That's it, I'm moving to Chicago!!!

BTW, Buenos Aires (where I'm from) is also quite beautiful, in case you've never been there.

Cheers!

I'm currently reading Alan Axelrod's book Profiles in Folly. I just finished reading the chapter about the Ford Edsel failure and wanted to share this amusing paragraph about one of the ways Ford tried to come up with a name during the making of the car:

Polling and the contest having yielded a bewildering and therefore essentially useless plethora of possibilities, Ford’s own head of market research decided to take a new tack. He put in a call to the woman many considered the most prominent American poet of the day, Marianne Moore, and informally commissioned her to present a list of names that would evoke what he called “some visceral feeling of elegance, fleetness, advanced features and design.” Even among literary critics and fellow poets, Moore was considered an eccentric. Her suggestions more than lived up to that reputation. Among them were Resilient Bullet, Andante con Moto, Pastelogram, Mongoose Civique, Ford Silver Sword, Varsity Stroke, Utopian Turtletop, Thundercrest (and the variant, Thundercrester), and Intelligent Whale. A late entry was Turcontinga, which combined the name of a South American bird, the cotinga, with turquoise, a popular car color of the 1950s.

“May I submit UTOPIAN TURTLETOP? Do not trouble to answer unless you like it.”

- Letter to the Ford marketing department from Marianne Moore, December 8, 1955

Love that quote: Every building you see is an image of a man you will not see.

I was about to say that's a wonderful analogy for all art; paintings, novels, films, etc, but no, probably not. Architecture is a thing entirely different, because it has no ties to leisure. It literally consumes you, while you really don't see the man (or woman).

In a book or a film, and in paintings, to some extent, there are extensions of the artist--people who represent parts of who he or she is. But a building is acted upon by its occupants. In large part, they become the final component of the art itself. Which again, is true of any art form, but I think here in a much more visceral, integral way.

Nice post, Roger.

I live just outside Albany, New York. As far as politics go, Albany has an even worse reputation than Chicago -- if that is possible -- and it's a reputation that was well-earned.

One of the few upsides to the corrupt O'Connell political machine was that it didn't trust funding it didn't control. During the middle of the century, when LBJ's Great Society unleashed urban renewal upon the country at the expense of our architectural history, Albany came through unscathed. Even Nelson Rockefeller's massive monument to his own ego, the begrudged but eventually beloved Empire State Plaza, put only a small dent in a great architectural legacy.

The glass boxes that litter skylines across the world today are faceless and without meaning. They all blend together, conceding to the sky instead of piercing through it.

I think of 9/11, when the Twin Towers burned to the ground and the fire and debris led to the collapse of 7 WTC across Vesey St. 7 WTC was a modern building, completed less than fifteen years before the attacks.

Directly adjacent to it, the New York Telephone Co. Building sustained substantial damage from the collapse of both the Twin Towers and 7 WTC. But it had been completed in 1927 with thick, heavy masonry encasing its steel frame. The masonry work prevented fires from spreading and melting the steel frame, and today the art deco masterpiece is the headquarters for Verizon. A tragic day that provided yet another example of the old adage: they don't make 'em like they used to.

If I had my choice, I'd work in a building built in the 1920s over a building built today every time.

I have only been to Chicago once, traveling through on the train. All I have seen of it is the inside of Union Station, but I was suitably impressed.

Your observations about the modern viewpoint of "less is more" are interesting echoes of the direction that writing has taken in recent times, as well. Adverbs, adjectives and gerunds have fallen by the wayside, as well as dialogue tags, description and multiple points of view. Newer novels frequently seem to have an identical "voice," which is increasingly in first person.

The pleasure of reading an old book is similar to that of the appreciation of older buildings. Less isn't more, it's just less.

Che, I'm form Buenos Aires too!

I can totally relate to your feelings as a student. I attend a private university, very "modern", clean lines, big windows... impersonal. My friends complain of the old buildings of the public university, I envy them!

I loved the pictures, and the words... thank you, and I'm looking forward for the response of modernist architects to this.

Your entry is about architecture on the surface, but the war between Capital and human passion is fought on many fronts. It has been around for a long time and will be around for a long time. I think this is a good struggle though as we can't afford to always splurge and indulge passions.

I also get the sense that you tend to think of a larger amount of contemporary architecture leans toward the Capital side of the scale and less toward passionate end and that contemporary architecture doesn't have the character that is present in older buildings. I don't think that's really accurate. We have different challenges today (efficiency, carbon neutral, etc.) and evolving styles shaped by these modern goals but there are plenty of examples of beautiful buildings designed with an architect's passion and not by a "panel of roundtable-sitters that brainstormed a design in what they undoubtedly refer to as a 'session'". I'm sure you could also look back and find examples buildings in the past designed purely for function. Comparing a landmark building from the 20's to a contemporary masterpiece would be like comparing Citizen Kane to 2001: Space Odyssey. They're both great, but in context.

I have a good friend of mine who wanted to be an architect. He gave it up. When I asked why he said that odds were he stuck building Walgreen's, CVS's, or something very practical along those lines which would be an awful job I think.

Perhaps some entries here will make you feel a bit better :)

http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/

Thanks for the post and sorry for rambling ;)

I had the good fortune to go the University of Chicago, and for three years I lived in Hitchcock Hall, which was then one of only two dorms in the Quad. The entrance to the building--a long hall that led to five locked doors--looked a little like the first picture above, but with smaller windowns and heavy wooden doors. And when the leaves changed colors and fell, they would blow into this entrance, collecting where the roughly hewn walls met the stone floor and staying there for months. In a modern building, such a collection of dead leaves would probably seem unsightly--but at the entrance to Hitchcock, they seemed, as a friend put it then, "classy."

It seems almost immoral to disregard the feelings evoked, or lack there of of feeling, from public places and how it can even cause discomfort, which probably adds to things like crime in society.

History is dead.

I'm 26. Went to Chicago once. 20 then. Express purpose to see the Cubs play at Wrigley Field. Fun at the time. But, now, I can watch it on tv--as I could then. Things have lost their luster. (Even the Cubs.) Cities and their erected towers of man's libido, to me, have also lost their appeal. You really want modern huts of communities? Read Thor Hyerdahl's (sp?) Fatu-Hiva. I know you're a prodigious reader, Roger, so you probably already have.

Anyhow, the only real appeal of Chicago, or any "major city," is the more populated madness that Henry Miller sought out. But I also think he tried to escape it. So it goes?

Life either sucks or it's grand and then, of course, you die. I don't want buildings greedily reaching for the spheres populating my world when and if I'm lucky enough to forsee my death. Just people, communication there for me, please oh-please. Somthing mad. But, most importantly, nature--truth in it. (I'm sick of the radio waves I'm addicted to, which can even be people's own words. You know that, I think.)

Sorry to ramble, but there's a point in there somehwere...

Anyhow or anyone or any...

Sincerely,
Peace in your...

modern architecture: efficient and beauty-free!

Your essay has made me wonder if you have ever seen CREMASTER 3, the final installment of Matthew Barney's film series on the process of creation. A lot of it strikes me as avant-garde imagery for its own sake, but since 3 involves dramatic use of the Chrysler building and the Guggenheim museum. As the wikipedia synopsis states...

"Cremaster 3 (2002) is set in New York City and narrates the construction of the Chrysler Building, which is in itself a character - host to inner, antagonistic forces at play for access to the process of (spiritual) transcendence. These factions find form in the struggle between Hiram Abiff or the Architect (played by Richard Serra), and the Entered Apprentice (played by Barney), who are both working on the building. They are reenacting the Masonic myth of Hiram Abiff, purported architect of Solomon's Temple, who possessed knowledge of the mysteries of the universe. The murder and resurrection of Abiff are reenacted during Masonic initiation rites as the culmination of a three-part process through which a candidate progresses from the first degree of Entered Apprenticeship to the third of Master Mason."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cremaster_Cycle

To read your citations of Louis Paul, I think Barney might have been on to something in terms of what is in, to quote a Greenaway title, the Belly of an Architect.

Like you I am also an architectural reactionary. I think the author that best spoke to this was Jack Finney, a man singularly obsessed with the 19th century. Jack uses old world architecture as a vehicle for time travel in the literal sense. Surround yourself with that which is old, and the tenuous ties that bind you to the present will slip away, and you will find yourself in a different world. A wonderful thought, and true to the feeling I get when visiting these places.

As you know, modernism in architecture coincided with modernism in art, and the change was so severe and so complete that the Beaux-Arts, neoclassical and Victorian movements were entirely shunned, discredited and ignored for nearly a century.

Now when you see such a building it is a treasure, standing proud against faceless cement behemoths. It is a reminder of how much we have lost.

What a pleasure it is to walk upper Manhattan, old San Francisco, old London, Art Deco Los Angeles. These buildings are a culmination of of 'peak art' combined with inexpensive labor and a unique melding of art and engineering in the Roman fashion that may not come again for some time, but the royal academy style art that inspired these great buildings is once again getting its due, at least outside the halls of professional art critics and other snobbery.

One of my favorite architectural explorations was in Turkey, primarily in Istanbul. The mix of old (Roman, Mediterranean) and 'new' (late Ottoman / French) is simply astounding. There is a gallery dedicated to Istanbul on my website.

The most enjoyable house I have lived in is a 1940s 'lunch meat palace' as my father would call them, small lower middle class houses built by railroad workers, etc. The house is shaped like a "U" so there are windows on at least two walls of every room, and the beautiful soft wood floors made a wonderful hollow creaking sound when you tread across them. My goal in life is to live in a Queen Anne with a wrap around porch and a turret! wish me luck.

Regards,

-Mike

You said you wouldn't give a history lesson, but indeed you did - of Chicago's great architects, Sullivan, Wright, and Mies van der Rohe - and the planner of Lakefront Chicago, Daniel "make no little plans" Burnham. That the University of Chicago had its design inspired by Oxford and that two of its building are Oxford replicas is very interesting history.

But your more interesting lesson was one of Humanities. The Green Tradition instructor you mention surveyed many of the humanities, centered his class on architecture perhaps, but included literature, art, and music. The juncture where these elements intersect as Art appreciation, is, as he knew, in our hearts. And it gladdens it.

I think modern architecture is designed to puncture man's spirit. If observable evidence is any indication, that goal is achieved in America.

Here is a common example of dialogue from a stroll in Mayfair or St James with a friend:

Me: "So what do you think of the... OH GOD! What is THAT?"
Friend: "What? Where?"
Me: "That building! Who on earth looks at these surroundings and thinks, oh! The perfect thing would be a glass and steel cube!"
Friend: "Yes its not ideal is it."
Me: "Not ideal? They should be SHOT!"
Friend: "mmm"

These conversations usually end with me outlining my plans, where I Mayor, to create retroactive planning laws that would result in the demolition, and rebuilding in a more appropriate style, of anything that would look out of place in the background of an episode of Jeeves and Wooster.

But Im a little odd, so..

As an aspiring architecture intern I have to commend this post. Far too many people in my field would love to continue the trend of making every single store and building the same under the rising trend of "modularity." It is more or less new age modernism.

Beware of modularity, it will destroy your ideal deli and anything Ghery does in one sweep of profit based affordable construction.

For that matter beware of any architectural planning commission, they love modernism and modularity combined.

Rewatch the Sketches of Frank Ghery, it might lift the stooper.

I enjoyed the photos from Kerns' website thanks to your twitter. His photos made me aware of that I missed a lot during the visit to U of C on one chilly Tuesday morning. My tour guidebook recommended take a look at the inside of Harper Memorial Library, but it seemed to be a restricted area at that to me. I'm good at sneaking in places or events, but the fact that I was a stranger seemed to work more strongly at that time.

After reading the post, I checked my photographs taken during that time. I could not find The Reginstein Library except the two photos for Henry Moore' memorial sculpture. Not a big surprise. Although I prefer Mies a little more than Sullivan and Burnham (probably due to my reticent nature), that library has the aura of a big bully even to me.

During the architecture tour on Modern skyscrapers of Chicago, the tour guide told us the trend has moved on from Mies. She showed us several examples of post-modern style and another new style that tried to incorporate the past styles into the buildings. They looked nice inside and outside. Maybe they will look antiquely old when I am at your age. And Sullivan and others' buildings will be still senior to them.

Ebert: In a way, the brutalist architecture complements the deliberately brutalist nature of the Henry Moore, which to me seems to combine a mushroom cloud and a skull. It's on the site where the atom was first cracked.

Another beautiful exploration - I don't think there's any subject that Roger couldn't draw the reader into.

But, best of all, it means that I can go around baffling and annoying people today by gnomically telling them, "If you want roses in your garden, you must first grow them in your heart".

A wonderful post, Roger. So much of the past is being eaten alive by a never-ending desire for newer, cheaper, and wanting it now. I treasure the pre-1960 buildings in my hometown (the inside of one bank is stunningly beautiful).

As for my desire to recapture at least a small part of my youth as I close in on 45, I just spent the better part of a month testing and tweaking until the music in my media player sounds just the same as it would coming out of a 1970s transistor radio. My cousin's 6 and 8 year old sons think it sounds horrible, but my cousin says it's the coolest thing she's heard in years.

@UpstateAdamL
Titanic steel framed structures collapsing, without any resistance, destroyed all at once into nothingness? Even though the twin towers were built to withstand multiple jetliner hits? All three buildings falling in precisely the same fashion, with every visual calling-card of the controlled demolition?
Oh yeah, I'm so sure explosives weren't at all involved that day...

Back in 2003-2004 I had the privilege of living in Prague, Czech Republic. The most beautiful city I have ever been to (minus whatever the communist regime built). When I got back to America almost all of the buildings I saw looked fake. They looked like set pieces for old Hollywood movies. I still largely feel this way. There are some buildings here that feel right but most of what we build is crap.

Wonderfully interesting, Roger. It's odd though, how succeeding generations can reinhabit public buildings with utterly different inner landscapes to the original movers and shakers. I have a personal spin on this, having been in Jameson Hall, centrepiece of Cecil John Rhodes's University of Cape Town's buildings at various times of my own life: as a weeping, drunken freshette making a scene 1963, as a serious student watching serious student politics era Joe Levenstein, as an aunt looking at the fabulous library facilities created out of the old student union and reaching between levels, and in 2008 sitting in Jammie with the sit-in (of 1968) commemmorators, as Graca Machel insalled Max Price as VC. I hope Cecil John and Starr were interested in the current zeitgeist, far though it may have been from their imperial one.

Ebert: Jameson Hall:

http://j.mp/bwMhvm

And the adjacent coffee shop with the wide tabletops where students hung out between classes. And the English seminar room where we attended classes with the vines blowing in the open windows. Open!

I almost always encourage visitors, even family and friends, to take an architecture tour when visiting Chicago. The river tour can be quite an awesome sight as you cruise along below the street, usually giving you some of the best views of stunning buildings all in a row and how some were meant to be seen. Sure its "touristy" but we have a wonderful river system and I don't currently own a boat. We are merely fortunate to have such options, but hitting the streets on foot is just as nice. Either way, enjoying the architecture of downtown Chitown generally produces the kind of feeling that must be rare worldwide. Throughout the city, we also have the largest remaining collection of working and standing movie palaces of the early 20th century, if that is more your thing.

You're right - it is visceral. Good architecture, good design really, hits you in the gut, moves you in a way that demands to be *felt*.

Most modern buildings, large and small are soulless, too sterile and anonymous to be felt. They're like giant identical widgets churned out by a factory. Whenever I encounter the latest cookie-cutter facade, I'm reminded of Warhol's Marilyn, or Soup Cans - branding gone mad, icons stamped out one after the other, identical save for color.

Sad.

One of the happiest days in my life was a day I spent in Paris, surrounded by ornamented buildings, gold-leaf covered statues and filigreed ironwork on the bridges over the Seine. I felt like I was in a place where *humans* mattered. The architecture was as much about the people living there as the ego of the architect. It was wonderful.

But he and his generation seem to have pointed us down the road to an architecture that is totalitarian in its severe economy.

This essay would interest you, then, Mr. Ebert.

The Architect as Totalitarian
Le Corbusier’s baleful influence by Theodore Dalrymple

http://www.city-journal.org/2009/19_4_otbie-le-corbusier.html

Beautiful piece. I live in New York and I can really identify. We still have our own monuments of early twentieth century architecture, but the street level has been almost completely defaced by the dumbed-down version of modernism that teaches that blandness and shininess are enough to make a small store look like a big one. Whenever I watch an old movie from the seventies it is downright startling to see the streets of Manhattan lined with drug stores, candy stores, hardware stores and lunch counters that look like they could have been there for fifty years. It still looked like a place that people live, instead of an airport shopping concourse that devoured an entire city.

As an architect I definitely resonated with this article and also love the implication that a building is an image of the invisible person behind it... which is a romanticised idea I can completely relate too.

I think almost unavoidably this is a side affect of the personal nature of all good (and lots of bad) architecture.

I too also believe that the realms of mathematical analysis are taking away the thought processes and general 'feel' or love that architecture should imbue. Much 'starchitecture' is design by numbers rubbish that computers are purely calculated with, rather than the deft touch of a great mind or thought process, the cold analytical scalpel of permutations.

That said I am more in the ephemereal school of thought with minimilism and side with Rohe much more than Sullivan but can appreciate both sides.

The branding of buildings as marketing and lowest common denominator products is a pure shame and not only limited to architecture of course. Blame capitalism for this!!

The fact is that we as consumers (and architects) need to resist this urge and realise that true 'Architecture', not building, transcends these problems and in this way both Sullivan and Rohe were absolute masters of their field.

I perhaps disagree with the notion that the timelessness of the architecture is a failing, in a world in which so many things are dated before they are even out I find it almost incomprehensible and thus entirely respectable to celebrate longevity and 'currentness'. Perhaps if one explored modernism more thoroughly they may appreciate that there is a definite traceable history inherent in the minimal, stark designs that ties back to Mies, Bauhaus etc. that actually roots it in a certain depressionistic, fatalist time of pre-cold war era? Perhaps one that we are still suffering to this day with so called democratic rule?? Many people still resonate with this of course, thus it is somewhat popular.

I think at the end of the day Architecture is misguidedly named for all building design when in fact that is just building as such. True Architecture transcends marketing trends, dollar values and fashion styles to impart a sense of wonder, romance and mystery on an occupant, just like art, but perhaps more subconsciously through experience rather than exposition and cognitive thought.

This is the value of great Architecture and you are right, it costs a lot to do right and requires great talent and minds and forethought.

Without a doubt personalities show through buildings in ways that most would not expect as well.

Thank you for the prose on this subject.

I hope that my Architecture fulfills this need and I wished many more designers/architects followed through with the higher quality side of design and art, rather than the cheap monetisation of our field which is becoming more and more popularist.

I share your loathing for soulless odes to corporate capital (and I work in Century City, the belly of the beast). Those are beautiful photographs of lovely buildings. I'm not sure how well the architecture in the photos would work in Los Angeles, however: that much masonry demands a winter, if you see what I'm saying.

Are you as reactionary when it comes to residential architecture, at least on a small scale? We can agree to hate the Lake Shore Drive Apartments, but I think Koenig and Neutra figured out exactly what a house in Los Angeles should look like. Which is to say, I guess, a soulless ode to personal wealth...

Something for your movie glossary: anyone who lives in a modernist home is either emotionally crippled or cartoonishly villainous. The sole exception is Edna Mode in The Incredibles.

This posting came at the right time for me. I'm currently living in Amsterdam to do some writing over the summer, and its amazing how architecture can entirely influence your mood, behavior, thought patterns, etc. I've of course read Jane Jacobs' amazing and prophetic "Death and Life of Great American Cities" (which is mandatory reading, I think, if you're a human being), whose points elaborate on Ebert's observations above. Basically, the external structure of a city replicates in the internal workings of the mind -- its as much an extension of our thought-process as a fork is an extension of our hand, a bicycle an extension of our legs. We must take care in what we create in the "outside" world -- because the effects are, in many ways, unchartable, but also deeply felt by the populace. You wonder why depression/anxiety is on the rise, and I would say that it has to do more with what we're physically surrounded by, rather than some flaw in our makeup.

Previous to coming to Holland, I had been kicking around New York and Philadelphia -- two cities whose rigid structures and newly-cheapened architecture stand in opposition to the nature that surrounds it. These cities strangle nature; humans are part of nature. The moment I landed in Centraal Station, the chokehold was released -- largely due to the necessity of the Dutch to think about their architecture before they make it. (Otherwise it would sink into the water!) The Dutch put a great deal of care into building a building. My Dutch journalist friend, upon arriving in America, was shocked that there were abandoned buildings. I asked her why -- she said that abandoned buildings were virtually unheard-of in their country, because in order to build something you must think about it a hundred years from now.

It's this kind of thinking that can get us our of ALL the current problems -- if the creation of a thing (mental or physical) is based first on compassion for human beings and the incredibly fragile (mental or physical) environments they live in, we might start healing the disposable world we've created.

I grew up in the new-born (1950) city of Chandigarh in North India which was created as a replacement to Lahore(my birthplace), which went to Pakistan when the subcontinent was partitioned. The work of it's conception and design was done by the legendry le Carbusier, who I guess has more in common with Mies than Sullivan, as you have described.

I was always quite proud of this open geometric city with it's vast patches of green. Carbusier is said to have defined a house as "a machine for living in". The grey concrete structures of my city seem to be growing out of the earth and have a beauty of inconspicuousness, being designed more to serve human needs than to inspire or to awe. While ancient cathedrals and temples may be nice to visit as someone's conception of things, one would rather be surrounded by a homely environment than the shadow or "the image of an unseen person" however exalted.

