyes on 2016:

"We're disappointed about (Chicago). We can't win them all, though," Populous designer Jon Knight told KMBC's Maria Antonia.

The firm is already working on a stadium for an upcoming World Cup competition in Brazil, so it hopes that will give the firm an edge.