Michael McAtee

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October 27, 2005

Chicago Prize Competition

The 2005 Chicago Prize Competition results were announced last night at the Chicago Art Institute with a keynote address by jury chair Thom Mayne, and as usual, the results were fairly anticlimactic. Out of 182 total entries five were selected as honorable mentions, and three received prizes. With a 12 person jury selecting projects over the course of a single afternoon I question how thoroughly each of the submissions could have been analyzed. The vast majority of the schemes appeared to either deal with extremely pragmatic green issues, (utilizing the tanks as wind power generating devices for water reclamation devices or planter boxes) or with the tank as a sculptural element either in its existing context or relocated (which may produced some more interesting projects). See an image of our competition entry board here. A more detailed presentation of our submission (Stephen Lee and myself) will be forthcoming at a later date.

Of the 182 submissions, only 51 were from the City of Chicago, and it seemed only a fraction of those entries truly attempted to relate the water towers directly to the City of Chicago. There seemed to be a paucity of solutions that were unique to the city, its history and development, its landscape. Several designs focused on harvesting wind, although even a cursory examination of the Windy City reveals that Chicago is not a particularly windy locale (ranking 76th of 255 US cities) and the region in general does not rate particularly high for the production of energy through wind farming (though it could be economically feasible). Though the green architecture and ecological aspect is a vital concern and a decent intervention, it is may also be the most obvious and generic. While our scheme utilized green ecological solutions, they were not the generators for the design, but were merely programming aspects for the occupation of the datum we created.

Of the recognized projects few if any truly dealt with the city as the generator of the responses for the competition. One honorable mention utilized the tower as an occupied artifact which framed views of the city and created an interesting perspective of water tower as creator of the landscape rather than object in the landscape. The third place scheme proposed relocating several water towers onto another site and creating a landscape of obsolete tanks which was a very intriguing notion, and another honorable mention proposed converting the tanks into UN sanctuaries for those enduring human rights abuses. While both of these entries were quite interesting neither dealt particularly well with Chicago as an inimitable place. One honorable mention used the projection of activities taped throughout the day to be projected back onto the watertowers at night. The intent may have been to evoke the a Wodizcko projection, unfortunately, the scale and distance from which these projections would need to be viewed would often make them illegible, and could just as easily be performed on blank brick walls, trash dumpsters, El tracks etc. Several other entries, including the winning entry, were ecological in nature and could easily be relocated to any city or locale.

The most disappointing of the recognized projects was the second place finisher which sought to replace a water tower with an urban bird aviary. The board consisted primarily of "analysis" which Thom Mayne indicated was the primary rationale for its selection. This sparsely populated board consisted of images of the construction of the assembly of a water tower (which I among dozens of other conpetitors undoubtedly turned up on internet searches) as well as an exploded axon detailing the components of construction of a tank. Another small grid of images described a matrix of native bird species and possibly their natural nesting habitat. Very little information was present explicating the actual design of the aviary, nor was there any real analysis provided that interpreted either the usage or condition of the water tower, or of birds and their habitats - which would have quickly revealed that these birds may be indigenous, but are indigenous to the wetlands, prairies and beaches of Lake Michigan, not urban blacktop. That such a project was selected for second place overall due to the fact that it substituted a sparse amount of superfluous for constructive design was disappointing to say the least. A competition, co-sponsored by the City of Chicago and the Chicago Architectural Club should have surely recognized more projects which sought to investigate and add to the identity of the richly unique fabric of Chicago.

Posted by mdmcatee at 10:09 AM | Comments (0)

October 26, 2005

Ohio Architecture part I

Earlier this summer we took a small road trip through the great state of Ohio before Jeff embarked on his journey to the west coast. We passed through Cleveland Columbus and Cincinnati in search of baseball and good architecture. While Cincinnati will get more extensive treatment shortly, it was the Knowlton School of Architecture that really pinned the heart of Ohio for architecture in Columbus.

The Knowlton School is a very recent addition to the campus, (enlarged image)
and continues to be overshadowed by its (st)architectural brethren at the Wexner Center by Eisenmann across campus. The narrative of the Wexner Center is a fairly well known, with the grid of the project derived from the offset of the campus and city grids, occupying a former Guard armory, contributing it's castle like turrets to the design. The Knowlton School does not appear to suffer from any such grounded narrative, but seems to be derived directly from the energy and monolithic history of architecture itself. It's flowing lines and bristling skin are so startling unique that they not only are tectonically disparate from their surroundings, but also from the very conventions of architectural composition and design.

The building wraps itself in a stone blanket, seemingly turning its back on the street scape, but is gouged deeply revealing a nearly black irridescent glass surface, end terraces cantilevering boldly, perverting the sense of scale for the building. The alternating play of the marble scaled skin and curtainwalls seemly reveals the interior machinations of the building, but each of these manuevers simply reveals a density of layers an reflections. The skin nearly succeeds in concealing the almost Brutalist concrete structure, but an enormous portico at the campus entrance that is pierced with a circular occulus proclaims this structure as the architecture school, and reveals both the power and play of its discipline. The Knowlton School never makes an ambiguity between the interior and exterior, or attempts to fuse itself into its environment, but rather stands as an astonishing and boldly distinct structure, a building strongly declaring itself as Architecture with a capital A.

Posted by mdmcatee at 12:25 AM | Comments (1)

October 18, 2005

Rural planning

While significant amounts of time and energy have been spent dealing with urban planning, suburban planning, and even exurban planning, little attention has been paid to masterplanning at a purely rural level. In the expansive midwest, once the city fabric ends an agricultural patchwork extends indefinitely, punctuated only by the occasional buildings and towns or natural features. In spite of regional planning documents and conservation studies, very little attention incorporating actual occupation of this environment. How does one begin to establish a system for the rational planning of a region whose context consists of unimpeded horizon and cultivated fields?

Recently I've been put to task on such a development, a masterplan for a school district in an unincorporated rural setting in Kane County Illinois. Although just beyond the grasp of the Chicago metropolitan area and more closely Aurora, the region is predominantly agrarian and underdeveloped. In the context of this site the establishment of an intercessory system is imperetive. Over time I will be investigating the development of at least two schemes for the planning of the site: the Ecotome model, and the Organic Agriculture model. As these naturalisic and artificial system of development of rural areas are explored two divergent architypes with the common intention of sustainable systems for rural development will be established.

Posted by mdmcatee at 10:37 PM | Comments (0)