Van Gogh's austere and luminous "Room" unpopulated even by books has always been my dream house, as the image of a person sufficient unto himself.

"Every building you see is the image of a man you do not see."

Not only that, but the image of a man who's mind went up to 11. He went to his drawing board and decided to make something special, something unique, something that would be admired. He made something that would stand 100 years later.

I remember the first time I went to New York City. I remember seeing The Flatiron Building, The Woolworth Building, The Chrysler Building, The New York Public Library (I always think of Ghostbusters), and of course the great Empire State Building.

These were like celebrities to me. I had heard about them, I had seen pictures, I had seen them in movies and here I was at their feet. I was gobsmacked. I was struck by the sheer size, the beauty of their form. I was also struck by the fact that every piece of these behemoths was constructed by human beings -- another human being, of a species that I happen to belong to, can look at a plot of land and dream up something as incredible as this.

My heart sinks as I see the world around me becoming bland, colorless and fitted for a room full of stockholders. Support beams in buildings are being designed only for support -- Blasphemy!

One of my high school teachers commented once that the buildings of the early 20th century--everything from the Empire State Building to the Newport mansions--is utterly irreplaceable, because the art and craftsmanship that allowed them to be made is no longer available. As a society, we've allowed functionality to override our aesthetic senses. Nothing can be beautiful just for beauty's sake; we must make it as functional, and preferably as profitable, as possible. Thus cookie cutter stores that are as alike from one version to another as identical twins, and a lack of sense of the importance of architecture as art. We've sadly turned it into a business.

On the other hand, I am ever reminded of Bertrand Russell, and his quotation: "Nothing great is achieved without passion, but underneath that passion there should always be that large impersonal survey which sets limits to actions that our passions inspire." I think the great earlier architects of days gone by struck the right balance between gaudy ostentatiousness and practicality. Even something like "The Whale" at Yale University or Baker House at MIT (both Saarinen buildings) combine a sense of whimsy with thought to the practical needs of their users. On the other hand, I can look at buildings like the Stata Center and Disney Hall (both Geary productions), which show an utter disregard for the environments in which they were located, and showcase the architect's ego more than anything else.

Perhaps the pendulum will swing once more, and future generations will relearn how to meld aesthetics and necessity. I would certainly be glad to see that, but I sadly don't hold much hope out for that.

I'm not sure that the utilitarian sameness and general disinterest of contemporary/modern architecture can be attributed to the aesthetic legacy of Mies or any of the other moderns. It seems, more than anything, indicative of the rather ungenerous spirit of our times, in which neither utility nor beauty count as much as short-term profitability. Capitalists once had a relatively binding sense of place, of attachments to cities or countries or to states. The architecture that you cherish suggests their commitment, their desire to sanctify specific places or people. To the extent that it ever existed, that attachment has been lost. We are now left with the husks of a thousand million box-stores and franchises and office complexes, barely congealed into the shape of cities, waiting only to fall in on themselves.

I studied architecture because my mother always complained about the house. My father said it was solidly built and my mother said it was badly planned. The front door was in the wrong place. The coat closet was in the wrong place. The pantry or linen closet (we never figured out what the designer intended) was in the wrong place. I decided I would become an architect and design homes that would fucntion for real families. I did earn my license but have never designed a house. (Actually I have designed some but never built one.) What I realize from my training is I look for exits. How do I get out in an emergency?

Concerning design and style, we were shown plenty of ugly buildings in school. I grew up in Chicago and never liked the IIT campus. I studied architecture at Tuskegee. It is a beautiful campus. Some of the original buildings still stand. The head of the architecture department designed the buildings and the students built them.

In the current economy money drives design because the customers can't afford what they think they want. The architect is given a program and a budget. The firm does what it can designing to the program first. When the estimate comes in the customer realizes he can't afford the magnificent project. At the value engineering meeting all of the pretty things are taken out of the plans. You end up with a functional, ugly, building or space.

Such as life.

TL

If you're ever in Pittsburgh, check out the Cathedral of Learning on the University of Pittsburgh campus. I spent many hours wandering through the halls there as a kid, and ended up taking classes there throughout college.

http://pittsburghsfavoritearchitecture.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/cathedral-of-learning-808x1024.jpg

Unfortunately it's about capital not culture. The fluid forms, the punctuation of emotion and style, the movement of line, light, and life are lost in The Bland. That's what you can call most modern architecture. It's just, The Bland. Mies may be saved by his own originality, and the strength of his particular simplicity, but such a thing can only last so long before are minds are left just as spare as our surroundings. We evolved with complex and diverse shapes and movements all around. Is it any wonder we gaze at cathedrals with awe, its use of the golden mean, its reflection of natural forms, and then glance at a Bank of America Tower and cringe, or go into aesthetic coma? A great book is the Architecture of Happiness, by Alain de Botton, and how it effects our moods and lifestyle and livelihoods, often in the most subtle ways.

Where's the dance of light? The infusion of a leaf pattern or even the mathematical fractality of a Persian motif? The play of perspective and its drawing of visitors on some lines both seen and unseen? Where's illusion and the organic canvas? I guess we don't have time for that. We like to visit it, but not live and work in it. Is that it? Or are we just too lazy to notice either way?

Your comments are heartfelt and well heard (at least by me). They are furthermore a symptom of the larger problem we face in our culture, which is a lack thereof. Like Jake Sulley scoffs in Avatar, "they're not going to give up everything they believe in for blue jeans and light beer". Everything possible is mass produced, dumbed down, streamlined and generic. I know what you mean about the soullessness of the global megacorporation's products, starting with their buildings. Everything (and everyone) is interchangeable, like that weird world in THX1138--a prophetic, if overstated, vision indeed. The bottom line has swallowed up the soul--I share your distaste for modern art/architecture, which is so abstract, nebulous and empty, lacking the heritage, history, and soaked-in character of older styles.

"Ornament" is not mere fluff, as the established wisdom might suggest, but food for the spirit, and testimony to our interconnectedness and being a part of something larger, older and more grand than ourselves. The nifty clean lines of the modern style just suggest (to me anyway) gimmickry and overemphasis of novelty at the expense of meaning and substance.

But that's just me.

Interesting. I wasn't familiar with the word "Brutalist." Had to look that one up.

My first mental image was of Monty Python's Architect Sketch. "The tenants arrive in the entrance hall here, and are carried along the corridor on a conveyor belt in extreme comfort and past murals depicting Mediterranean scenes, towards the rotating knives."

You remind me of my years as a college student in Philadelphia. My friend Gene and I would wander around the city--walking was free--and more often than not our heads would tilt upward, catching small decorative gestures on the buildings. We'd both grown up around Philadelphia, but never grew tired of roaming it like tourists, our necks craning, our fingers pointing up.

Funny coincidence: Watched Law Abiding Citizen on Instant Play last night--crappy movie, but shot in Philadelphia, reminding me of its beautiful City Hall, smack dab in the center of Center City, with a giant compass in the courtyard to remind you that you stood at the center of an assertive precision mixed with exuberance--with Billy Penn up at the top, looking down on his city and saying It Is Good.

For more architectural fun, go to James Lileks' site (http://www.lileks.com/) and scroll down to "Urban Studies"; loads of images from Minneapolis, Old New York, Fargo in 1950, and much much more.

Two links and an excerpt:

- I’m currently reading Alan Axelrod’s book Profiles in Folly and wanted to share this amusing excerpt from the chapter “Ford Motor Company and the Edsel” about one of the ways Ford tried to come up with a name for their new car:

Polling and the contest having yielded a bewildering and therefore essentially useless plethora of possibilities, Ford’s own head of market research decided to take a new tack. He put in a call to the woman many considered the most prominent American poet of the day, Marianne Moore, and informally commissioned her to present a list of names that would evoke what he called “some visceral feeling of elegance, fleetness, advanced features and design.” Even among literary critics and fellow poets, Moore was considered an eccentric. Her suggestions more than lived up to that reputation. Among them were Resilient Bullet, Andante con Moto, Pastelgram, Mongoose Civique, Ford Silver Sword, Varsity Stroke, Utopian Turtletop, Thundercrest (and the variant, Thundercrester), and Intelligent Whale. A late entry was Turcontinga, which combined the name of a South American bird, the cotinga, with turquoise, a popular color in the 1950s.

“May I submit UTOPIAN TURTLETOP? Do not trouble to answer unless you like it.”
--Letter to the Ford marketing department from Marianne Moore, December 8, 1955

Here’s the wikipedia entry for the Ford failure:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edsel

- A very nice photograph from Pen's Tumblings:

http://penbleth.com/post/790733892/dark-cloud-hanging-over-me

Peace, Mr. Ebert. Thumbs up!

Mr. Ebert

Here is a post by John K about liveliness in cartoons and the subsequent death

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2007/02/lets-put-some-life-into-animation-again.html

There is no such thing as an occurence happening in one field. All fields will have the same malady but expressed in the vernacular of each field. The goal is for a visionary to fix them all at once. What we frankly need is someone so full of joy that sparseness and inattention to the beauty of details go away.

I like to say that the 1960s were the greatest decade ever for pop music, and the worst decade ever for architecture. It was the time of the glass-box skyscraper and the cookie-cutter stadium. They mistook dull-and-sterile for futuristic. I think things have bounced back considerably since then. But I miss the Beatles and the other British Invasion bands; the Four Seasons and Supremes and Beach Boys and Simon and Garfunkel.

I agree to an extent with what you are arguing. But I must admit I am also transported and elevated when I see much of contemporary architecture (or other structures/installations by contemporary architects), some of which are very "mathematical" -- I'm thinking of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC, which if described in words in a memo could seem abstract, cold, and heartless but which is absolutely the complete opposite; or much of Frank Gehry's work, like the Walt Disney Concert Hall, or his Guggenheim Museum, which make me feel joy at their flowing freedom. I find these works to be quite inspiring.

that was a good post.

You know what I hate about the suburbs? (this is true for American midwest cities)... the 'burbs are full of those god-awful shopping centers which are build of mortar and brick, devoid of any character, personality, or colors.

an example: http://lmrg-pressurewashing.com/yahoo_site_admin/assets/images/miller_place_shopping_center.188202644.jpg

A part of my soul dies everytime I pass by one of these god-awful 70s style shopping centers. I'll always prefer the city over the 'burbs. I love corner shops, deli's, bakeries, and locally owned shops with flashing neon signs and home-made window decorations.

Let me begin by saying that I am an architect who lives in Chicago. Chicago always has been and always will be a conservative city architecturally, it's not all about conservative midwestern values though. The weather in Chicago is quite severe for construction which lends itself to conservative building styles.

You are correct in noting that arhitecture has lost its human touch. Ornate details, so pleasing to the eye, are all but gone from architecture. It used to be that the materials to make these ornate handrails or mouldings was very expensive and you would pay a craftsman to carve the stone or wood. Now, the materials are easier to get but the craftsmen who would carve the stone are too expensive, or simply not available.

The quality of construction has fallen so much that "builders" do not exist anymore. Everyone is an installer. Something comes in on a truck, it is lifted to the correct position and bolted into place. If a builder is asked to build an elaborate cornice they will first say, "Why don't we use this prefabricated cornice, it costs half as much." How can one argue that the cornice you have designed is justified for double the cost.

I am afraid that your view of architecture is now just nastalgia.

Thank you so much for such a clear and impassioned plea for an architecture of humanity. We so rarely get perspectives from outside the profession. I am not a big fan of Mies either, but in a career marked by WWII, it would have been awful difficult to maintain some faith in humanity. And I wouldn't call you an architectural reactionary, rather a phenomenologist - glass boxes leave little for the senses.

dangit. i thought i was going to be cool and say, "looks like hogwarts," and then i had to see the caption that said "chicagowarts." dangit.

I certainly consider architecture, often, to be art, as it is a human interpretation of what the world needs now, what the city and the block and its scurrying inhabitants and visitors might like to see emerge from the ground to join the familiar sights of their life. In short, architecture, when it is done right, reflects our values and our aspirations as they have changed, or stayed the same, to this moment.

I'm very distressed with what's happening in my little hometown in southern Indiana. From pictures of my father's childhood in the 1940s, I can see no difference at ground level between its downtown streets and any bustling medium-sized city of the same period. A few years ago, an important downtown building, on the southwest corner of the intersection at the very center of town, burned to the ground. It was replaced by a pole barn. Imagine a big yellow metal barn that would house farming equipment. That is what is now in the very apple-core of my hometown.

Coming back from Indianapolis a couple of weeks ago, I was playing The Pretenders' "My City Was Gone." Splendid song about the takeover of singer Chrissie Hynde's Ohio hometown by bland, blind corporate interests and by the foolish trust and weakening taste of the town's remaining denizens.

What you see happening in spots and strips of Chicago, depressing, so depressing, as that is, is happening in our small towns in vast, careless swipes away with their histories.

Dear Ebert,
I am an architect and a big cinema addict. i have been an Roger Ebert follower since i discovered you during my graduate architecture school at UCLA. Our school also had some of Sullivan's ornamentation prominently displayed on our walls. I have since moved back to India and practice architecture here.

It is good to read my favourite film critic's views on architecture. Here in India we have lost many architectural gems that are of much older vintage in the name of progress. The kind of globalised glass boxes that are being put up have rendered many a city ugly and faceless here too.

The Building "CRAFT" and "ART" has been replaced by the building industry. This is true of most of the artistic fields nowadays.

Love the blog and the matter that u bring up.

I have crossed paths with you at SUNDANCE2000 and I was in the same room as u once when u were on a panel with Eathan Hawke at one of the screenings.
Lucky Me - i was in the same room as Roger and i also saw snow for the first time in my Life.

regards,
nandu

I do love some contemporary architecture, but the solidness of old stone is innately appealing at a human level. It ties to Stonehenge, to the Easter Island statues, to ancient castles and caves.

Roger, any crossword solver can tell you that architect's name is Eero Saarinen, not Enio.

I live in Toronto and I love my city for its multiculturalism. But alas, much of its architectural history has been swallowed up over the years and destroyed by short-sightedness, poor planning and weak politicians. And we suffer terribly from a lack of artistic chutzpah, favouring instead to erect ever more glass and steel towers like the new Ritz-Carlton or Trump towers, generic as any new bank building. (Though derided by some, at least the Royal Ontario Museum's "Crystal" design, marrying late 19th Century sandstone with ultra-modern aluminum and glass crystalline spires, dared to challenge the glass block aesthetic.)

The epitome of our planning woes and lack of vision can be seen in our relatively new opera house. Built in the last 10 years just north of the financial district, it is an ugly glass and brick facade that speaks of nothing related to the art performed within its walls. Because of political wrangling, poor cooperation between levels of government, and a desire to jump on the lowest reasonable bid and comparitavely cheap municipal land, squandered was an opportunity to build a signature landmark on Toronto's (very slowly) redeveloping waterfront that could have been a grand palace envied everywhere outside of Sydney, Australia.

Toronto has a rich architectural history, and pockets of astounding beauty and diversity remain that I would invite anyone to explore. But you might be better off just coming for the food (and the Film Festival, of course!).

I recently read a wonderful book called The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape, by James Howard Kuntsler. This book pinpointed everything that I had felt but could not articulate about much of America's physical design, particularly the American Suburb. The rise of the car culture has wrecked our city planning. There is no sense of unity in our communities. The town square is a thing of the past. The idea of the public street as a multiple-use meeting place to be shared by the community is long gone. Now, our roads and buildings are not designed for beauty, but for more parking. Gone are the boulevards, the city sidewalks with storefronts right against and homes up above. Now everything is zoned to set back from the road, eliminate the sidewalk, provide more parking than will ever, ever be used, and spread out beyond reasonable walking distance. Now we are isolated in our cars amongst our own neighbors. The old cities like Boston are designed to be walked, to stroll pleasantly and engage with your fellow denizens. (I live in Boston for precisely this reason: I want to walk.) But any city newer than that is not walkable, provides no real public transportation, is not designed to please the eye and soothe the soul. Compare a place like Paris to almost any American city and it will make you despair. What went wrong?

Maybe we can blame the office building for the box-grid sameness of our cities. Once we decided that buildings should be utilitarian, unadorned, and shuffling as many people as possible in and out, we started to lose the grandness of our old city skyline. And suburban architecture is basically an oxymoron - it is a set of parking lots and strip malls spaced with clusters of abominable houses dumped along wide winding roads with no rhyme or reason. Atrocious. It's no wonder we cannot recognize beauty in architecture or anything else anymore.

I have visited Chicago a number of times, and while it has some truly grand buildings I have never felt that it was quite walkable. Too large, too spread out, not green enough, too many cars. I dislike very wide streets with many lanes of traffic that you have to cross over and over. Despite some bike lanes, the car is clearly king. It's the American way, I suppose, but it's no way to build a city.

First of all, These buildings are indeed beautiful. I've had the lucky chance to go up to Chicago and see a lot of this style of architecture. Of course, I've also been overseas to Europe to see the gorgeous architecture over there as well. I live in South Florida, in a city especially known for the great Mediterranean architecture of Addison Mizner, so I get to see some really striking stuff every day.

That being said, however, I also really like modern architecture as well. Some of the buildings architects are coming up with today are revolutionary, just as these designs were in their time. I enjoy the sleek, fractal based, gravity defying designs of modern architecture, and I don't see why one can't like both the new and the old. The key, in any art, is to always be aware of the past while also forging ahead into the original.

Of course, not every building in the world is going to be as ornately designed as these masterpieces. I suspect that at the time these buildings were erected, there were plenty of "drab" buildings dotting the area. Thatched roof cottages paled in comparison to the great cathedrals of the middle ages. Not every store and office needs such decoration. Practicality too, should be appreciated.

I live in St. Lawrence neighborhood in Toronto, the original Town of York, right next to the Market, which used to be the city's first City Hall. I'm surrounded by buildings designated as heritage, other buildings that are younger, but which follow the feel and flow of history in the neighbourhood. Many of which, the ones that narrowly escaped being designated heritage buildings, will be torn down in favour of modern, 40-story condos. And opposite the Market, they will build a new building, all glass and steel instead of brick, jarring to the eye. And I don't get it. If a city is proud of its history, celebrates its history, why build all these boxes, characterized by nothing but their being disposable, interchangeable and utterly without character?

the photos are magical - learning there must've lent a real sense of importance to getting an education. I grew up in Denmark and the photos of the U of C reminded me of the old country.

Could not agree with you more. I grew up in LA and now live and NY - when I visited Chicago I was just floored. Taking an architectural boat tour was just amazing. And the use of the waterfront is genius (and Hyde Park is pretty incredible too). I hope most Chicagoans appreciate what they have.

I also agree with you re Mies vs. Sullivan. A little of Mies goes a long way. One or two of those buildings are interesting - a city full of them is just blah. The Lever Building here in NY is pretty cool - all the copy cats are just ugly. Here's hoping an architectural movement comes along that revives the beautiful ornamentation you describe.

Why am I not surprised that you know architecture, too?! Thank you. Your writing makes me feel like we're lifelong friends, though we've never met, and likely never will. As an architect, I couldn't agree more. As a Chicagoan, I think you've hit the nail on the head about our city's treasures and mistakes. As a human, I think you're one of this country's greatest gifts to the world. Thank you for being you.

I was siting on the 16th floor terrace of the Trump Tower (oops!) where there is the most ridiculous view (wonderful) of some of Chicago's most historic buildings - illuminated for the night sky view. It is truly miraculous the big doings of humans.

I love buildings of stone - give me the Gothic towers, turrets and carved wooden interiors. My camera's eye always loves to capture them. But I have to admit that sometimes a glass skyscraper catches my eye also. And a well proportioned skyline need not contain only the old school architecture to make my heart go pitter patter. Sometimes interesting and new exciting forms does it for me as well.

Great post Roger!

Well, let me be the lone voice (so far) in defense of modern architecture. I find many modern building beautiful, whimsical, voluptuous - just not in the same way as a Gaudi or Sullivan. The lovely curves of Lake Point Tower and corncob delight of Marina City. Mies' IBM Building seems light for such a large building. Now, of course, the utilitarian condos and hideous skyscrapers like the Sears Tower show no design - only function. But how can we discount the delicacy of the John Hancock Building?

Look at the new Harold Washington Library. A monstrosity that was supposed to blend with the older buildings in the area, it positively scares people away from books and keeps them separated from them on the inside.

I love all good architecture, from the Pantheon to the Guggenheim by Frank Gehry, which seek to find forms that speak to the evolving consciousness - both of the "modern" Greeks and the modern world of today.

Modern architecture may not seem as warm as those ancient bookstores or as kitschy-comforting as those 50s diners, but they provide a wondrous vision that, to me, seems primal, archetypal. I respond to the immediacy of a modern building, whereas an ornamented monstrosity like Versailles sent me fleeing with sensory overload.

It's the execution, the soul of the building, not how many doodads it has, that makes it great.

Ebert: I'm in agreement about Lake Point Tower and Marina City. The tower is in fact based on a youthful sketch by Mies. Both buildings go to added expense to be pleasing.

http://j.mp/ctcBL0

I think Jacques Tati might have agreed with you on much of this. See Playtime.

Royally steamed at those bank offices aren't you, Roger. The nice thing is that they too shall pass and the buildings might remain. Something good can fill the spaces again one day.

During the time that my adult niece attended the university where a worked, the new science building finally came to pass and opened. I toured it for fun. She was a biology major. I asked her about it when semester started. Her words "I feel honored to study there." I would call that a success.

