Chicago lights its Zaha - Zaha enlightens Chicago?

The Zaha Hadid pavilion in Chicago's Millennium Park, commissioned to honor the 100th anniversary of Daniel Burnham and Edward Bennett's Plan of Chicago was lit for the first time tonight.

More fabric will cover the bones that remain exposed.

This pavilion was scheduled to open six weeks ago but construction difficulties delayed that. I've read reports that this pavilion and the one next to it by Ben van Berkel/UNStudio

could now stay up past their scheduled closing date of October 31 but I'm told by city officials involved in the decision not to expect that, those reports are erroneous.

If you wonder, as I do, how these little pavilions honor Daniel "Make no little plans" Burnham - well at least this one by Hadid will have video related to Burnham's ideas projected into its interior. See the two holes (unfinished) for the light beams?

Those involved also say, "Burnham gave the citizens a vision of the future, that's what we asked Zaha Hadid and Ben van Berkel to do."

LED lights change our lives and our art. At the Olafur Eliasson exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art you'll find a circular space around which a fabric changes color thanks to LED's sandwiched in. The Ben van Berkel in Millennium Park changes colors, as does Zaha's pavilion.

Blood red. Is yours stirred?

"Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood."

-Daniel Burnham.

Although both of spaces to "play" in reference the popularity of Anish Kapoor's Bean or "Cloud Gate" in Millenium Park, because it is "only" polished stainless steel, no lights, these new projects almost make it seem like a piece of classical sculpture. How quickly things move.

At the Ben van Berkel pavilion, kids run and jump up the "scoops" to then slide down. No one planned for that, and it needs restoration already. The fabric stretched over the Zaha Hadid aluminum frame is bouncy and almost invites kids to throw themselves against it, like an upright trampoline. It's also going to be very hard to keep clean. A city official told me that when the Hadid opens Monday evening, guards will keep people from climbing on either pavilion.

Kudos to Fabric Images of Elgin for completing the Hadid pavilion, on the double. They took over only recently and had to even re-engineer much of the frame. Fabric Images is more familiar with stretching fabric over metal frames for, for example, booths for conventions.

It'll take a day to take down the construction tent and then -

The new scheduled opening date is Monday evening.

The Hadid will also be washed with colored light from the outside.

Let me know what you think of it when it opens. I, unfortunately, won't see it. I'll be on a plane to Shanghai.

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More on the stages of the Hadid pavilion here.

Visit the other "Burnham" pavilion with me - the one that did open on time - here.

Aha! First look inside Zaha's pavilion in Chicago.

The Making of the Zaha Hadid pavilion

in Millennium Park, Chicago. July 28, 2009.

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On this fine evening I went to Millennium Park. Inside a tent, through a plastic window, I saw


men working on what looked like an inter-galactic spaceship. 8 pm, 9 pm, even later. Why are they working so hard? Men welded a metal frame.


I peeked inside the tent and saw women fast at work sewing reams of material.

As they finished each piece of fabric it was carried over to the structure and stretched across the aluminum framework.


Each one carefully positioned with the right tension. Easy to see the seriousness and the urgency in their work.

Metal rods swirled around, swooping here, swirling there; the space inside this tent - a vortex.

I felt swallowed up like Jonah as the "bones" are still exposed, into a cavity, against skin the likes of which I had never seen.

Zaha's spaceship, for Chicago, now almost finished, weeks behind schedule.

Where will this time-traveling ship take those who enter?

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More on the stages of the Hadid pavilion here.

Visit the other "Burnham" pavilion with me - the one that did open on time - here.

Classic modern, well-lit

Renzo Piano's Modern Wing, north facade, facing Millennium Park.

The white light of Renzo Piano's Modern Wing in Chicago

I love the Modern Wing, even at night. Veiled in white light, like a bride, she lightens and softens the area around her; no mean trick in what used to be a dark, heavy, masculine, gritty city.

And this bride of a building offers us another lesson too. You see that orange-ish light along the busway in the photo? (The busway takes conventioneers from downtown hotels to McCormick Place convention center.) Like most parts of American cities, it's lit by sodium vapor lamps. Those were installed throughout the land starting in the 1970's because they reduced energy costs. But that orange-yellow cast in our cities at night is awful. Only Toulouse-Lautrec or James Ensor might find it pleasurable. It's an unnatural color for light and it's mildly agitating - no good for cities in need of calm.

Night light like snow, should be white not yellow. And it probably will be soon. Within just a few years most street lighting will be done by LEDs. They're coming down in price, they're energy efficient, and their long life reduces maintenance costs. They're also becoming more truly white.

