Millenium Park
Yesterday, I took a walk over to the new Millenium Park -- Chicago's newest tourist attraction. It was mobbed with tourists (it's doing its job), so I didn't want to spend a lot of time fighting through the crowds to reach the various sculptures and buildings. (And some of you may be glad to hear that I didn't take any fuzzy pictures with my camera phone.)
But my brief visit was enough to cement my disappointment in the Gehry bandshell. The trellised seating area is nice, but I don't understand (or feel) the aesthetic felicitousness of the curled metal forms that create the bulk of the structure. And around back, it looks like a Hollywood set piece -- with a confusion of metal poles poking up in every direction to support those big metal plates.
I think Gehry is the Edward Durell Stone of our generation -- with his trademark massive metal curves the equivalent of Stone's fancy screens. In the end, however, both are simply conceits, not true innovations -- and can't be sustainable as good architecture once the "wow" of their initial creation has worn off.
Speaking of E. D. Stone, I walked across the street after rushing through Millenium Park to check out, close up, the much reviled Aon Center (aka Amoco Building). After fighting through the crowds of the park -- and dealing with the visual one-up-manship of the bandshell and the various sculptures, it was very relaxing to sit in the giant building's deserted plaza, listen to the tinkling of metal rods brushing against each other in the wind -- and gaze up at the rigid columns, now clad in even more unforgiving granite, of an out-of-fashion modernist's overblown creation.
Maybe too, when the world turns against Gehry, his bandshell will be a little easier to love.
But my brief visit was enough to cement my disappointment in the Gehry bandshell. The trellised seating area is nice, but I don't understand (or feel) the aesthetic felicitousness of the curled metal forms that create the bulk of the structure. And around back, it looks like a Hollywood set piece -- with a confusion of metal poles poking up in every direction to support those big metal plates.
I think Gehry is the Edward Durell Stone of our generation -- with his trademark massive metal curves the equivalent of Stone's fancy screens. In the end, however, both are simply conceits, not true innovations -- and can't be sustainable as good architecture once the "wow" of their initial creation has worn off.
Speaking of E. D. Stone, I walked across the street after rushing through Millenium Park to check out, close up, the much reviled Aon Center (aka Amoco Building). After fighting through the crowds of the park -- and dealing with the visual one-up-manship of the bandshell and the various sculptures, it was very relaxing to sit in the giant building's deserted plaza, listen to the tinkling of metal rods brushing against each other in the wind -- and gaze up at the rigid columns, now clad in even more unforgiving granite, of an out-of-fashion modernist's overblown creation.
Maybe too, when the world turns against Gehry, his bandshell will be a little easier to love.
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