Great article Roger! I wish there was a way to e-mail it to a friend of mine who also appreciates good architecture. The photos of Mr Kern are like oil paintings. I also mourn of the passing of strong, classical buildings when new boxy structures take their place. When good or great architecture is replaced with the banal it diminishes a city's worth. To demolishing old hotels, diners, movie theaters and replacing them with a strip mall that could easily be at home off the Eisenhower EXPWY makes me disrespect today's "architect" immensely.

Roger,
Thank you for this Chicago-centric look at an important issue. How can we have a vibrant community without a visible history? "If you want roses in your garden you must have them in your heart." It also is true that if the roses in your heart are not matched by a garden in tangible space, those roses wither. We do what we are, and we are what we do: the timeless soulless architecture of the Bank of America robs us of the chance to become more who we are.

Roger! Is there a topic that you don't speak on with mastery? Wow. Elevation describes the experience of reading this post, as well as it does the experience of those buildings.

Elevation describes an experience that I had on a short-notice business trip to Milan. Arriving on a Saturday afternoon, I asked the hotel clerk for 3 places that I should go photo-shoot. The old fort, the DaVinci church (Last Supper painting), and the Duomo (Cathelic Cathedral). I made all three, and was inspired by all three.

But the Duomo left me utterly speechless as I walked in. Stricken by silence and awe. Elevated. I read that it took 500 years to build. Now that is a community committed to shared value (and sacrifice to achieve it.) That is enduring value in stone. I was struck by not only the detail in the marble, but in the detail in the sculptures in the black doors. Intricate and beautiful. Detail even in places where no one ever looks.

We live in an amazing country in the US. But not architecturaly. Only sparsely, compared to the little that I've seen of Europe. Our loss.

I anticipate (and fear) that I will get lost in Justin Kern's website and beautiful photos. Just the ones that you posted here made my day. Elevated.

As a pale comparison, I updated my photo website (click on my name) and re-featured my Chicago gallery with shots of the Wrigley building as I walked the city one day. Also the Italy gallery with the Duomo.

What a richly elevating post. Thank you for writing it.

I have to disagree wholeheartedly with the way you reach your conclusion. The problem with modern architecture is not modern architecture in itself, it is many of the architects. No one says that modern architecture has to be dry and cold and calculating.

Older architecture styles, be they Gothic or classical are guilty of the same kinds of faults: they become commercialized. A classical building with unnecessary buttresses and columns is as perplexing and cacophonous as a modern building with poorly designed lines is boring and dull.

Lumping everything into "modern" is disingenuous. Ultimately a building serves a purpose, and its style should be chosen to match such a purpose. As a student at Georgia Tech, I can assure you that the buildings which attempt the grandiose simply come off as pompous, ineffective, and uninspiring. The modern buildings on campus save energy, give natural light throughout the building, and have collaboration spaces critical for my degree. I wouldn't dream of changing my buildings out for Chicagwarts's any day.

Maybe Chicago is able to pull that off and provide the inspiration that its students need, but for me the space becomes a tool rather than a mechanism for encouragement.

Beautiful words, Roger. But the heavily tonemapped HDR photos you used sadden me in a similar way that bad architecture saddens you.

Also, I'm surprised UpstateAdamL didn't mention our very own Empire State Plaza, possibly one of the ugliest, poorly-used, most shockingly brutal public spaces ever built to such a scale. Please, please don't visit it.

im' from Buenos Aires as well!
it appears that you have a lot of followers around here.

one question for you:
this quote is of your own invention? or are you quoting someone else?
"Here I squat! they declare. I am Chase! I am Citibank! I am Payless Shoe Source! I don't speak to my neighbors. I have no interest in pleasing those who walk by. I occupy square footage at the lowest possible cost. My fixtures can be moved out overnight. I am capital."
these words stuck with me.

Ebert: My own invention. I have wanted to visit your city as long as I can remember.

After living in Chicago for ~5 years, I decided to take the CAF Boat Tour and got to see all those great buildings around the river. I agree w/you about Mies but when you say,

"They will never grow old. They will never speak of history. No naive eye will look at them and think they represent the past."

Chicago has always been one of my favorite cities to visit, and I know that its architecture is a big reason why (the food is another). This was true for me even as a kid before I knew anything about architecture - even though I didn't know the names of any of the architects, I was in awe of their work. As I've learned more about architecture, Sullivan has become a favorite. I recommend searching out the PBS documentary The Richard Nickel Story for the sad but heroic story of the man who quite literally gave his life trying to preserve Sullivan's work.

Ebert: He died trying to photograph in the ruins in Sullivan's old Chicago Stock Exchange. Its original trading floor was saved and is now in the Art Snstitute.

http://j.mp/cbbOy7

Two phrases stickout to me in your piece, Roger:

That image is shaped by the man's values, he said. If you want roses in your garden you must have them in your heart.

True. Absolutely true.

You know that I love photography. Poor man's travel photography - just walking around in a new town and capturing it's essence with ambient light. Mostly, until recently, with just a Canon Powershot point-and-shoot - a good little camera which fit in my briefcase and did the job.

People tell me that I have a "good eye". Thank you. But it's not just an eye, which is mostly training and practice on the rules of composition and lighting. What people are recognizing is that I already have a sense of the beauty of the city or landscape in my heart and am just using those tools to express that.

The image of a man you do not see

Yeah. Now that you put it that way, I see that. I guess that the sum total of the galleries on my photowebsite is the image of me. Cool.

I featured another gallery on LCP (click on my name) too: Charleston SC. That's where I learned to love architectural photography. Now that I have an SLR camera again, Justin Kern is inspiring me to spend time to master it.

@ Conrad on July 13, 2010 2:37 AM

I have lived all my life in Chandigarh in North India, which was designed by le Carbusier in the fifties. It is very different from parts of Delhi or Mumbai, which are drenched in history and the footprints of diverse races. Chandigarh in contrast is by edict a statueless geometric town. It has no personality and is like a blank paper waiting to be written on. There are no skyscrapers and the wind is free to howl between the concrete cuboids and over the vast stretches of green with a frugality of flowers. Dust blows. The city has unfortunately by now veered from the original vision. I relish having grown up in this habitat with no past or invisible presence bawling at me. Carbusiers greatness is precisely to have designed a place with compassionate concern for human needs, to leave you alone spiritually and psychologically. It is an open city and not a mould to cast people in. It is a city as natural and unobtrusive as trees which looks to the future without reminding you constantly of the past. I love to return here again and again and after all history is but an hours drive away. The open endedness of Chandigarh in a way corresponds to the unwalled formless infinity of the human spirit.

I am no student of architecture. However, I grew up in Chicago, and my mom took me downtown on the old IC train many times when I was a child. My ambition was to work downtown. I achieved that ambition and had the distinct pleasure of going to school and working in The Loop for over 25 years.

Now I live and work in the suburbs of Northwest Indiana. I am off work this week, and I took the train downtown yesterday. My eyes are still delighted, my heart gladdened, by the beauty of the City of Chicago. Those buildings, the Pittsfield Building where my great-aunt worked, the Marshall Field Building where I used to shop, the old library which still feels like home to me, the Wrigley Building (where I attended school in the basement and ate at the original Billy Goat's Tavern), on an on.

When my oldest daughter was little she was sick a lot and was hospitalized at the University of Chicago three times. I used to joke that I vacationed in Hyde Parke. I don't know their names, but we could see two beautiful towers from one of her rooms. I would sneak out in the mornings and walk around the campus and it was like being in another world but it was Chicago.

Perhaps that is why I am satisfied that I probably won't ever see cities like London or Paris - Chicago is enough for me.

Thank you, Mr. Ebert for this article. I attended the U of C, and I often thought about those who walked before me in its halls. The buildings produce rarefied air that most students thrived on, I am convinced. I agree that what drives most modern architecture is money, and the need to fit in as much as possible, and it's sad. What's even sadder is that companies like Argyle Cut Stone that produce such beautiful stone work as you see on such buildings at U of C are struggling to survive or have already been extinguished, because of this move to modernism. Will we ever be able to reclaim the art again once the craft is lost?

Roger,
Those photographs are gorgeous!

I just had a conversation recently with some out-of-towners about whether I like my current home city vs my hometown (Cleveland now; Columbus before). Cleveland, being an "older" city, exudes beauty in its old architecture... especially its old churches. Columbus being "newer" doesn't have much style, architecturally speaking. Much of the same attributes you describe in your entry.

Nothing can compare to classic architecture when it comes to grandeur and grace.

Cheers!
Chris Ortman

I have tried to analyze why I feel what I feel when I see a Sullivan building. I've attempted to explain to myself why I slow in a crowd to stare, open-mouthed, at his overwhelming level of intricacy. With the help of this article, I've come to the conclusion that his style speaks so solidly to my aesthetic core that to want to drop to my knees in wonder, with no rational explanation, is a perfectly rational reaction.

Thanks, Roger.

Roger,
You should read Martin Heidegger's "The Origin of the Work of Art" and "The Question Concerning Technology." Your recent entry on architecture holds similar views to these essays, which is very rare and just great to see!

I agree with you, except with what you mentioned at the beginning-

"It seems drawn from mathematical axioms rather than those learned for centuries from the earth, the organic origins of building materials, the reach of hands and arms, and that which is pleasing to the eye."

In my opinion, new architecture is simply missing character and originality. Even old buildings were based on mathematical axioms, whether the ones who built it knew it or not. Beauty can be simplified to the Golden Ratio which is 1:1.618 which is also found on the Fibonacci sequence.

I am sure, when you walk into a Mies building, if you were to measure any corner, you would find that ratio of 1:1.618 everywhere. It is aesthetically pleasing, you find it even in humans.

Every architectural design follows an axiom, as does nature. There's just not much variety, it lacks innovation and originality. It's as if every person in the world were blonde and blue eyed... what a tiresome concept.

Do you know what, Roger? Much modern architecture has grown tiresome to me. It does not gladden the heart. It doesn't seem to spring from humans. It seems drawn from mathematical axioms rather than those learned for centuries from the earth, the organic origins of building materials, the reach of hands and arms, and that which is pleasing to the eye. It is not harmonious. It holds the same note indefinitely.

Wait a minute, didn't you just say that? Like, word for word? That's amazing. It's exactly how I feel about it. You'd think I just cut-and-pasted your exact words here. But, like, much modern architecture has grown tiresome to me. It does not gladden the heart. It... wait, dammit, all I'm going to do is say the exact same thing again. We agree all too well!

When Frank Gehry designs a building, I am saddened.

He builds buildings with no concept of 'usability', 'function' or 'aesthetics'. He builds technically difficult buildings because he can (mostly. except when the leak. or fail in other ways.), not because they look good, or improve the world around them (My building is heating yours because it serves as a giant reflector? Oops.).

I go by his Stata Center at MIT on a regular basis, and have since it was built. I cringe every time, still.

(Oh, and his amphitheater outside it? When originally built, the person at the bottom could hear the audience MUCH better than the audience could hear the presenter/performer.)

I love everything you posted pictures of. FLW's style brings joy to my heart - even if I would have to re-scale everything to make it fit me comfortably. I don't know Mies' work, beyond his most famous quote. The Empire State and Chrysler buildings, St. John the BizarreDivine, and the National Cathedral are all magnificent.

Gehry is _horrible_ as an architect. In fairness, though, I really like his Standing Glass Fish at the Walker Art Center in MPLS.

I think everything you said is basically true. Yes, modern architecture seems souless. Yes, our cities are now filled with too many ugly, shiny, glass bank towers. All the streets look the same, you could be in Anytown, Anywhere, America. Even as an architect-to-be, I find that no contemporary buildings come close to affecting me like those ancient masterpieces constructed by the nameless and faceless. As Louis Kahn said, "What was, has always been. What is, has always been. And what will be, has always been. Such is the nature of beginning.”

And yet...does that mean we should make all of our buildings look exactly like Gothic churches? Should all skyscrapers continue in the Art Deco tradition? Should I put columns in front of my house and make it look the Pantheon? The answer is obviously no. When that happens, we end of colonial-style suburban McMansions.

The true Modernists - Mies, Le Corbusier, Gropius - were trying to break free of all the overly ornamented/decorated buildings of the time, and find a new type of architecture free from excess. Do most people today like the results? Maybe not. But that doesn't mean it's not valuable. Mies and company weren't trying to come up with a style or look, so to speak. They were trying to get away from designing based on how it LOOKS, and were focusing on how the building WORKS. They were coming up with new ways of thinking about architecture, trying to figure out how one should approach design given the context. For me, it's their thought processes that are more influential/important than what their buildings merely looked like. The problem is though, afterwards, it became like a "style", much copied everywhere on face value, without any thought.

This same situation happens with all the arts. Maybe contemporary poetry pales in comparison to Shakespeare, but that doesn't mean poets should stop trying to create something new. Would you really choose any contemporary painting over the Sistien Chapel? I wouldn't. The only difference is, if the new poem or painting is bad, you don't have to read it or look at it. If the building is bad, we're stuck with it (for a little while, at least). But this doesn't mean the public should just dumbly accept whatever gets built in our cities! You always read about the death of movie criticism. Well what about architecture criticism? How many of our newspapers even have architecture critics anymore? Like five? Maybe some people actually don't realize how ugly Home Depots and banks are. Maybe they need someone to point it out, to make them reconsider, and to make them demand more beautiful cities. If any profession is in dire need of more critics, I'd say it's architecture. Even if it comes from a film critic :)

Though in defense of the architects...the REAL problem is with developers and not the architects! Oh how we dream of beautiful, uplifting buildings with endless budget constraints...only to be cut down by clients and developers and their bottom lines!

And lastly, I think the whole green building issue will significantly change things in the years to come. We'll have to wait and see how.

Slightly off-topic, but the photos illustrating this posting have been processed with a technique called "High Dynamic Range" imaging.

It's a method to allow one to see detail in dark areas without having light areas washed out. Were you on the scene, your eyes would perform this automatically.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_dynamic_range_imaging

I love your post and I am honored to be the photographer who jumpstarted your ideas and quickened your heart. Unfortunately, a similar trend has happened over time with photography - where art critics and the community abhor ornament and aesthetics. Perhaps I too am a reactionary - yet, I have more faith in the viewer's eye than to shun such beauty in photographs. I am continually rewarded for that faith by people, like yourself, who connect emotionally with my imagery.

Ebert: Your online portfolio is breathtaking. It helped me to look at what I had seen many times and see it. It actually did directly inspire my entry.

"The man you do not see" is not just the architect, but the person who will inhabit the building. The vision an architect has of the resident, the worker, the student, the dweller who will uses the building will shape the building. Someone who sees the viewer of the building as a lover of beauty will build a different building than one who envisions the person unseen as a mere cog. Sullivan understood his fellow Americans as persons who yearned for aesthetic delight. The average architect of a strip mall isn't given the luxury of considering the aesthetic, and so treats the building viewer as feet walking past a window and in a door. Thus, architecture shapes and is shaped by the vision of the people who are not seen.

Just finished a weekend trip to Chicago. Recommend the lobby of the Palmer House Hilton.

Ebert: George F. Will once wrote a whole column about that lobby, comparing it most favorably to the Hyatt extravaganzas.

But Roger, modern architecture is designed to take us into the future, into a world as dehumanized as possible, where people are numbers, and everything from the buildings to the endless forms to be filled out is as soulless as possible.

ugh

Let's hear it for Chicago, for the style of the turn of the last century, when buildings were for people - to admire, to inhabit, to glory in.

Thank you for illustrating this post with U of C pictures; I have always enjoyed the older buildings of that campus, even when I was locked away all night in Regenstein Library working on a paper.

Today I work in one of Louis Sullivan's buildings, but I don't know how much it reminds people of Chicago a century ago. The Gage is almost unrecognizable from its original form after thorough renovations inside and out. The elevators are fast, the plumbing is modern, but just about all of the ornamentation Sullivan designed is gone. A casual onlooker might mistake it for a late 20th century structure.

The old Gage is not completely gone. Some of it hangs on a wall of the Art Institute across Michigan Avenue, along with pieces of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings lost to time.

I grew up in Chicago. Attended the Circle -- excuse me, UIC -- where neighborhoods were bulldozed so that a nitwit architect's vision of a modern campus could be realized. The buildings were cold, and the weather was too.

I wound up in Atlanta where the not-so-old is constantly being torn down and replaced with the next great (read: ugly, poorly thought out) modernist idea. While there are many nice things about living in the South, there is no here here. I miss that.

Remember "Play Time" and its airport? That first shot of the airport could be any modern building, anywhere. Looking around the world, I find myself surprised to be in buildings that have one color scheme (gray) and treat humans as units to rest in a cold, mechanical form that can be reproduced anywhere at anytime for a reasonable price.

What appalls me the most are the Hyatt Places. I went into the Hyatt Place Rancho Cordova and thought the architecture was beautiful. I went into the Hyatt Place Austin, the Hyatt Place Fremont, and many others. They all looked exactly the same. It is one of the few buildings where the more you look at it, the uglier it becomes.

It was refreshing to me when I went to Chicago. I don't think many people realize this, but the city is far more beautiful than our formulaic hotels reveal. I was walking towards the Sheraton with relatives. We got lost. We always get lost when we're looking for hotels or important landmarks.

Just about everybody was looking for the hotel. I looked, and then looked up, and we took a tour along the river, and through the downtown area, and past the newspaper buildings and down Lower Wacker Drive. I looked up and the buildings form and elegance just seemed to uplift me. For a brief moment, I wanted to live here.

Then we got to the Sheraton. It looked like the interior of Discovery One. At that moment, staring at the emptiness of the corridors, I desperately wanted to live in a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

Keep in mind that there were lots of ugly buildings built in the early 20th century--many of those have been torn down since. There were lots of bad houses, too; many of them still exist.

"Modernists" believe in the delicacy of space, the interplay of light, and joy in the simple-looking-yet-technically-challenging detail. Please don't call the banal, boring, soulless buildings you see Modernist. They are, at best, contemporary. Modernism, with a capital M, is something clearly definable and quite beautiful.

For those who wish all our buildings looked like (and were built like?) those of 100 years ago, I ask, are you willing to live with the leaks, the humidity, the lack of insulation, the exposed electrical wiring, the radiators, etc? You forget that most of the modern conveniences we expect from buildings today are not possible, in the form we know them, in a "traditional" building.

hey Mr. Ebert you said this wasn't a history lesson yet i'm learning stuff anyway about my city Chicago. how dare you raise my IQ by 5 points :P lol

Architects fall under the sphere of the construction industry, which is fiercely competitive and inspired more by economy than anything else. It is natural selection on steroids. Architects are also privy to engineering practice, especially in places like Southern California, where buildings aren't just designed up and down, they are designed sideways; continuity is required in both directions. Construction workers and structural engineers (of which I am one) are unfortunately not artists.

Now considering these things, I took a look at the work of Sullivan and Mies on Wikipedia, and noticed something fundamentally different between their two styles: Sullivan worked almost exclusively in masonry, Mies worked with steel and concrete frames. Masonry construction itself has a long rich history of artisanship presenting the architect a lot more tools with which to create something that looks wonderful. The downfall of it is that is very expensive, and in some parts of the country unsafe. Construction favors steel and concrete because they are cheaper, and engineering favors orthogonality because the safe transfer of gravity and lateral loads is far easier to guarantee in those kinds of buildings (the conditions of that guarantee made ever more strict with the evolution of building codes). Combine the two factors together and you begin to understand the necessity of the modern style.

"The image of a man you do not see." Perfect Iambic Pentameter. Deliberate or not, it is a great foundation for the architecture of your think piece.

One sweet byproduct of 2010-and-beyond technology is the possibility of design of Virtual Cities, with Virtual Buildings, which will seem increasingly real as the years unroll. I saw my daughter tinker endlessly with an early SimCity, before she was ten years old; imagine the sophistication and ease of use of its analogue fifty years from now, and with new sensoria on hand. The only significant cost involved would be Time; and surely the most exquisite imaginings would seduce deep-pocketed entities into making them real...

Seems another reminder of the calculated, impersonal, disposable times in which we live. The dollar amount on the receipt is more important than the signature that claims it.

Saarinen's given name was Eero, not Enio; It's the Regenstein Library at UC.

Not to nitpick, but I gotta be me...

Blaming modern architecture on financial considerations is certainly valid, as any and all enhancements to a bulding cost money and raises the rent. If you get the rent to a level of unaffordabilty, you go broke. There is a delicate balance there.

Money however is not the only problem. The last bulding I did in Califiornai required 7 re-designs becasue every month the city planning department decided they wantd to dictate some other form of ugly ducking building. My architects really had little to say about the outside look of the bulidng. So, in essence, I blame all ugle buildings on the city planning departments.

Roger, you revel in the history and complexity of your chosen style, and yet ignore the history and complexity of the "modernism" that you rail against. Contemporary architecture (that of "today") trends look nothing like the Mies buildings you say still look new. A Mies building built today would look just as anachronistic as a copy of a Sullivan building or a Gothic Cathedral. Look at Gehry, and Hadid, and Koolhaas (the golden children of "establishment" architecture today). Their work is a far cry from Mies. And the banality of the Bank of Americas and Borders that you so casually equate with Mies and "modern architecture" is like equating the Cathedral at Chartres with an outhouse. Architecture, like any "art" must change and advance with the times. Gothic and Sullivan and even Mies are irrelevant to 21st century life.