I look forward to this. Everything will look better at night, though still not everything will look as nice as the Modern Wing. Maybe some day.

Inside Studio Gang's Aqua Tower in Chicago

Separate lobbies for renters, the hoped-for hotel, and here's the lobby for condo owners:




And then, the payoff. The building's "big move."




With many variations on the theme.




This one especially



reminds me of a view from Bertrand Goldberg's great Marina City, also in Chicago.




Here's the view of the number one amenity in Lakeshore East, the park.




Chicago, that once straight city. Reaching up, as ever, in new ways.


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.Chic

"Funhousing" with Ben van Berkel

One afternoon I visited the Ben van Berkel / UNStudio temporary pavilion in Millennium Park in Chicago.





And this is what I saw:























What if I had stayed longer?

Top photo © UNStudio. All other photographs ©Hello Beautiful!

Melting Mies means more modern?

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+

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Ben van Berkel
temporary pavilion
Millennium Park, Chicago

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Jeanne Gang / Studio Gang
Aqua Tower
Chicago

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And there's this. Any other examples of melting Mies?



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White (White Curve) at night

Ellsworth Kelly - White Curve (2009)
The Margot and Thomas Pritzker Garden
Modern Wing by Renzo Piano
Landscape design by Gustafson Guthrie Nichol, Ltd
Art Institute of Chicago

More on this here.

Farnsworth House safety evacuation card

Remember this scene last fall at the flooded Farnsworth House?

NOW, if you're in the Farnsworth House - and get hit by a flood-
Follow these safety steps:

Panels in the center cabinet pop out
and become inflatable life rafts.

By Andrew Liebchen,
(tongue firmly in cheek.)
© All rights reserved.

Zaha's Pavilion

Fabric begins to go up on Zaha Hadid's temporary pavilion in Chicago's Millennium Park. Story of the delay here and here.

When finished it's supposed to look like this:



A million bucks for this and the neighboring temporary pavilion in Millennium Park by Ben van Berkel?

Update! By Wednesday evening, a little more had gone up:

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More on the stages of the Hadid pavilion here.

Visit the other "Burnham" pavilion with me - the one that did open on time - here.

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Summer in New Chicago

Oak Street beach.

Global warming? No, they truck these in for the season. Used to be a small number, now they're getting a grove. Soon - Palm Street beach?

Wood on Steel and Glass

James Wood directed the Art Institute of Chicago from 1980 to 2004. During his tenure, in 1999, the Art Institute initiated the Modern Wing project with architect Renzo Piano. Wood was there for the first five years of planning.

I asked James Wood what he thinks of the Modern Wing now that it's open. He was gracious, as always, and tried to direct the attention to the current leadership of the Art Institute. James Wood is currently President and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust in Los Angeles. We spoke on a lovely sun-drenched terrace at the Getty Center where James Wood told me he often returned to Chicago to watch the Modern Wing rise.

Edward Lifson: So now that you’ve finally seen it open and with visitors, does it meet your great expectations?

James Wood: Well, I had a very strong image in my mind of what it could and should be. But to see it teeming with people, absolutely alive, and with the collections installed, it really went beyond my very expansive expectations!

Two marvelous things have happened. First of all these collections when you bring them together, of 20th century material, owned by Chicago- which are one of the great, great treasures of the world- brought from different parts of the earlier buildings into one space, you suddenly had that feeling of more than critical mass.

I mean after the Museum of Modern Art it is one of the great, great experiences of 20th century art anywhere!

The other revelation of course is seeing it in Renzo's light.




The curators have done a marvelous job of using that space because remember most of the walls are the choice of the curator; there are very few bearing walls in those two pavilions. Renzo gave them a very flexible space. And they've really tailored the scale I think wonderfully to the objects.

I mean, take the most obvious example, the extraordinary Matisse bathers, which is one of the finest paintings in any museum in the world.




It had undergone in the last year a major cleaning- not restoration, the painting is in good condition- but cleaning, which has just brought out a whole level of color and subtlety that I must say we had never seen before; and that combined with the overhead natural light, the painting, I mean I wish Matisse was here to see it!

Lifson: What would Matisse make of Millennium Park! How do those garden views affect the experience of visiting the Art Institute? You can look at Matisse's bathers, by the water, with vegetation, and move just a little bit to look out through windows at water and gardens in Millennium Park.

Wood: I mean it's because of Millennium Park ultimately that this is why the new wing, the Modern Wing was built where it is. You remember we began a decade ago with thoughts of a wing that might span the train tracks east of the original building, went through several iterations, and then as Millennium Park began to develop it become clearer and clearer that the second entrance of the Art Institute should embrace this new front yard of the city.