We are all free to have our own taste in the arts, but we must understand and appreciate the historical context that creates those art forms. You would certainly find me woefully ignorant if I were to dismiss all contemporary film, and claim that only movies in black and white were worth appreciating...

Reading your post made me think of 'Playtime'. What a great and prescient film that makes want to both laugh at its existence and cry at its implications. Modernism as the gift that won't stop giving.

Walt Whitman is to Louis Sullivan as William Carlos Williams is to Mies Van der Rohe. Is the poetry of William Carlos Williams less powerful because it is less ornamental, less fragrantly expressed?

Good morning, Mr. Ebert:

If I understand you correctly, you eschew "chameleon" or "Zelig" architecture. You apparently prefer unabashed flamboyance and even defiant anachronism in your buildings, provided the buildings offer insight into their designer. I imagine the buildings you prefer must have a "unique character", however you define it. Pre-fabricated, assembly-line, and geometrically severe buildings are simply anathema. However, how do you feel about Egypt's pyramids, which are geometrically precise externally and ornate internally? As Paul Simon may have put it, you would be rapturous at the thought of angels festooning the facade and interior, and to whirl giddily into infinity. New York's Times Square must terrify you.

Ebert: "Having spent a lifetime wandering when I could in London, Paris, Stockholm, Cape Town, Kyoto, my feet linger on the old streets but avoid the new." Not Athens? If you have not visited Greece's capital, I urge you to go. Even the pollution cannot diminish the stateliness of the Acropolis's offerings.

Also, if you have not already been, I invite you to tour Boston and its churches and universities. In particular, I recommend you take a gander at Boston's City Hall in Government and see whether you consider it, as many have, an unsightly monstrosity. Oh, incidentally, upon viewing the picture you posted of the Tribune (?) building on the right, it uncannily resembles the Schrafft's Candy building in Charlestown (a Boston, MA suburb).

As for myself, architecture is not my forte, and my attitude towards it is not as assured as yours. I suppose, aesthetically, I tend toward architecture with light, bright colors and comforting, rounded curves. Still, I can appreciate antiquity's construction and the incalculable hours craftsmen have spent hewing out these masterpieces. Such craftsmen honor humanity and nature.

On another unrelated note, I have an observation and a possible Movie Glossary contribution:

1) Regarding the query you posit regarding the alien warthog's protuberances in your "Predators" review, perhaps they are retractable, like Wolverine's claws.

2) "Don't worry, I Speak Fluent Gibberish": If a movie introduces a character that speaks a bizarre, incomprehensible language, it will introduce another character who will be the only one in the movie capable of understanding that language. Classic Example: "Star Wars" More Recent Example: "Land of the Lost"

Now, I have to visit Chicago. In fact, I'm thinking of walking amongst the buildings of your great city soon...maybe in November...hopefully in November.

I want to be there when it snows. I always imagine Chicago in snow for some reason. Looking at these pictures is a feast to the eye. They look so grand with the wide scope of the interiors and exterior feeling almost ambitious and glorious. I can't imagine how I'd feel seeing all that in real life.

In Cairo most of the buildings are old. We like them the way they are. We do build new ones but rarely to replace. The only thing that has changed in Cairo is the growing population. Therefore instead of replacing buildings and mosques hundreds of years old, new compounds are being construvted in the desert.

Here's a video of what Cairo looks like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHs9Ff7hfQo

*I love the Kasr El Nil Bridge shot. It looks the same today.

Ebert: It can be cold in November. Come in a milder month and imagine the snow. :)

John Ruskin always said that Gothic architecture was the best kind, because it allowed for the free expression of all artisans involved. He too valued old buildings above new trends, and said of them:

"For, indeed, the greatest glory of a building is not in its stones, not in its gold. Its glory is in its Age, and in that deep sense of voicefulness, of stern watching, of mysterious sympathy, nay, even of approval or condemnation, which we feel in walls that have long been washed by the passing waves of humanity.”

I grew up in the eclectic architectural madness of Altadena, California, which at least had the advantage of some nice Spanish-style houses and some lovely Craftsmans, which is my favourite architectural style now. One of the highlights of the one brief trip I've taken to Manhattan was seeing the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building--you can see the World Trade Center in my pictures from the trip up the former, but I was never interested in visiting it. I don't like big glass towers.

The college I attended here in Olympia, Washington, looks rather like the set to a bad '70s sci-fi movie, and consensus around campus is that at least our first president insisted that it be a centralized campus, not one all spread out which would have required cutting down the acres and acres of trees. (And the lecture hall looks curiously like the Millennium Falcon, given it was built before the movie came out.) There are murals in various places, but the actual buildings themselves are very unattractive, something I've always considered one of the college's greatest failings. Alas for its being a product of its time.

On the other hand, downtown Olympia is charming. Very little of it has been substantially overhauled from its early days as a port and then as the state capital. On winter evenings, as you take the bus around the lake, it can look as though the capitol building is floating. (We have a great public transit system.) Oh, modernity has struck the town, especially on what used to be the outskirts and what still is, but there are old buildings which used to be warehouses and now have fascinating little stores. A bank which went out of business now houses a jewelry store. There are Victorian houses; there are stores from the '20s. There are notices all over town informing you of the historical nature of the building in front of you. In the park in front of the old capital building, which looks not unlike a castle, there is a fountain installed a hundred years ago by the temperance people. We don't have the soaring architecture of a big city, but that's one of the things I like about it anyway. Its intimacy.

Emotion and architecture made me think of that sad, majestic ruin of a building in Rashomon that the storytellers take shelter under at the start. It was my favourite character in that film
http://youtu.be/-XZCZHXmWbA

Maybe we should get directors to become architects?
I could see Terrence Malick designing a beautiful house or Spielberg a towering sky-scraper...

One clip your entry reminded me of is a sneak preview of a "This American Life" DVD about Chicago's famous buildings:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBpFKK0DqR4

From the last shot in that clip, the crimes are not mere ones of replacing a cozy deli with a sterile bank at street level.

re: Frank Gehry, his contribution, Walt Disney Concert Hall, to the otherwise schizophrenic downtown Los Angeles is well loved and joins many other iconic landmarks on postcards. Gehry says it's one of two buildings he's designed that spends time in (the other being his house).
We have managed to hold on to some beautiful works, both big and small, against the ever present threat of the wrecking ball. Some, like the Gamble House have gone onto star in films: http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/12/2009/12/bttf_delorean_for_sale_top.jpg

But preservation efforts generally face the giant bulldozers operated jointly by developers and city hall.

For New Yorkers, a film scout has a site up chronicling the odd (and old) stuff he comes across in your fair city (ok, he's on a road trip now, but dig through his archives):
http://www.scoutingny.com/

Architects seem to design buildings for maximizing cubicles, and lowering operating costs. If they were told to satisfy the enormous egos of the developers, that is, create monuments, we might see interesting buildings again. But developers are only interested in maximizing rental income, bringing in the same chain stores that every zip code has. They have no concern that they'll only be remembered for the art they've destroyed.

(1) All right, I don't believe you were saying exactly otherwise but I just want to state that the beauty in nature and in the buildings you like all embody significant mathematical relationships.

(2) As far as Sullivan vs. Mies, you do know that Frank Lloyd Wright's buildings may be aesthetically appealing but are generally complete shit as structures? I have no idea whether Sullivan's are better. Wright's require quite a lot of money to maintain.

(3) A real problem with modern architecture is that it is not Green in the modern sense. Buildings are not designed for the climates or environments in which they are constructed and end up requiring expensive modifications and/or detrimentally affect their environments.

I attended the U of C, and while I'm in agreement with your love of its architecture, I'm going to have to disagree with you about the Reg, though I see your point.

I like how the Reg mirrors the atomic pile Fermi built on the same block, and how the fluted stone and blocky silhouette make it seem even more imposing than a building of its size would be already.

I always told my friends that in the case of plague or apocalypse, I'd head to the Reg, since it looked like the kind of place to ride out locusts or a nuclear attack. It looks like a place you could rebuild civilization from. Which is kind of fitting for a library, don't you think?

PS to Will: extremely jealous of your opportunity to live in Hitchcock. The balconies and thermostats in Stony Island were nice, but man, that is some practically ugly architecture.

So, we should go with Gothic style then? Nostalgia is comforting…
Architecture, like any other art, evolves and if it does not, we are dead. There is good art and there is bad art. There are bad films and there are good films, right?
I disagree that modern buildings have no place in history. They do mark a place in time. Some can become timeless and some become symbols of what went wrong with that period of thought. Live and learn.
The Gothic Revival Style which you illustrate is wrought with history, no doubt. Was it not symbolic of an oppressive church? Did it not become a symbol of the elite? Some of these spaces, while well crafted, can be cold and dark.
Modern architecture can be cold and dark, but it can also be light and warm.
I will agree with the loss of craft in architecture and the sense of ornament. Much of this is due to economic factors and not necessarily architects cool aesthetics. The cost of labor is high these days and materials are not cheap either. As architects (I am an architect) we struggle to do the best with what we have. Most architects I know are interested in creating warm and welcoming environments for people.
If your frame of reference is Universities, then you are probably struck by the brutality of many mid twentieth century buildings. After all, “Brutalism” was all the rage and was an actual style. You have to take the good with the bad and try to make things better if you can. As these buildings age, the good ones will stay and the bad ones, well they may stay too thanks to preservation. In any case, I think we need to keep a record of our architectural history.
Fear not haters of the Modern style. The architectural movement of the day is about the environment and energy. You are about to get your fill of planted roof, solar panels and composting toilets. There will be good and bad examples of this as well.

I've often thought we could spend just a little more -- maybe 25% more? -- and wind up with buildings and spaces that appeal to both us, and also to visitors who might come and spend money wandering around, looking.

And might be happier, and more inspired with joy and energy, and maybe even more productive of GDP.

Always remembering, though, Garrison Keillor's story about becoming unsettled with the never-ending perfection of the scenery in the Netherlands, biking past delightful house after perfect garden after perfect public building or square, finally stopping to drink in an unkempt lot on which sat a rusting old refrigerator. Then he flew home to the U.S.

I.D. the delightful architects and designers and give them more money. Pay them to help with small scale makeovers in cities and towns across America. Also, I.D. the horrible architects and give them different jobs, or even pay them to Just Stop.

Yeah, but Regenstein is a great place to study. Maybe it's the leftover energy from Berwanger, or the very different energy from Fermi. The inside of the library is good architecture, efficient and homey at the same time.The big chairs are unsurpassed for inducing REM contemplation,(the light in Harper was terrible for studying ). The outside seems to compliment the gothic elevations across the street, or maybe Rockefeller Chapel. I can take Mies or leave him alone, and Le Corbusier looks the way the whole world would look if the commies had won the cold war, and French commies at that. There are modernist architects that create works of complexity and resonance: I like the Getty from a kazillion different angles, and both the inside and outside are fun to walk around in. I think FLW was right about the Trib, but I enjoy it anyway, like the Cubs, and no great architect did more trainwrecks than the sage of Oak Park. A friend owns a copy of a Wright home, and it's a pleasure to live with: you feel like you're part of the space. On the other hand, if you've seen one Gehry building, you've seen them all, and inside one I keep expecting Caligari around every corner.

@Ian Chalmers -- that's correct. There were no explosives involved except for the thousands of gallons of jet fuel. Vertical steel beams, their insulation blown away by the initial impact, softened under the pressure of hundreds of thousands of tons. Sorry if you find it difficult to grasp that reality, but I'm tired of humoring you nutters.

Roger, I live in Atlanta. When I used to go for a walk down Peachtree Street on my lunch hour, I'd always look forward to our own small Flatiron Building. None of the newer buildings have as much character.

Have you heard of Christopher Alexander? He had some of same problems with modern architecture that you have, and some interesting ideas about the root of the problem.

Old architecture borrowed techniques, styles, and ideas from still older buildings. This allowed a whole town, city, or area to have some sort of coherence, but more than that, it allowed architects to borrow from a rich tradition. He developed this notion of "pattern architecture" from that, which strangely enough became vital to computer programmers while being ignored by the architecture world.

A modern architect is expected to start, essentially, with a blank canvas, and fill it on his own. This makes for unique and interesting buildings, true expressions of personal creativity. But the creativity of one person, no matter how ingenious, is no substitute for generations of evolution, experience, and insight. The resulting buildings will be striking and unique, but they will necessarily be shallow and lifeless. An architect must invent his own school and tradition, and, like a fictional world, the result will be striking from afar and hollow from up close.

BTW, in my opinion, the root cause of this problem is an unhealthy attitude to 'intellectual property', which views borrowing or copying as a cardinal sin. How different is a striking building with no depth from a catchy pop song with a 3-listen half-life? Your cookie-cutter bank branches bear some sort of uncanny resemblance to equally temporary songs.

Ebert: I have three of his books and A Pattern Language is one that opened my eyes forever to how architecture interfaces with humans. It is also physically one of the most lovable books I know about.

Perhaps beautiful architecture was doomed when education became less classical and more functional; less mindful of the study of great creative minds of the past and more about rote learning and short-sighted test-taking. The pace of life is such that we have taught our children to never slow down, consider, or savor the elegant or masterful in design or nature. We all rush past, pretending like there isn't a larger cost to living surrounded by boxes of cement.

@Steven Doyle: Here^2.

Roger's "Man on Wire" review:
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080804/REVIEWS/808070305/1023

Roger doesn't critique the Towers' architectural value, 'cuz he's paid to review movies, not the buildings, but from Wikipedia we get this:
"Petit's high-wire walk is credited with bringing the then rather unpopular Twin Towers much needed attention and even affection. Up to that point, critics such as historian Lewis Mumford had regarded them as ugly and utilitarian. The landlords were having trouble renting out all of their office space."

From the WTC Wikipedia article: "The World Trade Center design brought criticism of its aesthetics from the American Institute of Architects and other groups. Lewis Mumford, author of The City in History and other works on urban planning, criticized the project and described it and other new skyscrapers as 'just glass-and-metal filing cabinets'."

So, Mumford was saying "your building sucks"?

Actually, on cities Mumford said this: "The physical design of cities and their economic functions are secondary to their relationship to the national environment and to the spiritual values of human community."

Petit had all charges against him dismissed, and he was "sentenced" by the court to put on a show for children, which he did in Central Park. The Port Authority granted him a free lifetime pass to the observation deck and invited him to sign a steel beam on the South Tower.

Roger: The original WTC architect was also afraid of heights, so he made the windows small.

Dear Mr. Ebert:

I have been to Chicago three times and totally missed those sights! I obviously need to go to Chicago again.

I did once buy a curious book at a garage sale (really the front lawn of an apartment building sale). It was all about the architecture of Southern California--noteworthy buildings by region and called "A Guide to Architecture in Los Angeles and Southern California." It was sadly outdated and I then bought the more recent version, "Los Angeles: An Architectural Guide." Alas! So many wonderful buildings were destroyed between the 1977 book and the 1994. I supposed I now need to buy something written in this decade.

Having lived in Pasadena, I was able to tour the Gamble House. It's sad to think of all those beautiful craftsman houses that were torn down.

I loved walking around Tokyo because you'd often see the old with the new. There are some modern houses that attempt to be green as meaning organic as well as green meaning energy saving.

If you're interested in seeing some really organic structures check out Patrick Dougherty at www.stickwork.net.
Now I wish I were walking around in a lovely garden rather than stuck in a townhouse condo in the city!

Lots has been written about this, though certainly not all from this perspective. Check out Anthony Vidler's THE ARCHITECTURAL UNCANNY, for example.

Love those photographs of the UofC campus. The reasons why they are so satisfying (visually and experientially) is explained in Christopher Alexander's masterworks, "A Pattern Language" and "The Timeless Way of Building". Anybody who cares about urban design, community design, building construction, and soul-nurturing architecture will find a motherlode in these volumes. Highest recommendation!

At wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pattern_Language

Ebert: I wholeheartedly agree.

I said in the last blog that I didn't like to compare art, but what I meant to say was that some art knows what art is and some doesn't and while what it is technically may be art, it doesn't mean it knows what art is.

Art is the illusion of spontaneity (Japanese proverb).

With Sullivan and his ornamentations you see a spontaneity, that says "here's this and this, and--surprise!", and although, I do want to change what I said earlier about not wanting to compare art (well, at least for comparison's sake), I think with architecture, it seems to be something you might have to experience, particularly for hours as you watch how the sun changes it and perhaps even how the moon changes the way it looks; but it does seem like there is a bit more lacking of spontaneity, at least from web photos, of Wies' compared to Sullivan's, although I think just having Wies' kind of perspective alone almost makes it enough, just to kind of say, "well, there's that too."

I think this subject was discussed before in one of your old blogs when talking about other world cities. What comes to my mind instantly are all the famous landmarks in London and the atrocious buildings that have been placed right besides them. Think of the mayor's office right alongside London Bridge or the “Gherkin” (Swiss insurance company building) close by London Tower, one looks like a porcupine, the other like a pineapple. They almost seem laughable to me and I can’t stop thinking how anybody would dare place them alongside such renowned places.
I don't have as much problem with the new Chicago Trump Building, the shape is pretty hideous but at least they had the sense to use a very discreet color of mirror-glass which makes the building seem a lot “lighter” and blend with the sky foreground, almost disappearing in it. While in Chicago I took a picture of it, I think from Wabash Ave. and the building almost looked like a drawing.
The one modern building I love is the Hancock in Boston. Such a clean design, its mirrors do a wonderful of reflecting the very old buildings that surround it. I do love the mixture of modern and old, when done right. And that is my conclusion: it’s not only the style that matters but how well or not they are executed.
I love that you bring up the “less is more” remark because it reminds of a story I hadn't thought about long ago about a schoolmate in architecture school some 25 years ago who attached a note with that saying on one of his assignments in order to justify the lack of blueprints he provided. Safe to say the note didn’t help with this grade.

Banks used to appear respectable, firm, and trustworthy. Now they look like gaudy, street-corner shysters. Architecture still reflects the times, just not in ways that inspire comfort.

"The man behind a Sullivan building seems humane and humorous, a bringer of gifts to the observer. The man behind a Mies building seems more like a machine and a miser, never relinquishing a single detail not absolutely necessary."

I'm reading the book The Fountainhead at the moment, and find reading a contrasting take on the subject to be refreshing and interesting. What Ayn Rand/Howard Roark had in mind is different than the storefronts you mentioned, but the principal of it--having ornaments and decorations besides a purely rigid, uncompromisingly plain and modern building.

Architecture must be experienced and not just seen because it is about space not just appearance. A photo of a gothic cathedral or a modern office tower is more about the photo than the structures framed in the shot. So why is the spatial quality of gothic so different than modern? As Mr. Ebert mentions, something to do with economics/capitalism. People decided over centuries that space and it's qualities must serve a quantifiable/comodifiable purpose and less representative of say religious aspiration (or religious control). In short, what there is to like or dislike about modern architecture really has a lot to do with economics and politics of space. Post WWI, Mies and others (e.g.Bahaus) saw the open plan as something socialist/democratic, impossible to identify with any group or ideology per se as representative of same or be the instrument of political control (e.g. Soviet style brutalist architecture) by one group over another. Based on universal law of proportion and clean lines and function and emphasis of materials, Mies wanted architecture without authorship (though, ironically his authorship is well established)... If our public values were different our public buildings would look different too. Best proof is in how overwhelming majority of our private homes have pretty much looked the same for centuries; pitched roof, fire place, etc. Our values of domesticity contrast greatly to our values of commerce (which for most are not ours but more of some corporation's); for the former we want space that holds intimate meaning, for the latter a box with lights will do. A society that places private values public spaces will lead to architecture of the descriptive not non-descriptive. But, as due consequence/cost, that society will be less democratic. What is more important to Americans today, especially in these hard economic times: a more uniform society/politics leading to architecture of shared meaning or a more open society/plurality and architecture of communal emptiness and at most subjective, solipsistic (defined by personal definitions) meaning?

Roger, I seem to remember reading a book in which the author contended that a culture goes through 3 stages of art in its lifetime.

The first stage is simple functionality - the thing does what it does, and that's it. The beauty of this art comes from the simplicity, the expression of an object's function through its form, etc., etc.

The second stage is...let's see if I remember this well...functional art, in which things do their job but are also decorated and beautiful. The decoration enhances the form of the object.

The last stage is ornamentation, when the decoration overwhelms the form and function of the object.

Perhaps we can look at this stage of architecture as the first stage of a new artistic movement?

I looked at the pictures you posted, and they remind me of many buildings one can see in Ottawa. Our Parliament buildings, some of the embassies, Rideau Hall (not so much, though). There is something that warms one's spirit in looking at something beautiful.

I will be a graduate student at the University of Chicago this fall onward. Cinema and Media Studies. I've never fallen harder than when I fell in love with the University back during campus visit days. Thank you for your musings -- which are always full of quiet precision -- and for linking to Mr. Kern's work. His astonishing collection of photographs captures everything that makes UofC the magical place it is. I can hardly wait to be swept up in the full swing of academic life when quarter begins.

Ebert: You will be astonished at the energy and depth of Doc Films, the nation's oldest film society, which operates its own excellent Max Palevsky Theater in Ida Noyes Hall.

http://j.mp/9V4iV3

Some of Kansas City's best architecture:

Kansas City Power And Light Building:

http://tiny.cc/1s84j

The KCPL building used to have floodlights that would alternately bathe the building in reds, yellows, blues, etc. As you can see in the photo, only the top lantern remains lit; at night [and particularly in the sunset's afterglow], this gives the windows the illusion of being holes that open to the sky on the other side of the building. Side note: the west side of the building was left bare for a twin tower that was never built.