And what is so extraordinary now after, what has it been- three or four years of growth of the gardens, Frank Gehry's Pritzker building/sculpture is just settling in wonderfully with its plantings around it, and Renzo's building lines up within a centimeter of the axis of the gardens and the Gehry.







So you have a remarkable interior space for art, but then also a connection with the city, and that wonderful bridge.




You know (current director) Jim Cuno has just taken this design and then gone beyond what I thought was possible. The bridge physically connects, but then equally important it visually connects.

And Renzo from the outset was thinking of this wing as part of a larger institution but also as part of an urban plan.

click on arrow

It is incredibly gratifying to see how all of that has really gone beyond what any of us could have dreamt of; it's damn near perfect!

Lifson: Well then tell me, how did you get such a better building from Renzo Piano than Los Angeles got with the Broad Wing at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art?

BCAM - The Broad Contemporary Art Museum
at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Renzo Piano Building Workshop, 2008

Wood: (Pause.) It took us a long time! This is ten years from the first meeting I had with Renzo, until the opening. The clients make the difference. There were many people here beyond me. (He names them.) I think the important thing for the client , particularly with a museum, is to know that they're not the architect. But the architect is not the curator or the director.



The most important thing for us to do, I felt, was to keep articulating the needs of the collection and the needs as we saw it of the public and what we wanted to provide to the public. Renzo was very sensitive to that. At the same time, he's an architect first, and an interested "enjoyer of art" second.




So our role as client was to create a good strong confrontation- any great building is compromises- and I think over time, I think at the end of the day the compromises aren't apparent! They're not visible to the user.

Lifson: Well then you have to tell me what they are!

I mean compromises such as: how much space do you give to architectural expression because there's this constant desire to get as much gallery space as possible. But at the same time, Renzo is a great creator of public spaces.




He talked about the “profane” and the “sacred.” The “sacred” is where we look at the art, the “profane” is where these other things happen. We were creating a north/south axis that would meet the east/west axis of this huge institution. And that axis took space, it took money, it took architectural commitment. I think he has really given us what we wanted.

It's going to be hard to decide now which of the two entrances to the Art Institute is- not the grandest- because this isn't about sheer scale, but which is the more seductive, and just satisfying, as a way to enter a building where you're going to experience art. One is absolutely 19th century,




and the other is absolutely 21st century!




And the fact that you got both in the same building, to me is very nice. Most major older, Beaux-Arts museums, most large earlier museums when they had to or wanted to add a new wing or a major new structure, tended to come up with a secondary entrance or they overshadowed the original entrance. The National Gallery in Washington would be an exception to that- to some degree. In this case you have two new equals, and that was very much intended. The new building was not intended to overshadow the old building; old building wasn't supposed to in any way prevent having the new building from having its own life and importance in the city.

Lifson: I thought the grand old Michigan Avenue entrance– beloved if not “sacred” itself- to generations of Chicagoans - was to remain the principal entrance.

Wood: The principle entrance is really going to be the entrance that most people use. My guess is that it's probably going to be something like 60/40 with more people using the Michigan Avenue entrance, because public transportation goes there. They're both wonderful entrances, the bottom line here is if you come to the Art Institute, come in one, enjoy yourself, go out and come back in again!

Lifson: Would you agree the Griffin Court entrance, the new one, is a slightly more commercial entrance? The scale is larger, it's not quite as intimate.

Wood: This is a good question. I would not use the word "commercial." Surely, there is a shop there. But actually there’s a shop to the right as you come in either entrance, old or new. But in both cases, the shop is a choice, it's not a requirement.

The fact is that Griffin Court creates an uninterrupted axis all the way to the core of the whole institution, as opposed to the Michigan Avenue entrance where you come in and you're confronted by the staircase.

You can go around the staircase and I think given the layout of the Michigan Avenue building, that's perfect. You walk in, and you are drawn up with a strong psychological pull to the day lit European paintings galleries.

In Renzo's building you're drawn in to Griffin Court and then you have a choice, to the left-- elevator, or you take a staircase- equally exciting- but it doesn't block you, it's an option.



Lifson: The choice and that asymmetry are more modern.

Some people say that Griffin Court is a lot of wasted space and it's a shame there's not art on those walls.

Wood: Well first, I wouldn't call it "wasted space" because it's functional. I mean for the size of the wing, and the size of the institute, the dimensions of that space, to me are not overpowering, and the desire was to keep that human scale. Whether over time they’ll decide to introduce more art into the space, that's a completely open question. I think they're wise to take it a little slowly, you know, see how people function in the space, see what art may.... I'm sure over time some art will find its way into the space, and I think it will work nicely. There's a lot of light, so you have to be sure they're things that can deal with the light.

I have a friend who bought a house and they gave two parties before they bought any furniture. Just to see where people went and how they used the space!

Lifson: What do you think of the Ellsworth Kelly?

Ellsworth Kelly’s White Curve (2009).
In the new Pritzker Garden, landscaped by Gustafson Guthrie Nichol Ltd.
White Curve (2009) is Kelly's largest work to date and his first collaboration with Renzo Piano.
White Curve was commissioned in honor of James Wood.

Wood: Oh, well, Ellsworth is one of my favorite artists, he's a remarkable human being, I've had the good fortune to know him for years. I'm just so- I can't say surprised because he does it... but he has reinvented himself again! And not just the size. I mean when they told me there was going to be a Kelly on that wall I thought, "My god, this is an immense wall..." And Ellsworth scaled it absolutely perfectly. It floats.

But what he's done in that piece that I had never seen before-- and I don't believe he's done it before is-- he's developed a whole new surface. It is a relief sculpture, but it's a surface that um, it reminds me of a marvelous piece of Japanese lacquer. You know where you get a reflection, but a reflection that goes deep into the lacquer. It's not a mirror image, and yet it's also not opaque, or absolutely flat. So it picks up Renzo's building, it plays back….




And of course picking the color white- is perfect! You know a novice probably would have said- "good place for green or red…." But white! Once you see it, you know it had to be white. That's Ellsworth, he knows.




Lifson: Were you surprised by the dedication?

Wood: I was incredibly moved. I-I-I, frankly I-I-I I still am. Yes surprised.... To be honest with you, I can't imagine anything that would make me happier and prouder,

Lifson: Your voice is breaking...

Wood: (Collects himself) Ah well, such a thing doesn't happen very often, in fact it's never happened before! (Clears throat.)

Lifson: You talked about the compromises a bit. I wish that on the third floor, looking east, you had pulled the solid wall in enough to make a passageway, and had glass for views of the lake and the park. I would have given up a little gallery space for that.







Wood: You know that was considered. At different times, as the wing was taking shape, we all agreed we did not want to have a box with almost no views out of it. That in effect is what the Beaux-Arts building is. The Michigan Avenue building is a temple in the park- you enter the temple and you don't see out of it. This from the beginning, we wanted to have a much more transparent relationship with the city.




Glass on the east was considered; but ultimately it was thought, let's have almost a domestic view to the south, but very shielded because that's where the strong light is; a view down to the garden.




You do get a few views there where you get a bit of lake. Then we just absolutely open up and embrace Millennium Park to the north. But don't give up gallery space and don't start piercing the east wall. That's compromise. I think it was the right decision to be absolutely exuberant looking north and really maximize that glazed wall, and not open it up to the east.

Lifson: In some ways the bridge looks like an afterthought.



It's not integrated like Piano's escalators in Los Angeles and at the Pompidou Center in Paris.

Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1976.
Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers

Wood: I don't want to sound defensive, but given my emotional commitment to this building it's hard not to! It's not an afterthought, because Renzo from the earliest sketches was thinking about a physical connection. For me - "afterthought" - no; to me it is a very bold thing. Because most bridges, you think of sort of being a reverse catenary-- you start at a level, you go across, and at the other side of what you're crossing, you come in at the same level. This doesn't do that. This is sort of like a samurai sword that is halfway out of the sheath.



You know it angles down! And it took me a little while to sort of grasp that; but visually in the end, it's far more dynamic than I think a static, more traditional bridge.

It comes along the side of the building, it does not go into the building, and I think it animates the facade. What I love is when you're in those galleries and in the building looking north and then you look slightly to the west, suddenly you've got this incredible sculptural... blade. It's a very dynamic thing to see.




So I mean, in its way, in a totally different way, it's a bit like Gehry's bridge, which is a kind of a folly in one sense, you know.

Frank Gehry's bridge in Millennium Park

It's sort of the bridge to nowhere, but it's a wonderful thing, it animates the park.


Renzo's bridge has a definite function, it absolutely connects park and museum. But it's no standard bridge. It has a deep sculptural and architectural justification.




Lifson: Any other surprises for you when the wing opened?

Wood: The new Architecture and Design galleries. That collection is growing quickly and beautifully.

Lifson: Yes, and it’s less locally focused. Thank you very much James Wood.