The Bartle Hall Sky Stations:

http://tiny.cc/anq5u

[silhouette: http://tiny.cc/7rtci]

While the convention center itself isn't particularly impressive, the four towers [called "sky stations"] were inspired by the art deco of the adjacent Municipal Auditorium, and are definitely the most unusual architecture in the Kansas City skyline.

Municipal Auditorium:

http://tiny.cc/s88k7

Built by the Hoit, Price, and Barnes architect firm [Hoit was a native Chicagoan, and he carried his art deco sensibilities with him to Kansas City] in 1934, Municipal Auditorium's interior contains classic art deco signs, sculptures, and statues; its exterior seems to have been inspired by Chicago's Field Museum [which seems reasonable, since Hoit would have been in Chicago during the museum's early years]: if you can imagine the museums without its columns and windows, you'd be imagining Municipal Auditorium.

Perhaps another difference is that more humanity was put into the design of the old buildings because they were expected to last for centuries, whereas in this throw-away society, nothing is needed longer than the initial glimmer. That said, despite the name, I enjoy the shimmer of Trump Tower and the wavy playfulness of Jeanne Gang's Aqua.

I feel very similarly, except on this notion:

They will never grow old. They will never speak of history.

Who's to say that what we see as "modern" now won't become outdated? I am a (relatively) young person living in San Francisco, and none of my friends shop at CB2 or Crate and Barrel; we spend our Saturdays trolling flea markets and estate sales for unique, older pieces. An apartment described on Craigslist as "modern" is synonymous with boring, the same way "cozy" means small. Victorian and Edwardian flats command higher rental places and attract more forward, aspirational tenants. Modern is mainstream. The architects of my grandchildren's generation will be influenced more by older styles, I think, or at the very least, they will have developed something newer that renders the Mies buildings "old."

When I moved to Chicago, I chose 1st Chicago as my bank, partially because of the wonderful view of the Chicago skyline on their checks. And whenever we see a film on TV that was made in Chicago, I can't help but get chills from seeing how beautiful our city is.

Yes it is still beautiful, and I was so looking forward to the opportunity to show our city off to the world at the Olympics. But it was not to be.

Some of the great losses suffered in our city are documented in Lost Chicago by David Garrard Lowe, a compendium of photos of Chicago architecture lost forever courtesy of progress and the wrecking ball.

Subtler changes occur daily, as you document. Yes, blah banks blossom. And, my 1st Chicago bank is gone, although one of its glorious ashes remains on Michigan Ave., the "1st" still proclaiming its stately presence above the revolving door at the corner of Michigan and Ohio.

The building epitomizes all the changes you document, but in a different way. Instead of putting up a squat and gobbling bank, they took a miniature classic of a bank building and turned it into a Guess.

How can a building give me such a feeling of happiness and sadness at the same time? To me, there should be a picture of that building next to the word "bittersweet" in the dictionary.

The absolute worst, though, in my mind, is the dreadful Walgreen's store and apartment building on the corner of Chicago and Michigan. Although it, too, creates mixed feelings in me. When looking up and down Michigan Ave. and marveling at what I see, my eyes land on that building, and I just have to laugh at how awful it really is. In opposition to Mies, it was dated from the day its cornerstone was laid. That's one that I look forward to seeing the wrecking ball demolish. I hope to live to see the day.

Thanks for the post.

Ebert: Yep, it's an eyesore. Best building in the area to live in, though, because you can't see it out of your window.

Aside from the 53 stone steps to get to it, spending a week going to sleep and awakening in a penthouse apartment in San Donato reinforced for me daily that the building had stood in that spot since the 13th century. Glorious views of Tuscan countryside.

First floor, retail. Second, apartments. Third penthouse apartments.

Summer is fine for Chicago. Architectural boat cruise is worth every penny. Snow is better as an image than as reality. Got lucky and visited in mid-December once. Light snow and minor fender-bender for taxi on way to airport to leave.

Mr Ebert,

I am an architecture student and in one short year I will be graduating with five years worth of "eco" design pounded into my brain. I have to say i completely agree with what you are writing about, I have been brought up through the program with only minimalist design strategies and a strict adherence to cutting edge technology, even if I never did quite understand their uses. But as I am getting older and more knowledgeable in my studies, I have started to question the education that is given to current students. Every professor wants us to integrate solar panels into the roof, want us to explore self adjusting window screens, research the easiest way for a person to travel efficiently through a space. while i do understand the importance of responsible design, i also understand when a piece of technology has its time and place. i never understood what happened to the beauty and procession that once inhabited the design of past masters, why are we taught from the ground up to learn about sterility and abstraction. granted, i do love modern architecture, but part of me thinks i only love it because its all I've been exposed to. since Mies, Corbusier and Gropius have had such a profound influence on modernism and effectively changed the way architecture is taught, i fear that if something isn't done, if our generation doesn't realize what is happening to the profession, then the Tribune Tower, the Water Tower and the works of Louis Sullivan will be considered relics. I am afraid that there aren't enough students, like myself, that are open to history and the lessons that are to be learned from it, that take anything other than studio design time seriously.

Tom Wolfe's book "From Bauhaus to Our House" is a great chronicling of the conscious decision-making process embedded in the glass box look. A bit dated now, but worth reading.

Fantastic insights (and images)! I think your perspective reflects the thoughts of many who are not a part of the architecture establishment. Of the establishment, however, there are several firms, and a few architecture schools that espouse traditional rather than utilitarian or avant garde design.

Three schools of architecture near Chicago (Judson University (Elgin, IL), Notre Dame (South Bend, IN), and Andrews University (Berrian Springs, MI)) once again teach traditional architecture. The beautiful work coming out of these schools gives me hope for the future of cities!

For some reason my first post this morning is listed from Anonymous. And my second post this afternoon didn't go thrugh at all. OK, one more time. I enjoy going on building tour field trips. New, or old, I always look for the exits. Ha ha! And usually ask if the roof leaks.

When the architecture building at my school was renovated the original monitor skylight was removed. The building was constructed around 1919 by the building trades students. The skylight provided natural light into the design studio until sundown. There were times after severe storms that the power was out. We were able to continue working because we had natural light. When it was too dark to work at our drafting tables we went to the window sills. They are almost two feet deep so we could lay our boards flat and draw. Now the students do almost everything on computer. There is something beautiful about the building. I think old stone and masonry structures have more character than the steel and glass.

Ebert: I hope this gets through. I would never delete one of yours. "Anonymous" might mean you didn't type your name in.

I have only been to Chicago several times and whenever I hear of someone going there I always recommend the achitectural boat tours and Frank Lloyd Wright's studio and tours. I am always looking for an excuse to return, now I will be armed with more places to see. In a lot of cities the buildings are merely glass rectangles. That is all. No charm, no grace, no style. Nothing that draws the eye, except size and glare. Nothing delighting the eye, instead, assaulting it. There is nothing for the ages. Our buildings are as disposable as the rest of the consumables that our society so frantically amasses. The only monuments being built are bank accounts. What is being out out there is aesthetically painful to look at. How dreary.

While I can sympathize with your sentiments here, having grown up in the suburbs of Los Angeles, the modern architecture of Chicago WOULD feel old and cultured the same way London does. However I suspect that the cookie cutter housing projects of California are symptoms of what you lament in modern architecture.

What I worry about, though, is that your only prescriptive alternative seems to be... the past. The photographs are lovely, as are the buildings themselves... but they evoke to me University Architecture. Particularly American University architecture that seemed to feel the need to imitate British University architecture in order to legitimize itself.

But where's the life in that? Should all artists try to repaint Davinci? Not just in reference but as the ideal form? London is lovely, but many of those old London buildings are simply facades, where the entire building behind the front has been rebuilt (here's a drawing I made of one of these in progress http://darteboard.com/2010/02/16/facade/).

Should all new architects seriously subvert their own contemporary visions to hide behind figurative versions of this, where all aesthetic decisions are made by the dead, even if the living continue to imitate them?

What I love about London architecture is the VARIETY. Yes you have the old school London that Disney Land mimics, but the Globe Theater is within walking distance from the Tate Modern. The Tower Bridge is near 30 St Mary http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/30_St_Mary_Axe, and so on. You can find remnants of the nineteenth century near remnants of WWII near where the structures of the future are being built.

To me THAT expresses the vibrance of architecture, and the handicap of American Cities, particularly on the West Coast: Our cities are young enough to be defined by 1 or 2 styles. In Los Angeles there are signs of the old LA in spots, but for the most part the car has had the biggest impact. Compared to which the skyline of San Francisco (or even Seattle) seems imbued with culture. But all lack the rich layering that only development over time can bring, where the distinctive styles DO begin to define histories and a diverse, living intellectual tradition I grew up starved of.

Give me modernism any day over the grey expanse of a 6 lane intersection flanked by a 7-11, cigarette shop and stuccoed condominiums.

What are your thoughts on Michael Graves? Also, what are your thoughts on the Chicago Spire by Santiago Calatrava?

Ebert: Graves' Disney Seven dwarfs building is fun. I pass the site waiting for the Spire every day and hope they finally build it.

Roger,

Great piece. I live in Toronto, which, architecturally speaking, is atrocious. Chicago tops my list of American cities I'd love to visit, as does Wrigley Field for ball parks.

Also, I'm going to go off on a bit of a limb here, but was this piece inspired in any way by your recent viewing of Christopher Nolan's 'Inception'? It has been my most anticipated film since I became aware of it a couple years ago. Either way, I eagerly await your review.

Cheers,
Shane

And then there's....

http://www.lileks.com/institute/motel/index.html

In your face, Sullivan.

Ebert: As the page notes, that was a common architectural style. Also for bowling alleys.

Toddler architect here, and a contentious one at that. Sorry for sounding snarky, (because I know that you know a heck of a lot more about life, in general, than I do), but c'mon, postmodernism has been decrying modernist principles for what, 60 years now? Welcome to the 50's Roger.
And hey, I love ornament as much as the next guy. Renaissance architecture is among our greatest human treasures. But it has its place in the past. Do you know how much construction costs? I mean really know - the nitty gritty? Do you realize how much of that is eaten up by red tape costs, bureacratic incompetence, contractor corruption, the client's need to feel like an ice cube in the summer? The ancients built barreled vaults because they had none of that crap in their way, and a lot of time on their hands. There's not much architects can do to change our behind-the-scenes problems, because the more we try to explain them to people, the less they understand and the more suspicious of us they become. Better to put the little money designers are allotted into the architecture of space-creation, than to the architecture of "whimsy," otherwise known as sculpture. I love the Bilbao, but Gehry's a sculptor. Also, I'll take Mies over Sullivan, and Kahn over Wright any day - (but I do appreciate them all).
You're argument about assembly-line store fronts versus gothic-collegiate campus buildings is like comparing apples to oranges. Modularity and modernism is not the same thing, and that's not even to say modularity doesn't have its own beauty, (in small doses, I'll admit). Finally, I disagree with the general criticism of the modernist aesthetic, reading over the comments. "Less is more" allows the other hemisphere of your brain a chance to enjoy the pleasures of beauty.

I'm of two minds about this.

On one hand, I tend to agree about what I see as utterly horrid modern architecture. It seems to lack any sort of personality, and seems to say nothing other than "Hey Mom, look what I can do!"

On the other hand, I can't help but wonder if people living 100 years from now will feel the same way. Maybe they'll look back at it and think that it has a lot to say about our era.

The problem with Mies' Lakeshore Drive buildings is not that THEY were built but that everyone else COPIED them and devalued their appeal. Imagine a world where the monotonous glass box city skyline was replaced by another trend all "architects" followed. Then you see the Lakeshore buildings, standing stoically in the middle of all the garbage.

Yes! Modernist architecture IS calculated, "efficiently" constructed, horrible when pasted all over any landscape, but its life as pure "Modernism" ended shortly after it started. Though it carried on formally a little, architecture had moved into the post-modernist world even while the great Modernist buildings were finishing construction. Le Corbusier had already moved passed his Villa Savoye when he started designing La Tourette and Ronchamp. The construction of his unbuilt Church of Saint-Pierre de Firminy just recently finished construction. It is absolutely breath taking.

I also take from your article that you bring "modern" and "contemporary" architecture into the same category. But they are very different. From modernism, society carried only the machine efficiency points and applied them to every design project from that moment on, leading to your "cookie-cutter" suburbias, street fronts and cityscapes--all things "modern."

They all miss the point of why Modernism started! They retreated back into the mindset from before, this time with a machine attached to their projects.

While as a human being I can wholeheartedly agree to your assertion--we have created a nameless, groundless, emotionless built environment--I want to add a qualifier to that statement: most people see and live in ONLY those "stamped" buildings and then weep silently on the steps of the Gothic architecture scattered in between.

Where are the links and suggestions to other contemporary architects' work of the same time as Modernism or later?

Have you seen Carlo Scarpa’s work? It makes me yearn for the day I get to put my hand on one of his buildings. He lived and worked around the same time as FLW.

Have you seen Peter Zumthor’s masterpiece? The Thermal Vals. Pure poetry.

Alzaro Siza? Portugal’s hidden master.

You cannot forget the Great Louis Khan. His works and writings make me want to be a better person. What a gift his architecture gives to me.

My personal favorites in contemporary architecture have to go to Herzog and de Meuron. I cannot honestly say I love EVERY building they have made, but I enjoy their experiments and will never tire of looking at their Dominus Winery, Signal Box, de Young Museum, Tate Modern, CaixaForum. How I felt like I grew when I read their book “Natural History.”

Lastly, some books for you:

First, “The Poetics of Space” by Gaston Bachelard. Beautiful. If ever there were a written text designed to place their reader into a world of wonderful thoughts, imagery, poetry and ideas, this is it. My roommate and I joke. We call it the Bible of Architecture. Pick any chapter and allow Bachelard to carry you into the feelings architecture always wanted to evoke but has a hard time reaching. Read it. Seriously.

Second, “The Architecture of Natural Light” by Henry Plummer. Here it is on Amazon http://oork.com/wbfdr I truncated the link on oork.com. In it you will see other architects I didn’t want to keep listing and some I have forgotten about. Contemporary buildings with the NATURAL LIGHT architecture always needs to
have yet seems to shun often.

Third, “Between Silence and Light: Spirit in the Architecture of Louis I. Kahn.” A smaller Bible. Maybe it can be analogous to The Acts of the Apostles. Another truncated link: http://oork.com/3a3yy

I don’t have any help for the coldness you feel from the Chicago buildings. But I hope these sources can help you see what good came out of Modernism’s rebellion.

p.s:
if you can stomach it (I only did because it was assigned) read Heidegger's (circular moving) "Building, Dwelling, Thinking."

Ebert: I didn't intend to give quite the impression I did. There are many modern buildings I admire. Mies did something important.

Amazing coincidence...
I am an Architect from Toronto. Have been all over the world, worked in many cities (Paris, Moscow, Jerusalem, Kyiv, Toronto, you just name it) and have never visited Chicago... (I know it's a shame). This week as I am planning my Chicago trip I stumbled upon a really nice story about Chicago and published it in my architectural blog at:

http://j.mp/9zpt5J

And now this wonderful essay from Roger Ebert.
Chicago... well, now it's really mystifying me.

Ebert: That's a Chicago story I never knew!

Agh! I forgot Alvar Aalto's Villa Maria and ALL of his Finland works. His MIT Dorm building isn't too bad either.

Forgive me Architecture Gods for I have sinned! How could I forget him?

the facade of a building should be representative of its interior. what occurs within most modern buldings is exploitive, banal, precise capitalism. thus the cold, soulless emptiness on the inside is reflected on the outside. such is the machine.

Hi Roger,

There is no word to appreciate there work, obviously without advanced technology they have created such architectural marvel which inspired us many times and several architects follow our ancestors work and learn the technical aspect behind the heritage buildings.

Cheers,
Richard

My favorite building complex is the Mesa Lab in Boulder. It was designed by architect, I.M. Pei, for NCAR in the 1960's. To paraphrase Roger, my initial reaction was not ideological, just incredibly visceral. Then I learned it was inspired by structures left by the 'old ones'- the Anasazi.* I have since visited some their old ruins,which just makes me appreciate Pei's creation even more. I would recommend it to anyone visiting the area, particularly those with children. And there are many wonders awaiting inside Mesa Lab you can all also enjoy.

*Anasazi: The old ones, ancestors of the Pueblo people, who occupied the Four Corners area of the American West. Their culture emerged sometime after 1200 BC, and survived perhaps a thousand years.

as a young professional architect (in chicago) i have to agree & disagree. Like you, i have a deep appreciation for the architecture of chicago's past (Sulivan/burnham/Wright) but to claim contemporary works are lacking the humane, harmony, and the human touch is harsh and unfair.

As you stated chicago has a unique past, the great fire REQUIRED a flood of talent to rebuild a city all at one. In ordinary circumstances building space is more limit and time between realized projects is much further apart.

I will admit that the work of Mies (and his followers) can be harsh and Repetitive. But, no mater which you prefer, i think this counterpoint between rigid modern geometry & ornamental forms enlivens each other & builds on the character of the city.

I also believe that architecture should honest in that it represents the time in which it was built. The style/form/space of buildings in the 1800s is not appropriate for today's technology, lifestyles & work. Architecture within a city is an expression of history in physical. I think this is very important to a civilization.

Marina City is an excellent building from the 1970s, with a sculptural form that is both modern & organic, created by the endless balconies that wrap the building. The Aqua Tower which was just complete has a similar sculptural quality generate by curving balconies but with a form and identify appropriate for our current time. The new addition to the Art Institute of chicago is a building that is light in both color and assembly. Though a large construction, the details are delicate and at a human scale (window system, stair) and a softness to the quality of light rarely found in chicago. A confident building that presents an optimistic future and great art work- love those giacometti sculptures!

thanks for another great article which has forced me to consider again my purpose & goals as an architect. i hope i was able to provide an addition point of view and a few insightful thoughts.

oh and did you see what Transformers 3 did to the streets of our city, what a mess! really i kid, i love getting a chance to see the process of filming, constructing & lighting scenes (whether or not they are great )

thanks!

Ebert: Oh, there are lots of gorgeous new buildings, including 333 Wacker.

I moved to Chicago last month after living in NYC for six years. Chicago stuns me with its beauty. The architecture is astounding. I am lucky to be living in a building designed by Mr. Burnham, and living in The Loop allows me the daily privilege of seeing up-close the work on many giants of architecture and design.

I am not as reactionary as you, sir, as I find the new Trump building a satisfying piece of contemporary design, yet it doesn't stand any where near to topping the Reliance Building or those two gorgeous towers facing off across Michigan Ave that you featured at the top.

Ebert: For me, one of the flaws of the Trump is the way it handles its first 12 floors of parking. At night, you can see right into them, and it makes the base of the tower seem insubstantial. Compare the way Marina City handles its lower parking levels.

I also believe the Trump would look more imposing if it were in a darker color instead of that tinfoil.

Now that you're in a Daniel Burnham building, I assume you have your copy of Devil in the White City, which has a great deal more about Burnham in it than you might expect from a book on America's most macebre serial killer. Burnham of course was not involved in the design of his soundproof basement oven.

Need to be in Chicago soon. Very soon. Now.

A space is not about the air within it, but the memories that permeate those air.

Also just added A Pattern Language to my amazon wishlist. And a bigger bookshelf.

You should really read Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald. Briefly, it's about a architecture professor in the ~1980s that travels through his and Europe's histories through the continent's architecture.

Besides being thematically right up your alley, it's a beautiful book.

Ebert: Oh, I have, and given copies to readers on this very blog.

I read Michael Pollan's book "A Place of my Own: the architecture of Daydreams" which lead me to " A Pattern Language" and "The Timeles Way of Building". What wonderful books, art in and of themselves. I collect photos, books and architectural drawings just because I love the beauty of well designed buildings.

I met Frank Lloyd Wright when I was a child when he came to the campus of Florida Southern College in the late 50s. I remember going into the library and absolutely loving the wee nooks and crannies he had designed into the building. The play of light through the windows and the excitement of the unexpected still bring me joy.

I love Chicago and have stayed at the Palmer. The architecture allows everyone to be royal and full of class because it is reflected in the building. Just walking along the Lake admiring the architecture is a great way to do a service station fill-up for the soul.

I don't know what has happened to building in this day & time. I suspect the focus on cost to the exclusion of all else destroys the soul of the buildings and hence our soul as well. Thanks for the blog. May you live in a beautiful building in a beautiful city.

If modernism is the worst architectural crime that Donald Trump ever inflicts on your city, you should count yourselves lucky. When he aims at recapturing the glories of the past he tends to fall somewhat short of the subtle good taste of King Ludwig of Bavaria. Imagine waking up in the lobby of a 1920’s movie palace and then realizing that it’s not the lobby, it’s your room.

Four links:

- Harlan Ellison talks a mile-a-minute to Robin Williams about L. Ron Hubard:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9AGVARpqdk

Great memories and details. Harlan’s digressions are always a treat.

- In 1985, BBC music conductor Clive Wearing contracted a virus that normally causes cold sores. But in Wearing’s case, it attacked his brain. His memory only lasts 7 to 30 seconds:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmzU47i2xgw

I remember watching this on TLC (back when they had interesting and educational programming) and thinking that Dracula himself isn’t nearly as scary as this. The questions that filled my head after watching this were endless.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clive_Wearing

- Brahms’ “Sonata for Piano and Violoncello in E minor, op. 38 - Allegro non troppo”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BM-6B8_Jj-o

You know the scene: A man is walking through a dark city during the early morning hours. He’s depressed and a little drunk. He hates his memories. This is the song that plays in the background.