James Wood: Thank you, and good to see you. See you next in Chicago?

Me: I would like that.

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I review the Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago here.

I've blogged a lot about the Modern Wing, here are the posts. Scroll, scroll, scroll.

Nearly all the photographs ©2009 Hello Beautiful!

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Edward Lifson's wedding party ???

How surprised I was to read that title on Lynn Becker's blog. I didn't know I'd set a date. But Lynn was providing smart, penetrating writing about photos and commentary I recently posted after I stumbled upon a wedding couple at the new Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Lynn likes this one -

He writes,

It's a painterly composition, the bride posed with her legs extended, bare feet curled, over the lap of a groom who's looking in the opposite direction, almost as if he were unaware (unable to handle?) her relaxed but assertively sensual presence, accented by the cast-off sandals criss-crossed atop each other on the ground to her left.
... The supposed intimacy is shattered by the presence of two more figures, photographers pairing off with their subjects - male, male to the left, female, female to the right, capturing the ceremonial exhibitionism of the occasion.

Thank you for making me realize its rhyme.

Lynn writes with equal acumen of other shots; he sees more than I, and I greatly appreciate that. But we may disagree on the effects of the very white Griffin Court of the Modern Wing. Lynn writes,

Indeed, the groom seems so detached in most of these shots that you fear for the future of the relationship, until you get to another stunning shot set against a seemingly infinite white wall.

You have to click on the photograph to view it at a resolution where you can actually see it. I've cropped a bit here for emphasis.


Edward sees this as their purity reflected "by the pure white room." I see it as a cautionary tale of how Piano's overwhelming whiteness threatens to overpower everything it comes into contact with.

The backstory I see here is that the overwhelming nothingness all around them finally turns the two lovers back in to each other. It's them against the world. The groom is still standing there stiffly, arms folded, legs planted far apart as if he's expecting to be toppled at any moment, but he's smiling, completely softened by the way his bride leans in to him. The geometry is wondrous. The line of her chin extends to the sloping of his left shoulder; the line of the slant of the groom's head extends down the back of the bride's dress. The fullness of her dress provides the secure grounding that the spareness of the triangular perch of his pants legs does not. The richness of her bare arms, the gentle touch of her hand that seems to be going directly to his heart - you get the impression this marriage may turn out OK after all.

1. That's excellent writing.
2. I want to know if he's right; and what this couple thinks!

Roy Lichtenstein
Art Institute of Chicago

Anyone know the lovely couple?

Bottom image: Edouard Manet, 1863, Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, Musee d'Orsay

Hello Beavtifvl Art Institvte of Chicago

You see the new clear sign from Renzo Piano and design firm Pentagram from Monroe Street.


Atop the glass, above the bridge that shoots over from Millennium Park; as you ascend, above you, on your left, before you enter:







Like this.



Vsing the old to make new. That's what the "v" does, that's what the Modern Wing does.

With the major new wing, the AIC thought it a good time to rebrand. They hired the design firm Pentagram.

Remember, Art Institute of Chicago director Jim Cuno wrote, “Who Owns Antiquity?” He is interested in the old, as much as the new. He lauds merging cultures and epochs under one roof. The AIC does that well.

The font is Topaz with overtones of Wiener Werkstätte, and especially with the classic Roman "v", well, he owns antiqvity.

Precedent? On the 1893 Michigan Avenue facade you will also find the word - confusing and then humorous to children - "Institvte."

What's odd here is that the classic Roman "v" is usually found etched into stone, not glass. But that's what makes this Modern Wing so great - that deeply satisfying combination of classical and modern.
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Heavenly Modern Architecture

Top: Renzo Piano's Modern Wing at the Art Institute of Chicago (2009)
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We love you Renzo

The Art Institute of Chicago's new building by Renzo Piano
is already the place to be.

I visited the Modern Wing today, to see Modern Art. I saw
Modern Love.

The white dress of purity made more sublime by the pure white room.

© Gerhard Richter
Collection - Art Institute of Chicago

I've told you of the romantic new Pritzker Garden.


I think Renzo's columns with their Cinderella slimness were jealous of her folds.


Speaking of Cinderella, take your shoes off, relax...

if you can-

The photographers told me they were shooting genuine wedding pictures, that these were not actors in an advertising shoot. It's so hard to tell these days. The couple's interaction showed the emptiness of the new Art Institute piece, Wedding Dress (1989) by Robert Gober.

Of course a trip through the art museum reveals the many facets, stages and forms of love.

Was this couple

once like this?

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More on Renzo Piano's Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago here and do click here.
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