Peace, Mr. Ebert. Thumbs up!

Ebert: I tweeted two of these. You have added to the lives of thousands. :)

I grew up in the Northern Suburbs of Chicago where my father was always extolling the architectural wonders. We would ride downtown on LSD (Lake Shore Drive) and look at the beautiful apartment buildings. We could see the Lindbergh Beacon from our front steps and later the top of the John Hancock Building. I even had a friend who lived in a Frank Lloyd House in River Forest. Ironically my first house was a 1970's cookie cutter 3 bedroom ranch in the far southwest suburbs. Now I live in New England in a center front Cape which was built in 1836. In Chicago our ranch used to rattle with the slightest wind and regularly lost its aluminum sideing in storms. My 1836 house has lived throuigh countless hurricanes and during the most violent thunderstorms you can hardly feel the wind. And the difference in craftsmanship is amazing. My present house has 3 fireplaces all still burning, 1 foot moulding inside and out and 1 1/2 foot honey pine floors worn to a beautiful patina from almost 200 years of feet padding around on them. It is warm and cozy even in the coldest winter. I think what you miss is the pride in craftsmanship that built my house so lovingly. My house in the suburbs of Chicago was built for money and money only and I am sure that right now it is falling apart. Thanks for reminding of how beautiful Chicago was and in some parts still is.

I don't think you're right to blame architects. There are simple economic reasons that buildings like those you admire can't be built in today's environment: labor is relatively much, much more expensive than it was in the 19th century and earlier, and the spare modernist aesthetic is the cheapest way to make a building look halfway decent.

Slave labor was a necessary requirement to build the Taj Mahal. If we want buildings of that sort again, we either need to convince those who finance buildings to dramatically increase what they are willing to pay, or reduce the relative labor costs to what they were historically.

It's so easy to take architecture for granted; after all, we walk by it every day and the subtleties of something as elegant as a seemingly simple arch become generic wallpaper.

I took a few Architecture classes as part of a Structural Engineering degree, and I definitely found myself wanting to visit Chicago. I was quite taken by the Monadnock Building - which I think you were alluding to, since the northern half of it is still the tallest commercial building in the world with load-bearing masonry walls (six feet thick at the base). The southern half, built two years later, was a pioneering steel frame building: much lighter than the northern half, which has sunk so far in to the ground that engineers had to install extra steps.

We wouldn't have Modernism without steel frame construction: it freed architects from the need for thicker and thicker walls at the base, and allowed vertical consistency and much more light to enter. High, filtered light is fine for cathedrals, but I don't know if I'd like to work in a cathedral!

I believe Mr. Ebert is more specifically referring to post-modern architecture. And, as a whole, I don't disagree with him. But modernism wears many dresses. Mid Century Modernism for instance was all about harmony and blurring the lines between outside and inside.

Can we look at this: http://bit.ly/aoISvf and not feel one with nature? I think not.

Cheers,

Baz

Mid Century Modern blogger: http://AtomicIndy.com

Your right when you say that modern architecture is colder - led by functionality. But sometimes this mix of old and modern can be so beautiful. Take these new skyscrapers being build in London, they fit in so well with the messy mix of different styles throughout the city. Many modern structures truely fit in I believe.

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=418897

Look at this picture:
http://www.britishdesigninnovation.org/new/dd/images/portfolio/full/be7a4120004cd88646cfac5e4b213dec.jpg
A melting pot of styles instills as much warmth in me more than a single building ever could.

Take the Millennium Dome in London for example, it looks dated to me, it takes me back to that time in history. I hear the 90's britpop music of Blur, Oasis and Spice Girls. I feel the optimism of this New Labour newcomer Blair, and everything was alright for a while before it started to go bad. So synonymously linked is this building to this time in history it only adds to city.

The world's greatest parody of modern architecture is Tom Wolfe's 1981 book "From Bauhaus To Our House." It's only 130 pages and reads quickly. In it, Wolfe found the best target he ever had for his cartoonish writing style. It told me everything I needed to know about modern architecture. Tom Wolfe is now a cranky old fart who writes whiny essays about how afraid he is of neuroscientists, and his last novel was terrible, and he's a two-time Bush voter, but "From Bauhaus To Our House" is hilarious.

The book has been mentioned once in this comments section already, I see, but I'm mentioning it again.

To sum up: Roger prefers stone over glass and steel.

One of my favorites is the Carbide and Carbon Building, now the Hard Rock Hotel. I like the legend of its champagne bottle guise.

_Devil in the White City_ is a must read. When I arrived it was touted to me almost as required reading to become a resident, and it was indeed a rich lesson in the city’s history. I talk about it quite often, and that thing about the serial killer is always an afterthought. It is my most loaned-out book. There is a Japanese garden behind the Museum of Science and Industry, and being there can give the impression of going back in time to 1893.

Soon after moving here I caught Hiroshi Teshigahara’s _Antonio Gaudi_ at the Gene Siskel Film Center. The film itself was a pleasure to see, but it was even more so watching it with a new friend who is an architect; she even gasped at some of the more impressive images. Afterward, she explained some of what we had just seen in more detail, but the most fun was walking up State St. and getting a personal lesson in the local architecture, and seeing the organic shape of Marina City in contrast, both in form and material, to the starkly geometric van der Rohe nearby. It was achingly bitter cold that evening, but remains one of my most pleasurable and memorable strolls through the Loop.

Old Timers closed? What a shame.

Roger: I just knew that this would create a great dialogue. It has. One of my favorite courses at the Urbana campus, many years ago, was a Humanities course, a lecture that I just wandered into and continued to do so. The course tied together elements of culture, art, architecture, literature, etc. with culture, politics and economics over time. It was interesting to see how they all tied together, responded to each other and changed with each other. The architecture of Chicago needs its modern and contemporary icons of Gehry and Gang, for better or for worse, alongside the work of Sullivan and Burnham. The contrast serves to illustrate the history of our culture and its values. Let's not choose to rewrite history, nor burn books or buildings!

less is more? Billy Childish summed up the modernists by saying they were looking down the wrong end of the telescope

Thank you for helping remind me to see what I'm looking at. Part of that observation includes the idea that structures we live and work in shape us to their needs and limits. Far better to develop ideas in the Harper Library than in a steel and glass shoebox, sans the rich scent of old paper and bindings. (Check the College of Wooster site.) And, it seems to be that what is on the outside often reflects what is inside. - Again, thanks.

I was going to let this one slide, because my knowledge of architecture is pretty much nil.

The comments got me to thinking about how much downtown Chicago has changed in the 40-odd years I'e been coming in on a regular basis.
So, For What It's Worth (as Paul Harvey used to say):

- Back in the late '60s I sometimes took the Rock Island train in from Beverly to the LaSalle Street Station. From there I would walk to State Street and go through the department stores - Sears, Goldblatt's, across the street to Montgomery Ward, then back to Carson's, Wieboldt's, and Marshall Field's. That was the spine of the trip; among all those places there were all the other stores, like the big Kroch & Brentano on Wabash, and of course all the Balaban & Katz movie palaces. Also some out of the way spots as I made my way back to the LaSalle Street Station (There was once a really nice little second-hand book store on West Madison, but it closed sometime in the early '70s; the building went down shortly after).
I was still in high school then; architecture meant nothing to me in any formal sense. All I knew was that these were interesting places to go on a Saturday. Some were old and looked it; others were more recent; all were unlike my suburban home area. I just enjoyed the sights, probably taking them for granted.

- As a little kid, I went with the family once each year to the Museum of Science and Industry. That was the largest building I had ever seen, with high arching ceilings (from which somany gigantic objects were hanging), balconies ringing the whole space (an atrium, but what did I know, I was 6), and all sorts of gadgets you could work (the first experience with interactivity).
A couple of years ago, I went back for the first time in some years. The outside is unchanged but they've renovated the interior with a vengeance.This was one of my markers that I'm truly Getting Old. I want the Museum that I went to as a kid. Pathetic, no?

- When I started working downtown, my company was located in the Rookery building at LaSalle and Adams.That was a place that took pride in its age. When I went out on messenger runs, I could walk down the big marble staircase in the main lobby and feel quite impressed with myself. The upstairs offices looked like something out of a '30s movie: green walls, wooden doors with pebbled glass and transoms, lighting just dim enough to make it interesting. You almost expected Sam Spade to come out of one of those doors.
Ultimately, Continental Bank bought the place and determined to spruce the place up - which meant chasing all the tenants out. I've only sen the place from the outside since we left; honestly, I'm half-afraid to see how much they might have changed it. I hope they left the tenant floors as is (was?).

- When we left the Rookery, my company moved to the newly constructed 333 Wacker Drive, on the bend of the Chicago River, just across from the Merchandise Mart.
333 made all the architecture magazines, all right; and it's on the calendars, and in the coffee table books, and on the postcards. Just lovely.
Here's a fun fact about the place:
When tenants started to move in, they noticed that objects placed on their desks would be in different places by the end of the day.
This is what happens when the foundation of your building is on a river bed - unless you remember to reinforce it. Because our builders forgot to do that, our company's move was delayed by a few weeks.
The interior designers made a similar discovery when they sold the company on polished hardwood florrs for the entryway to the executive area. They really looked beautiful when they were put in.
Then people started walking on them.

The lesson here, I guess, is that however great the building might look, you have to take into account that people will be using it.

- Before the Orange Line went up, I came downtown via the Archer Express bus. This was long before the South Loop redevelopment, and much of State Street south of Congress was barren of any construction at all. Just south of VanBuren, there were mainly flophouses, porno shops and peepshows, and the last of the old-style burlesque houses, all in plain sight from my seat on the bus. The most resectable building in the whole area was the Pacific Garden Mission.

All different today. Lots of new housing up, and many nice clean stores wher the flops and porn were. Of course, nobody's doing a coffee-table book about that ....

- My one exposure to architectural criticism was during the uproar over replacing Comiskey Park.
A professional architect named Philip Bess proposed two different plans for a new park for the White Sox. The first idea he had, Bill Veeck Park, would have gone in south of downtown, where all the railroad tracks came together. Jerry Reinsdorf didn't want to know about that.
When that happened, Bess came up with a different plan, which he dubbed Armour Field. This would have gone in west of old Comiskey, wth the old field being turned into a public park; the old Comiskey diamond would have become a field to be used by amateurs and school teams. Part of Bess's plan was to revitalize the whole area, with new shops, residences, and above-ground parking garages instead of a lot. The old neighborhood would not have been razed, but rehabilitated.
Jerry Reinsdorf didn't want to know about this one either.
So now we have U.S.Cellular Field, which more than anything else is the largest food court I know of. It was the first of the HOK ballparks, and is often referred to as the one where they made all the mistakes they corrected on their subsequent ones (One wag said, "The White Sox moved into the crate that Camden Yards came packed in.")

The foregoing is one lagely ignorant layman's view of architecture.
If nothing else, I offer it as contrast to the more learned posters.

This post made me think of the film "500 Days of Summer", with Joseph Gordon Leavitt's aspiring architect living in LA and finding beauty in the buildings there. My two favorite touches: when he gives Summer Alain De Botton's The Architecture of Happiness (I literally squealed aloud in the theater: he's one of my favorite authors), and the georgous building he works at through much of the film. It's the answer to the question "why has he stayed at this job that's supposed to be temporary for so long?" Yes, he's stalled in his life and trying to find himself and blah blah blah, but he also loves that building.

This also made me think of a very interesting story my history teacher in college told our class one day. He said he had an Italian buisness aquaintance who one day started in on how much he loved American architecture. And not Boston or New York, but plain, boxy buisness towers that were streamlined and as plain as it was possible to make them.

Baffled, my teacher asked why someone from such a rich cultural history would find such soulless echo chambers wonderful. After all, in Italy you may never be able to get your damn plumbing fixed, ever, but you'll never be short on beautiful buildings. The man said, (paraphrased):

"That's just it. In Italy we are never allowed not to appreciate. All our work is done in fifteenth century palaces or twelfth century palazzos, no matter how impractical it is for our daily lives. We cannot install computers because the buildings are barely adequately wired for minimal electricity. We can't build a bigger headquarters without a hundred years' worth of planning and bribes to work around our "lovely" old buildings. Here in America I can get ten times the work done because the buildings are designed for that. I go in, work, and go out, without having to climb up mountain after mountain of the past."

I think another reason it may be so hard to get lovely new buildings built is because of this mental split: "New must be Ugly because Beauty is Impractical." After all, just about anyone may tire of living in a palace with leaky plumbing. Here's to the beauty of the new--may we find it before the entire world is CitiBanked.

It seems as if you're generalizing the majority of modern architecture as being designed to be cost effective, and not beautiful. I wouldn't really call this modern architecture, I would call it new buildings, since it's not art.
If you are talking about what I would call modern architecture, what you see as rigid, I see as neat and tranquil: http://www.robertstonedesign.com/p03.html

I doubt you're talking about this type of building, but you should have clarified more. Just doing a google image search for "modern architecture" (http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&source=imghp&q=modern+architecture&gbv=2&aq=0&aqi=g8g-m2&aql=&oq=modern+archi&gs_rfai=) does not show any cheap, corporate, replicable buildings.

Ha! Yeah, maybe. I do love the sight of snow though. I want to see a green park turned white in real life. You may be used to this sight but I'd travel across the world to be the midst of that environment :)

The picture 2nd picture from the bottom (4th if you count the two videos)...what's the name of that building?

I'll use this blog entry with the informative comments as a brochure guide. I'll print it out before my visit though...to get a more of the reader comments.

For that, I thank you in advance!

Ebert: Yep, it's an eyesore. Best building in the area to live in, though, because you can't see it out of your window.

Brought on a smile and a laugh. It also reminds me of a cartoon I did. An elderly couple in a shanty town are facing a magnificent palace. The wife says, "Name me one thing we've got that's better than what they've got." And the husband says, "The view."

I have to say that I generally agree with your views in this piece - I can appreciate a modern building, but I am not drawn to it or enthralled by it the way I am by some of the great older buildings of the world (honestly, they don't even have to be old, just pre-modern, with room for a bit of ornamental character and not just pure austerity). Though I will say that the modern skyscrapers of Chicago, when viewed from across the water at the planetarium, represent one of the great and most beautiful skylines to be found anywhere in the world.

Have you read Tom Wolfe's "From Our House to Bauhaus"? His views in that piece (though critically lambasted) have always resonated with me a bit, as does what you write in this piece.

My father was a writer, and at one point he worked for the Chicago Tribune. I still remember getting dropped off at the Tribune building by my grandmother so that I could take the train home with my dad. Talk about fun! And every time I see that building I still get a thrill. In fact, I've often thought that between you and Siskel, Siskel got the better job just because he got the better building to work in.
I never could decide who was the better reviewer, but I always knew who got the better building.

Roger,

Have you read any of the writing of James Howard Kunstler? He's probably best known for his writings regarding Peak Oil, suburbia, and speculating about a world after oil. But, all of that aside, he writes amusingly about architecture and urban design, and shares many of your opinions. If they think you're belly-aching, I hate to imagine how they'd describe his acidic tone.

Your post here expressed a lot of what I feel about the unwelcoming world we're building for ourselves, with blank-walled box stores and blank-walled civic buildings, and he has expressed the same, with the same passion, and occassionally, somewhat deeper analysis.

Anyway, I think you'll enjoy his writing on architecture. Here's his site:

http://www.kunstler.com/index.php

I wish I could say it were easy to find what you're looking for on the site... But here's an easy, fun sample:

http://www.kunstler.com/eyesore.html

Hope you enjoy.

Check out the Equitable Building in NYC. When it was built back before electricity was in lots of buildings, it brought down the property value of all the buildings around it since natural light was a huge factor. After that experience a new zoning regulation went into effect that required tall buildings to cascade toward the top and the New York Skyline was born.

Also check out 11 Madison Avenue.

http://www.finfacts.com/irelandbusinessnews/uploads/csmay042007.jpg

Was slated to be the worlds tallest building. Unfortunately the depression hit and so they capped it off at 23 floors and called it a day. Now it's just a stump of a building taking up the eintire block at 23rd street.

I used to work in this building and man it was nice. It had elevator banks for a 100 story building so you never had to wait for an elevator! Pretty much got your own private one every morning.

Check out the Equitable Building in NYC. When it was built back before electricity was in lots of buildings, it brought down the property value of all the buildings around it since natural light was a huge factor. After that experience a new zoning regulation went into effect that required tall buildings to cascade toward the top and the New York Skyline was born.

Also check out 11 Madison Avenue.

http://www.finfacts.com/irelandbusinessnews/uploads/csmay042007.jpg

Was slated to be the worlds tallest building. Unfortunately the depression hit and so they capped it off at 23 floors and called it a day. Now it's just a stump of a building taking up the eintire block at 23rd street.

I used to work in this building and man it was nice. It had elevator banks for a 100 story building so you never had to wait for an elevator! Pretty much got your own private one every morning.

Ebert: Oh, I have, and given copies to readers on this very blog.

He's answering a guy who told him to read Sebald's AUSTERLITZ. I swallowed it whole and am going back periodically and chewing on various passages for their various flavors. Roger Ebert is a pal to the whole world.

I was about to single out a passage most vividly bringing the reader (me) into the thick and feel of a given building Sebald's Austerlitz describes, but open it anywhere. You can SMELL the architecture even if you haven't landed on a passage about it.

Glad to see that Rodge is ahead in the poll.

The most popular tourist sites everywhere in the world are the ancient stone structures. There's a reason for that; like everybody else with 5 senses, they're what I want to live in.

What's great about New Mexico is how the craggy cliffs look like fantastic ancient buildings in the light of dawn and dusk. Maybe I'll make a cave there. Actually, don't have to. The ancient Indians did that. They're still there. People camp in 'em. They wish they could live there.

Fact U didn't know: sometime in the 70s NYC ruled that gelignite charges must be placed in the joints of all skyscrapters -- wow, I just called 'em "skyscrapters" -- for their eventual demolition, as it's well known they're not gonna last.

Think of that next time you tour the mighty World Trade Center to stand in awe of its Mammon-like massiveness.

Oh, wait... it fell down a few years back, didn't it? Just like a stack of deflating pancakes.

Wait... Did you say Old-Timers is closed now?

***Sigh***

I blame myself... I've been eating at my desk too much lately...

Ebert: It is too, too true.

Roger, have you ever seen Vancouver's Public Library? You're probably thinking 'no' but you'd be wrong; it's such a visually distinct building that it's become a favorite location for films and television shows. "The Sixth Day" was filmed there, as was "The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus." It might amuse you to rewatch those two films and see if you can identify the building in question. Or you could just go straight to Google Images. We've become quite proud of our library since it went up.

Two quick points:

1- Not that it improves the street view, but Regenstein Library is designed after the (Continental) US. See here:

http://maps.uchicago.edu/north/rlibrary.html

Now, that I think about it, it might be the US east of the Mississippi.

2- The Trump Tower in Chicago grows on me. Because of its location on Rush, it looks like it's in the middle of the street. Thus, you get the see the whole building. In a city of tall buildings and narrow streets it is usually hard to appreciate anything more than the top third of a building. But, with the Trump Tower, you can glance at the whole thing from many spots around the city.

The tinfoil color looks especially bright and eye catching in the latter afternoon. Like right now.

But, I'm not yet a fan of the antenna thing.

Omer M

Roger, first video games, now architecture? I concede that modern architecture is overwhelmingly repulsive, but we lack the proper frame of reference to make such bold statements. I little doubt that a 14th century Venetian would find great beauty and boundless joy in a modern office building that offers little-appreciated wonders such as air conditioning, elevators, and a vast view from atop the clouds.

We have to forge our own architectural vision, even if the steps we take are patently ugly (Brutalism). Better to attempt something new and fail spectacularly than spend the future in a sad, Disneyland hyperreality, clinging to aesthetics that our forebears already perfected.

My career as an architect has entirely been in Chicago. I was amazed at the more than 164 responses that Roger Ebert's blog elicited from so many people from so many places about architecture and my city and its elements.
Harry Weese said that it takes 3000 years to make a city, but he seemed to be wrong as regards Chicago. The architecture of our city is placed in a context of an inland sea and river that gives boundaries and form to the center. The early canal surveys established the city grid and the Burnham/Bennett Plan of 1909 created a direction for its form. All this has been accomplished in the 241 years since DuSable. The style of architecture can be egregious (Michigan & Chicago) or inspired (The Rookery) but it doesn't really matter in the general context of the city which has continued to change and improve in the several decades I have lived here.
In reading some of the many comments and Roger's responses, it seems that Roger has admitted that he likes certain examples of "modern" architecture and I have learned that there are many others knowledgeable and sensitive to architecture and the wonderful qualities of Chicago. I am humbled.

Mr. Ebert, I've been to your fine city and can say that you were truly blessed to live there. I come from a city that had no major development until the 60s and 70s and stopped shortly thereafter; a monument to modern architecture. Nothing but rectangles and rectangles.

There's a reason of course, the aesthetic of modernism was able to rise up in the first place and start populating the skyline.

Light.

Modernism began as a breath of fresh air.

I mention that because I'm not oblivious to the reality of cold, dark buildings with heavy furnishings and somber interiors and layouts designed from another era, and thus frustrating to work in, let alone live.

However...

Quick, cheap and easy is not how to solve it.

I live near Vancouver. A city of steel and glass. I've watched the skyline changing and noted the homogeneous nature of its design.

It all looks the same. It's like staring at glasses on a shelf at IKEA, the only reprieve coming by way of the Marine Building (Smallville: Daily Planet) or the Beaux-Arts Sun Tower (Smallville: Watchtower) on Beatty street at Pender.

There is one notable exception, though:

The Vancouver Public Library.

Modeled after the Coliseum in Rome, with a spiral footprint like a seashell, it's faced with warm concrete made by adding brown rock into the mix. This allows the surface of the entire building to change with the light and go from a cool brown to a burning sienna when sun sets over the Pacfic.

And people have been so inspired by the design, which draws you literally into the building like a book opening its cover, some even dance on it suspended by cables...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioR9dhcOr_o&feature=related

And here's the thing - many designs were submitted for the contract, but this is the one the public picked:

http://glacialjade.ca/ESW/Images/librarybc.jpg

And what it can be like, to walk inside..

http://www.miragebookmark.ch/images/central-library-vancouver.jpg

http://supernaturalfm.com/images/vp2/017.jpg

http://lh4.ggpht.com/mjasong/RjlW1dANcEI/AAAAAAAAByU/knskixPUVS8/s512/S4010094.JPG

It changes, the way Venice changes, with the light - which spills and ripples over the entire atrium. Concerts are held inside it and coffees drunk and muffins ate. It's where to meet and greet and protest, too. It's like a village square with small shops lining it and the floor is made of hand-set warm bricks.

Yes.

Bricks.

And like cobblestones, they make a comforting sound underfoot.

It is not a box or an oval football made of metal. It's not too modern, or too old. It's not at one end of the pole or the other - but somewhere nicely in between.

It's new and old and both at once.

It's got character, but without being obnoxious.

It doesn't say "Maggie Thatcher totalitarian dystopia" or "Let's copy Frank Lloyd Wright and Arthur Erickson because boxes are easy."

Note: I love the Bilbao in Spain, less anyone think I hate ALL modern architecture. I don't.

I just hate BAD modern architecture. And most of what gets built is bad and for being soulless.

P.S. I know Architects are akin to hired guns working for clients who don't want to spend extra to make a building more aesthetically pleasing, if for less, it can do the same job. So I get it - I really do; it's called freelancing for a living, eh? You want the gig. You have to compromise. So I understand their dilemma.

But I also know that there are so many buildings that all look the same now, that Architects can start pitching a different approach:

"Yes, it will cost you more. But it won't look like the other 20 buildings standing next to it - and being different is how it can compete. It will attract people wanting to lease space from you; people looking to stand out from the crowd. And they'll be willing to pay more to do it, and for seeing it as an investment in their own businesses - their offices now having a certain cache."

Or maybe that only works on people who take pride in what they make? Maybe the guy with the money only takes pride in his bank balance?

And maybe that's the reason so much architecture these days sucks.

Back in 1971 my friend Mike and I were driving cross country back east and I convinced Mike we needed to make a 500 mile detour north so that I could go take a look at Louis Sullivan's Owatonna bank. We got there just after the bank had closed for the day at 3, but we got a good look through the main doors straight at the big metal vault door at the other end, and the amazing stained glass, and the tellers windows. We sat in the town square for a while, really marveling at this piece of architecture that stood head and shoulders above every other building on the square. And then we went home.

What I remember most of all is that this was a building that both pushed the edge of what a bank should look like, at the same time that it nestled easily into small town life. Never grandiose, it was truly a grand space. And it was created by someone with complete mastery of the craft: of this, there was absolutely no doubt.

And that's what I think of when I visit Chicago and see Mies's buildings. They are, indeed, austere. But they've been designed and sited by a master. A few years later I had the chance to spend an afternoon at Le Corbusier's Villa Savoie outside Paris - and just like looking at Sullivan's bank, it was so clear that this was a design for living created by a master of the craft. Really a beautiful thing to see. So light and airy, looking upward to the sun.

Roger,

I feel as though in some ways this blog is one of the purest syntheses of your writings of the last couple years.

I think that that idea of the "image of the man you do not see" extends far past architecture, and onto film, literature, politics, etc.

I personally believe that in any creation: science, the arts - even business, intention and motivation at times outweigh thought. Most decisions we make during the day are subconscious. When someone is designing Bank of America branch, they're focusing on supporting a corporate environment and a corporate idea. No matter who the architect is, the intention behind the building is inherently wrong. There is no room for whimsy or creativity because there is no room for whimsy and creativity in the modern corporate environment.

Sure one can love Frank Gehry and other modern architects that play with the meaning of a building, but personally, nothing will ever replace a REAL diner or a REAL bookstore. For me, so much of modern art is an act of quiet desperation. In fact, maybe not even quiet desperation but quiet SCREAMING. A Frank Gehry building is less of a building and more of an attempt to do SOMETHING. To move forward humanity in some way. We live in a time where things happen so quickly, it seems as if nothing is happening at all.

The image that you see in modern architecture is the humanity you have a problem with. In the past, human greed was mitigated by almost insurmountable physical obstacles. We've gotten to the point where we are forced to confront the fact that we may have caused our own annihilation. We have gotten to the point where we can actually rupture the fabric of our own planet.

There is a simplicity in the skyscrapers of the early and mid 20th century. They are big, they are majestic, but they are simple. In an age where human power is seemingly uninhibited, big art seems to take two roads. The first is a film like The Dark Knight. It's big, it's huge, it's massive, but it's simple. Then there's movies like The Sorcerer's Apprentice or Transformers 2. They are big, they are massive, but only because they can be.

There's something to be said for the beauty in a thing that is done for the right reason. In my experience, it tends to come out better than something done for the wrong reason. Call it karma, but I think there is something about the power of the human brain when set on the right track. It does things and makes decisions that are seemingly impossible.

My point is that at its core, the image of the modern world is the image of modern humanity. And even though so much of our current landscape seems to me a blight, it does make the beautiful things that much more important, that much easier to spot. It gives you an unprecedented appreciation of the quiet moments.

@ Randy Masters
I also saw the Catholic Cathedral in Milan. I had to take three pictures to hint at its size. The carvings, the size (a steeple so high, there's mist near the top!), the large paintings hanging inside--just, wow! I thought Notre Dame Cathedral was impressive, but the Milan Cathedral floored me.

@ Justin
I just scrolled down to look at the pictures on your website. You (and the others who contributed to your website) are very talented photographers! And you've found such beauty in buildings.

When I was in London, I didn't take the architecture class that was offered, but I always went on the architecture walks. I couldn't tell you now (or then) which style was employed in which building, but I can tell you that London is a great city for architecture (heck, ANY city in Europe is a great city for architecture, except for the New Towns, I believe they're called, which were constructed after WWII as an experiment in suburban design, where utility trumps beauty). I also bet that I can still point out all of the buildings (particularly the churches) that Christopher Wren designed.

In The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Victor Hugo wrote that architecture was man's main form of expression hundreds of years ago, but in the 19th century, the novel became his main form of expression, which is why architecture such as is seen in buildings built hundreds of years ago is no longer seen today. We have found other modes of expressing ourselves, and imagination seems to be lacking where it is most needed--in the real world.

Plus, I think that we, as a species, have less patience than we used to. The idea of building something or working on something that will not be completed for many lifetimes is not appealing to us. In fact, the only way that some of those buildings were created was by force. That certainly holds true for castles and cathedrals, and for wonders of the world like the pyramids, slave labor was necessary, which is certainly something that we aren't bringing back. Still, that's no excuse for building something that's not aesthetically appealing. Works of art stay around because they are good, but buildings stay around whether they are good or not.

Roger, Your diatribe against modern architecture illustrates the sad fact that many in our society lack a basic understanding and appreciation of modern architecture. It is sad you cannot comprehend the beauty of a fine cut diamond. If I see one more fake Tuscan Villa I think I'll...

Roger:

Lovely post. Great insights. I attended the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana in the 80's and had a chance to experience living, working and studying in a range of architectural styles as a student. As for living, I spent some semesters in a modernist dorm (awful, cinder block, flat roof known as 'the six pack') and a Tudor style fraternity (lovely building, probably a firetrap and lots of fun) and a Craftsman style off campus house with friends in Champaign (wonderful house, required car to get to campus). Something about classes in the 'classical' style buildings like Altgeld Hall made the experience of college more special than ones in later buildings...such as the faceless engineering buildings north of Green Street. One of my favorite urban planning blogs has a great post on the subject of gothic campus and its opponents in academe. http://massengale.typepad.com/venustas/2004/03/whos_afraid_of_.html
Personally, I love modern buildings. If I were to win the lottery or something, I'd love to live in something like the Getty Center. My own Xanadu would have a flat roof (but no cinder blocks). But when it comes to building PLACES, can't we agree that the modernists have largely failed? Take Chicago's Daley Plaza (please). Would anyone but the modernist mandarins want to re-make Havana into a city studded with modern buildings post Castro? The robots can have their cities of steel and glass. I'll take Savannah or the West Village of New York or Siena any day.

Ebert: You'll be happy to know the six-packs are being replaced.

Dear Roger, You are a scholar of architectural history, a poet and a brilliant critic. Thank you for your wonderfully provocative musing on Modern architecture! We are all enriched by your writing. Thank you! A fellow Cliff Dweller, Pauline Saliga, Director, Society of Architectural Historians. Zivio.

Ebert: And his desk I know is still there.

You're right on about cost vs. beautiful decoration. Mies and his Bauhaus pals are remembered for inspiring spare, clean, geometric, minimalist design — and endless drab glass, steel, and reinforced-concrete box buildings. But the Bauhaus gang was driven by a utopian vision. They hoped to flatten class distinctions by producing elegant but affordable mass-produced designs. They saw their geometric style as a universal language that could transcend national divisions. The masses never really embraced it - with good reason - but Bauhaus style proliferated because glass, steel, and reinforced concrete buildings remain the cheapest thing going.

Ebert: I failed to make clear that I admire Mies. It is his influence that has gone wrong. Do you think the Bauhaus style played a role in Stalinist architecture for mass housing?

My only formal instruction in architecture actually came in one of my undergraduate American literature classes many years ago. My excellent professor thumbed his nose at the New Critics and dared to examine a work of literature in its historical and cultural context and devoted quite a bit of class time to examining how literary trends mirrored similar developments in other American art forms, including architecture. I was hooked. To this day, I still see many landmark works of "modern" architecture as little more than an icecube tray stood on its end. Required reading for the course was John Kouwenhoven's The Arts in American Civilization , in which the author examines the development of a distinctly American artistic vernacular:

"The forms we have so long neglected are in reality the products of a unique kind of folk art, created under conditions which had never before existed. They represent the unself-conscious efforts of common people, in America and elsewhere, to create satisfying patterns out of the elements of a new and culturally unassimilated environment; but this patternmaking is something altogether different from the folk arts which in recent years have been collected and studied with such enthusiasm. It has nothing in common with the balladry of the Kentucky mountaineers or the decorative crafts of the Pennsylvania Dutch. Unlike these, it is the art of sovereign, even if uncultivated, people rather than of groups cut off from the main currents of contemporary life. The patterns it evolved were not those which are inspired by ancient traditions of race or class; on the contrary, they were imposed by the driving energies of an unprecedented social structure. In their least diluted form these patterns comprise the folk arts of the first people in history who, disinherited of a great cultural tradition, found themselves living under democratic institutions in an expanding machine economy" (from Chapter 2: What is Vernacular?).

Kouwenhoven argues that this vernacular can be seen in virtually every form of American artistic expression and design: literature, architecture, engineering (especially bridges), railroad steam engines, music (especially jazz), and so on. It's a fascinating read even for an architecture novice like myself; since reading it all those years ago, I have never looked at a building in the same way. Perhaps the fact that I work in a building that looks like an icecube tray stood on its end has something to do with that book's staying power. Anyway, it's available in full-text form online: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/made/cover.html

I couldn't agree with you more. You've reminded me of happy times in Chicago, when I soaked in the architecture (of the non-Payless variety), and the end of your post really resonated with me. I attended Vassar College for undergrad, and I couldn't possibly count how many times I walked among the beautiful old buildings and felt so fortunate to be there. Thank you for this.

The image of a man you do not see.

Maybe it's a man who never existed in the first place. A mythical demographical creature born out of marketing strategy sessions and image consultants.

Maybe it's something to do with the fact that we pour trillions of tax dollars into a Pentagon shapped hole trying to win unwinnable wars, while our health and education goes to hell.

What I'm getting at is maybe this anonymous, pre-fab regularity of design that chain stores and banks and other corporate organisms are implanting in communities reflect the fact that many major corporations have deals with the Department of Defense. I'm not talking about defense contractors like Halliburton or Lockheed/Martin, but organizations like Wal-Mart, Starbucks, numerous fast food and retail stores. It would seem that chain stores and banks have a lot in common in with military procedure and philosophy: move in, build things as fast and as efficiently as possible, and obliterate all enemies/competition. I can't help but think that all of these things are the result of a common, underlying process.

Not a conspiracy. Not a conscious one. But rather a commonly held view that growth and expansion are eternal verities, or at least they are for Americans. Never mind how many times the economy goes into cardiac arrest. Just give a shock, give it some meds, some stopgap procedures, no big deal. Repeat as necessary.

"The image of a man you do not see."

What an evocative phrase!
Wonderful post!
Are you planning on putting out a book of essays anytime soon?
What about a memoir?
You seem to have an interesting life and a lot of insight into different things.

Of course this blog is a wonderful thing, too, I wouldn't want a print book to replace it. I'm just saying I would buy the book, too.

Chicago

I want to lie down with the corn-fed families relaxed in their prosperity unselfconscious in their patriotism in the green next to the fire station but I only have a tourist class ticket the gothic with burnt sienna shading across from the Art Institute the Union Carbide building desk blotter green with gold foil each building one vote for geometric beauty sticking out a hip or flashing a bit of garter belt intersection of Michigan and Wacker deep pockets for boat taxis and Trump's tower with paper wrappers a cloud darkens in one breath as if a pterodactyl flapped a wing horizontal rain wedges into my neck and ear I pull up blocks of buildings to shield myself from the wind I had just the one pair of shoes

Ebert: More, please.

I believe Monsieur Hulot (Mon Oncle) would approve:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FclQzWGjZ5c

"Remember a deli, with its neon signs, its daily prices, its sausages and cheeses and displays of pop and wine in the window. Now it has been defaced and replaced by this branch of the Bank of America, which was not even conceived for this site, but offers as little glass and metal as it possibly can, devoid of any ornamentation at all. Remember a fussy, mussy bookstore, its aisles wandering here and there, and now regard Border's -- which sells books, not clothing, but could otherwise be Old Navy."

As an aspiring architect, this really opens my eyes up. Instead of designing art, we've been designated to designing the shelter of corporations. Thank you for this intriguing article.

I would agree that much of modern architecture is soulless. But I wouldn't blame it on the Modernist movement. Sullivan's architecture is not great merely because of its ornament. His buildings' ornament complement their wonderful forms. Conversely, poorly designed buildings fluffed up with gaudy ornament are as revolting as an old prostitute with heavy makeup.

Mieses philosophy was bastardized by evolution. The masses needed large inexpensive shelters for their urban centers and "Modernism" fit the bill. In instances where such a style would be more expensive, i.e. single family construction, we did not see such wide adoption.

It is silly to blame today's banal cities on an architectural movement.The fault lies with the people. If they valued higher aesthetics they would pay for it - and they don't. The greatest testament to this is the ubiquitous suburban center hall colonial. In other parts of the world where "living the good life" means more than a huge TV, a huge car, and a huge house, you can see plenty of excellent Modern architecture. Look towards the real masters instead of the posers and you shall regain faith - Rafael Moneo, Mario Botta, and Renzo Piano, to name a few. Or look at last generation's masters Louis Kahn, Carlos Scarpa, and Auguste Perret. Would you dare say Scarpa's work is tiresome?

I'm not here to defend all modern architects. But if you legitimize all of Modern Architecture simply because you have seen a few practitioners abuse the medium, then friend, you give up too easily.

Roger

I think somewhere up there Jane Jacobs is smiling. You and I were contemporaries at Illinois in the 60s where I was trained as a modernist. I appreciate Sullivan and Mies. Mies was more easy to copy badly than Sullivan, but they both attempted to find the fundamental nature of their projects for the appropriate expression. Sullivan had a base shaft and cornice, the first true expression of the high rise. Mies designed office and residential towers with a lobby, typical floors, and mechanical penthouse an simplification of Sullivan's concept of a high rise. I prefer both/and to either/or.

Three links:

- Abbie Smith talks about HIV-1 and black homosexuals, and why D.L. Hughley is not the person to go to about all this:

http://scienceblogs.com/erv/2010/07/science_race_homophobia_and_th.php

“Hughley worsened the stigma of HIV-1+ in the African American community in front of millions and millions of viewers.”

- 1989 Oscar winning animated short Balance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91bNp7HJolE

Everything in this film is ugly for a reason.

- “Fuego Cubano (Cuban Fire)” by Johnny Richards and performed by the Stan Kenton Orchestra.

http://steinbolt1.tumblr.com/post/707796476/fuego-cubano-cuban-fire-johnny-richards

The beginning of this piece will fool you.

Peace, Mr. Ebert. Thumbs up!

Let us engage now with Roger Scruton.

http://american.com/archive/2009/december-2009/the-high-cost-of-ignoring-beauty

Also, if you can find a copy of his BBC show "Why Beauty Matters", do so. It was on YouTube but has since been removed.

Thank you very much for that YouTube clip -- I just happen to have made a trip to Owatonna a couple weeks ago to see Sullivan's bank. I'd highly recommend it to anyone passing through southern Minnesota.

This topic has been an area of great passion for me for so long that I couldn't even attempt to respond in a blog comment. But I would like to commend you for noting that Sullivan's "form follows function" does not quite mean what his modernist descendants seem to believe. I recall reading an architectural critic saying something to the effect that Sullivan "never ate his functionalism quite as hot as he baked it." I thought that was way off-base; the quote is "form FOLLOWS function," not "form IS function," and his point was not to banish decoration but to ensure that it sprung organically from the purpose of the structure, as opposed to following the pre-determined needs of traditional architectural forms. I think it's safe to say that Sullivan hated many of the mock-Gothic buildings you're praising here. Structurally unnecessary flying buttresses were not his thing.

The brilliance of many is also defined by degrees of Asperger’s syndrome; which perhaps seems a reasonable explanation for some of those producing the detached mathematical exercises that are all too common in modern architecture.

Hello Roger,

Thanks for this article. I live in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Calgary is a good city in many respects; architecturally, it must be one of the most ugliest cities in North America. I was born here and lived here most of my life. When I was younger, I had the opportunity to study for a while at the University of Toronto. My God, the beautiful Toronto campus was a revelation to me. Don't get me started on the sterile, concrete and glass monstrosity that is the University of Calgary. Your words about the University of Chicago - "I felt that being a student was ennobling, and that these spaces were the backdrop for great enterprises" - expresses beautifully what I felt during my time in Toronto. I feel sad for the many young people who may never have the opportunity to study in such soulful spaces.

everybody thinks they are an architect or an architecture critic... it is so available to everyone...
discussing about form and styles in architecture is redundant, it is a matter of taste...
architecture is not form or styles, modernism with its strict demagogy was the ground work for the evolution of architecture, post-modernism allowed us to think in a thousand different directions and question the validity of focusing on form...
now architecture is much much deeper than form...
if you want to halt human evolution keep discussing victorian, arts and crafts, modernism, post-modernism, minimalism, deconstructivism- do you see how superficiallity of it all?
architecture is much much more than that...

I appreciate Ebert for starting this discussion, but I strongly disagree with his conclusion: here's my take, published on Architizer:

http://www.architizer.com/en_us/blog/dyn/4720/no-bauhaus-in-ebert%e2%80%99s-house/#more-4720

I am going to be visiting Chicago in August. I was a little worried that i may be at a loss for photo ops with the various buildings there, but after reading this i now feel as though i may not have enough time to visit these spots. What would be the definite spots to hit?

Ebert: I would definitely begin with one of these walking tours, just to get oriented. The groups aren't large.

I've spent the majority of my life in the suburbs, where every building on the horizon was identical to ten thousand others. I never learned to appreciate architecture. To me, buildings are purely functional. It's enlightening to hear from someone who sees things so differently.

As an architect practicing in the modern era, and therefore a modern architect, I must agree with your first two sentences.

Whether we are designing churches, skyscrapers, museums, or banks in strip malls, the architect must make every effort to gladden the heart.

To put bluntly, your analysis of modern architecture and urbanity is frightening and ill informed. Please stick to the movie business Mr. Ebert.

Roger,

I appreciate your post, however I have a few critical objections. I should state that I am an architect, and therefore I have a biased appreciation for the work of American modernists. I also feel that you're not giving the style it's fair shake. In fact, I think your argument corners a very limited view of what the modern movement was in architecture, avoiding other readings in which I think you might find some appreciation.

It seems that your main points are: 1) modern architecture lacks a soul (or, that it lacks the image of the man behind it), and 2) that modern architecture embodies the commercial and material perils of global capitalism. To the first point, you avoid acknowledging a broad range of modernists who produced buildings with incredible soul and expression - Eames, Saarinen, Utzon, Pei, Wright, just to name a few. And each of these have had a significant effect on architecture's evolution beyond modernism. Look at the work of today's emerging avant-garde practitioners and you will see things that are almost baroque with effect, but still tied to the lessons learned from modernism. But to associate all of modernism with the pure and minimalist canon of Mies is as much a violation as associating all of modern film with a single director. Mies had a particular agenda, identified particular challenges within that agenda, and solved them with incredible grace - so much so that, in his architectural details, some see incredible passion, expression, and dare I say it: ornament. To that end, you forgot a critical Mies quote in which he declared "God is in the detail," a belief that architecture's capacity extended far beyond that of a single man's soul.

As for the second point, which locates the failures of global capitalism as a trait in architecture, I think you short change the profession yet again by assuming that architects are willingly complicit in the drab storefronts you describe. To make this assertion without examining the bigger picture of architectural practice, you place the entire burden of urban junk on the shoulders of architects, absolving the responsibilities of developers, city planners and politicians. Unfortunately, the profession is mostly reliant on these parties for defining architecture's potentials and limits, and often these are far less than ideal. Again, I could turn to Hollywood as a metaphor. In either case, architecture or movies, heroes are rare, and even if they do take shape they're usually the product of a higher (and not so innocent) power. The next time you pass a boring storefront bank, I'm not saying that you should pity the architect, but you might consider writing a post with a slightly different slant, yielding perhaps a more effective response.

Lastly, I'd like to end with a question. I'm curious to know why you gravitate towards the affect of Gothic architecture (i.e. the photos of Justin Kern) and not towards the systems (both logical and aesthetic) that defined its style. My feeling is that the tradition of problem-solving and the belief in aesthetic form that we see in the Gothic style was very much alive and well in the modern era, and certainly lives on today. I think you're missing so much of a city if you confine yourself only to the old. While you might not like the surface treatment of the new (or the modern), I hope you can find it in you to look deeper and to appreciate the intelligent minds that gave it order, logic and some semblance of joy. Sometimes, you have to look at these things abstractly. But given your tenure, I'm confident that you won't find this too difficult.

Josh

Ebert: I basically agree with you. I admire modernism but not most of the way it is now translated into the cheapest building strategies. Bank branches for me are a perversion. Mies would have designed lovely ones.

Reading your words and seeing these photographs is like waking up. I audibly gasped when I enlarged the first of the Chicagwarts series. I am headed to Chicago for a family vacation in a few weeks and cannot wait to force everyone in my party to join me for a tour.

My father-in-law rants about function being the only necessity. It's a pet topic at family gatherings. I never understood fully why I disagreed with him, but this is why. Humans need beauty, in the same way that a baby needs to be held often. Sure, the baby will live and grow into an adult without human touch, but the person he or she will become is twisted. Everything seems OK, but it is not. A human being deprived of beauty is alive but lacks those awakening experiences that enrich the heart and soul and give the mind depth, and appreciation for something beyond themselves.

Really, thanks for sharing. If I bump into you admiring the halls of The University of Chicago, I'll say hello.

Ebert: Take one of these tours:

http://j.mp/9ksp7B

Louis Sullivan hated the University of Chicago campus.

"Who's going to be shooting from them thar turrets?" he was said to have asked
when shown the plans.

I've loved and still love the U of C campus -- I have lived three blocks from it
almost my whole life -- But I can't agree with your broad lines on this topic,
Roger.

Sullivan introduced Modern architecture in this country. "Form ever follows
function" was his saying, not Mies's. And he meant it. He despised Burnham
and the World's Fair, the U of C campus, the Tribune Tower, etc. I don't agree
with him on that. Ditto his adoring student, Frank Lloyd Wright. Neither
though can I share a blanket view of Modernism. The John Hancock Center
inspires me every time I see it as does the Seagram's Building in New York or
the Guggenheim Museum or the Robie House (built before much of the U of C campus
was finished).

Bad "modernism" is bad architecture. Cheap imitations are cheap imitations.
But drawing date lines or dismissing whole schools of architecture because of
these strikes me as limiting one's curiosity and appreciation of remarkable
works. I can't see you doing this in film or literature. But then, there's
always chacun à son goût!

I read Devil in the White City before moving here, and this is why I will likely always be more partial to Burnham over Sullivan.* (I was tempted to skip the serial killer chapters, but decided to give the writer his due. Just as I am ready to give Sullivan his.)

As for the Trump, I see what you mean about the base. I suppose I appreciate it more from a distance (even though I live just two blocks away). It looks great about two hours from sunset when viewing it from the north side.

*When I learned that my building was indeed a Burnham building, I freaked out.

My family and I live in Osaka, Japan. My students and I laugh whenever I ask them if Osaka is a beautiful city. Here no one knows when to stop. But Osaka is somewhat of a concentrated version of what's happening in the rest of the country.

Today I bought a photo frame and as I was removing the cheap picture it came with of the Eiffel Tower, I stopped to look and wonder at why Japan has so many "towers" and none of them come even close to the Eiffel. Tokyo Tower's orange, radio-tower appearance is probably the first big no-no. But the Eiffel Tower has a little flair around the edges, and somehow it all adds up to having a bit of class.

But most importantly, the first thing I really noticed was that there is *nothing* surrounding the tower in Paris. It stands majestically and commands our attention because it is left alone. In Osaka we have the little-known "Tsutenkaku" tower, which was originally patterned after the Eiffel Tower. It's not the ugliest of towers, but it is a joke even to Osaka people. And if you go maybe twelve blocks away and up the hill, you can see the top of the tower peeking out of the buildings. If you're only two blocks from it, chances are you can't see anything at all. You have to get in the right street at the right spot. And of course, your view will still be a bit cropped.

When my brother visited me here a few years ago, he liked the parts of Kyoto I took him to (just as you did, Roger) but hated the modern cities. But even Kyoto is suffering from the general business desire for profit at the expense of beauty. I imagine you avoided downtown Kyoto. I'm not sure if you visited Kyoto before or after the new, controversial JR train station was built. It's actually a beautiful modern-looking station. It would be wonderful in Osaka. Or Tokyo. Or anywhere else in Japan *but* such a traditional city as Kyoto. It just doesn't fit. I've taken to describing Kyoto as a city with one foot in ancient society and one foot in modern society, unsure of which it wants to rest in and trying to uncomfortably straddle the fence instead.

The image I had of Japan was one of traditional, simple beauty (what the Japanese indefineably call "wabi-sabi") that valued nature and was even somewhat conservationalist in nature. It's been a bizarre shock for me to see something almost completely opposite in daily life and even in the traditional cities that try to preserve the ancient culture--or at least the look of the ancient culture. The beautiful little traditional places are like islands in the vast sea of aesthetic garbage now. Some "islands" are well-known, but even those seem to be getting smaller and smaller (and some turn out to be tourist traps). The "islands" seem to be harder and harder to find, and often some nice architectural or historial "island" is removed or dwarfed by modern profitecture. What it makes me wonder, incidentally, is if the ancient culture was not so rosy as we think. Maybe the zen-paradise images we have of it were actually portraits of "islands" back in those days.

Ebert: One of the nice aspects of Chicago, partly because of the lake and river, partly because of planning, is that there are many places where you can stand and actually see the buildings.

It used to be, in ages past, that there was no distinction between art and the functional, craftsmanship, beauty, in things that were made. But we now live where art is a separate thing, elevated unreachable above the functional, elevated like some distinct, prophetic type of thing, like some intense mystical/religious thing. why some don't even view architecture as art, in the proper sense. so with this distinction we grasp for art to show us beauty and truth, while the world we surround ourselves with, from cups to chairs to houses and buildings, is depleted of these searches for the greater; kind of a catch 22 thing (finding beauty in a world that has less and less to do with such).

(ideas not my own but from the book, in crass paraphrasing, 'Modern Art and the Death of a Culture', which you might appreciate as an interesting and perhaps somewhat unique view of western cultural history and our world today; it's a book that i for one adore.)

Hi Roger, excellent entry as always. I've been through Chicago many times growing up and have been lucky to enjoy many of the buildings described here.

Reading through I've now picked up some nice book suggestions to read - could I add one more?

"Suburban Nation" by Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck is THE book when it comes to discussing how not only American building design, but how urban planning in general has declined through the years to create soulless subdivisions across the country...

So many seem no longer to care how we've lost our "traditional" neighborhood design principals (Do any kids still walk to school? Can anyone still walk to the grocery store to pick up some milk, outside of our largest cities?)

The authors also prove how most of today's developments are not only economically but environmentally "unsustainable" - a topic which never seems to be discussed when "green" matters are brought up...

What I've described here may seem like a lot of hard work for some summer reading...but it is an enjoyable and hugely worthwhile read.

Roger,

Thank you for such an evocative post. As a student at the U of C, I thought I'd share my thoughts on the architecture here.

The gothic style of campus is part of the reason I chose to come to school in Chicago. The pictures are gorgeous, and wandering around the grounds always gives a sense of wonder and awe. The view from the center of the quads (or better, from the top of the bell tower in Rockefeller Chapel) is stunning.

However, it is the strange experience of entering one of these buildings that I want to talk about. Taking more than a few steps inside reveals a very different view. Walking up the side steps of Cobb Hall, for example, we open the doors and find ourselves in a modern building. It could be the interior of a building at any other school. The building is a lie.

It is as though the school is putting on a mask for the public, saying "Look at us! We are old and venerable - a great place for learning. Be inspired by us." And this is exactly why the architecture is as it is; U of C was built in this style (copying Oxford) in order to give the appearance of being just like the storied schools in England. But it is only an appearance, and only one seen from without.

Is this wrong? I am made uncomfortable by this guise, and also strangely comforted. I do not like to think of buildings hiding something (or even giving them human emotions and motives), and this is why good modern buildings hold a place in my heart. The 860-880 Lake Shore Apartments (and other Mies buildings, perhaps exemplified by the Farnsworth House) are consistent. They are clean and ordered. The building is a building, a created space for something else. The building conveys Mies's optimism - that everything can be ordered: that everything has its place. We need not hide our true selves behind a mask just because the mask is what others so desperately want to see.

And yet, that strange comfort. Perhaps I am recalling my parents, shielding me from the harsh and bleak world. Do we, as humans, need to be told lies? And worse, are lies what we want?

I am struck by the applicability of the final line of Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises - "Isn't it pretty to think so?" The thought of a successful relationship for the characters is a beautiful lie, just as are the facades of the buildings at the University of Chicago.

Is beauty enough to make up for the lie? What happens when we enter and see through it?

Ebert: Perhaps form follows function differently on the outside and inside?

I spent the first 23 years of my life living in a Mies van der Rohe condominium (the two towers at the corner of Diversey and Sheridan), and I can say without any sense of irony that it was truly a magical space (clearly, I'm not biased at all). I've lived in every manor of home (condo, rental, townhome, single family, etc.), and no structure fostered a sense of community like those two towers. It was a small town in two steel structures, where kids ruled the block, and parents sat on the steps of the pool gossiping until the sun went down.

So while I agree with many of your sentiments about modern architecture, please don't drag down Mies. That said, I think often times people overlook what Mies accomplished inside his buildings.

However, growing up in a Mies building what I really came to appreciate is that the units are modular. Mies gave you a blank canvas to make the home your own (unlike today's condos, which are dictated by the tastes of the developer and the latest fad).

So back to my original paragraph, Mies really did make something magic. He managed to cram hundreds of single family homes into one unifying structure. This wasn't investment property. This wasn't a stopover on the way to the suburbs. This was a neighborhood (during my youth, we it even had a Jewish deli that sold penny candies, and had an old fashioned walk-in fridge guarded by a heavy wooden door...but of course children were always allowed inside).

Roger,

Thank you for a beautifully written and poignant piece. I am yet another architect who feels compelled to respond, though my point of view differs from many of my colleagues who have posted before me. There is around the world, a small minority of architects and designers who have rejected the Modernist Orthodoxy fed to us as architecture students. We recognize that “Architecture” is not mere technique, but the ongoing application of a tradition spanning thousands of years. Modernism, (at least within the early 20th Century Corbusian and Miesian senses of the term ) was the revolutionary overthrow of a Humanist tradition by the Machine Age (explicitly forecast by Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto of 1915).
Architecture is the only creative art whose revered practitioners cling to the aesthetic language of the early modern movement. The 12 Tone Serial Music of Berg and Schoenberg has been rejected from all but the most adventurous repertoires; contemporary composers of dissonance and arrhythmia struggle to find an audience while we are living through a renaissance of tonality and structure among serious composers. Both film and theater continue thriving narrative traditions whose practitioners are not derided for continuing to work within a traditional craft, rather than creating the new “Chien Andalou” or “Waiting for Godot”. Both of these works are ancient venerable works now, icons of Modernism whose power remains undiminished. But the analogy can be made, as you spoke of “…the ornate entrances, stunning lobbies, cornices, canopies, deceptions, elaborate decorations, breaks in the monotony of the facade.” And describe Mies' work “… as sparing as it could possibly be... The man behind a Mies building seems more like a machine and a miser, never relinquishing a single detail not absolutely necessary...” that Bunuel and Beckett paired the narrative to a similar degree . Replication of emulation of their work contributes nothing new: it has already been said. It is no longer new. What was blunt and direct once, is in repetition, merely blank and soulless. In Art, figurative painting is still practiced and respected though the installations at many Contemporary Art Institutes would lead us to believe that “Art” has totally divorced itself from craft and that the “Idea” is all that matters. It’s a Cartesian twist : “I make”Art” therefore I am an “Artist”. I believe the public at large has dismissed the idea that a microscopically thin bovine slice is “Art”.
Yet somehow Architects have convinced the public that we must make architecture” of our time” and not look to the past. Architects, who look to Antiquity and attempt to build within the ongoing traditions of Classicism or regional vernacular styles, are dismissed as irrelevant and ignored by the architectural mainstream.
This is a paradox, however. On one hand, architectural design practiced within the pre-modern traditions of the Classical or the Gothic is dismissed as unoriginal, yet on the other hand, architectural design that references the nearly 100 year-old forms of the early Modern era is viewed as “cutting edge”. Either both traditions, the humanist and the machine age, are Contemporary, or neither is. The late Chick Austin said, "All art is contemporary". The mere act of making architecture today is what makes it “contemporary” “Contemporary” is not an expression of style, it is merely an expression of the here and now. If I conceive an idea today, it is of my time.

The dilemma of the architectural education is that it teaches us that in order to be successful; we must be geniuses of great originality. If we fail to be a solitary innovative genius like a Wright, a Sullivan or a Le Corbusier, we will have failed. Personally, I believe that originality is overrated. The reality of practice is that design is a collaborative process in which many people bring their expertise to the project. The ultimate success of the project lies not with the architect, but with the client who ultimately makes the decisions about what gets built.
The real poverty of the Modern movement is not that its great works are bad, for they are not. Despite fashioning myself as a Classicist, there are many modern icons I adore. Yet I admire them in isolation. It’s the second and third tier works which are so dreadful. The city fabric of branch banks and franchise stores in the modernist idiom you have described is desolate and soulless. I once worked for a Classical Architect in Philadelphia who was a devout Roman Catholic and his mind, there was a clear relationship between the glories and rigors of the Jesuit Order and the Italian Baroque. He conflated Classicism and Catholicism, and made the following witticism: “Better a bad catholic than a virtuous heretic”, where classicism was the universal or “catholic” expression and modernism the heresy against tradition.
The ancient cities in which we love to stroll and spend our time are built upon their own unique traditions. The second and third tier buildings form a harmonious and delightful whole. The side streets still have a humane scale and details which emulate and simplify the details of the greatest monuments in our cities. These monuments are our civic realm: Museums, churches, theaters, seats of government, piazzas, and parks. In Chicago, Sullivan understood that commerce was the religion and the civic life of the America and he strove to create a humane and naturalistic architecture to enrich the lives of its inhabitants. For all the abstract beauty of Mies’ work, it was never about humanity and the souls of the people who inhabited it.

Ebert: That's how I feel. Still, read the comment here by a young man who grew up in a Mies building and loved its sense of community. I wonder if that was more because of its residents than its architecture.

You're looking in the wrong direction.

The big change in architecture is its obselescence. That is most clearly evident in middle-class housing.

If each building is the man behind it, then home-building is a celebration of the expendibility of the individual. Nothing is stickbuilt--it's all component work, all precut, right down to the stud sizes that allow for top and bottom plate without the use of as much as a skilsaw.

It's the uniformity of these sizes that have led to the conformity of current style. The lot must have a certain setback; the width of walls must be divisible by 4', or 8', or at least 16", but more likely 4', to allow the sheathing to be panelized; therefore the maximum attainable footprint can be calculated while standing on one foot, eating a Big Mac. No builder in his right mind would exceed these dimensions because extra time and materials would have to be used to achieve them, and the skill level of his current employees would be immediately eclipsed. Why hire men who can measure and cut when you can get them at Home Depot at half the price, but only if they can repeatedly stand up a stud between two plates and toenail it with a gun? Hell, they don't even need their own hammer. They'll only be using the boss's nail gun, and the boss's compressor. Not too many guys hang around the Home Depot with a 2 1/2 horse compressor in their back pocket.

It sounds like I'm trying to stretch this into a rant against immigration again, but truly, Roger, this is what's happening on job sites throughout America. There is a straight-line correlation between the demise of the southern brick cottage, once a staple of small-town southern life, and the influx of very cheap, non-English speaking labor.

No one would argue that the influx of European immigrants from the middle of the 18th C. through the Second World War did not heavily influence American building styles, both on the large scale of which you write and on the housing scale. Just look at the gingerbreaded, handcarved style of houses of the 20s and 30s. The argument holds just as true today, but our immigrants now can only build boxes and cover them with stucco. What a mess.

Why, then, are you surprised that we shop in boxes, have large boxes in our large cities, compartmentalized boxes in our apartment houses? It is not a top-down influence; it is bottom-up and it is a direct result of our dunderheaded reliance on cheap, ignorant, unskilled immigrant labor.

Once in North Carolina I attended a city council meeting, and a man got up and spoke, decrying the proliferation of brown faces on all of the current building sites around Raleigh. He looked around the room, filled with Central American immigrants, and asked, "Who are you people? Where did you people come from?" Was he some cracker, perhaps, longing for the plantation? No, far from it. He was a black man in his 60s who'd fought all his life to get black men onto these job sites so they could learn a skill, a trade to be proud of. But nobody's hiring them anymore.

You don't need any skill to build a box. So until the borders are managed, until the hiring procedures come under some sort of scrutiny, we can all pay for it by living and shopping in cheap boxes with poor wiring and bad roofs, built by people who's only exposure to design has been the Great American Box--for many of them, the castoff boxes of American appliances they've used for years for roofs and walls of the shacks they've abandoned all through Central America.

No one is served by this. It's a shameful thing and we all participate in it.

Roger you make a mistake that many make. You hold up the best (and surviving) examples of the past and compare them to the average of today. It is an invalid comparison. The average building of Sullivan's time was real schlock. That is why they were torn down. The average buildings of today will also be torn down in time. The exceptional ones will survive because they touch our hearts. It is said that the great cities of Europe are that way because for over 500 years they have continually kept the best and replaced the schlock. We have been at it far less time. Give us 500 years and our cities will be beautiful as well. In fact I think we could do it in half the time.

One more thought: good design did not end with the gothic.

To those who think that Mr Ebert 'should stick to the movie business':

I believe that the gulf and lack of communication between the specialist and the generalist is a great failing of our modern age. I find that many of my generation withhold their views unless it is on their specialism or a widely-held belief and as a result conversations are poorer and more limited. Why would they voice them if their intelligence and opinions will be insulted and criticised or dismissed because they are not an 'expert'?

Everyone benefits from greater communication - if only more people stepped outside their fields with confidence like Mr Ebert! We can be more than the labels we are given by others.

Thank you for saying what so many people think. Like life, it's all true—to a point.
Rich

Yesterday I was talking with a senior colleague about a novel that I was reading.

"I don't read fiction", he said. "If I am going to read a book I want to learn something while doing it."

Now, I read a fair amount of non-fiction too. But, no! You need a mix of fiction. To elevate. To go on adventures. To feed your soul. You do learn a lot from fiction, I think.

That comment made me think of this blog post. It's a very utilitarian worldview.

Ebert: You can learn a great many things from fiction, especially about yourself.

On yahoo movies, it says you gave Inception an A-. Is this true? From your review, it sounded like an A. Who puts those grades on the site, anyways?

Ebert: Seems to me "four stars" means an A. That's what I just told Entertainment Weekly for their critics' roundup.

There is certainly some validity in what Roger says. The richness of older architecture can be a delight. But the fact that modern architecture can, when it is good, can have a timeless quality does not seem to me to be a bad thing. Here in Chicago, the outstanding modern buildings, such as the Hancock, 333 W. Wacker Dr., and the new Aqua, are as exciting and powerful as any of the older buildings nearby, perhaps more so. On the other hand, bad modern architecture can look very dated.
The modernist aesthetic lacks charm, something post-Modernism architecture tried to remedy with only limited success. But my point is not that modern buildings a better or worse than older ones, but that they are dancing to a different tune. To put this into perspective, consider the pyramids of Egypt. Simple, geometric, devoid of ornament, yet few disparage them for failing to match the richness of detail found in Venice. Taken on their own terms, they are powerful and superb. That is the tune to which much of modern architecture dances, sometimes succeeding, sometimes falling short.

Ebert: The fact is, I admire all three. In its haste to make its principal point, my entry was lamentably imprecise. There is a universe of difference between the Aqua and a branch of Chase.

Beautiful essay. I strongly dislike the notion that every building must be as simple as possible. It takes all of the life out of an area. The thing that's most annoying about modern architecture is not how it looks, but how anonymous it feels. It is because of this that the Experience Music Project (EMP) building in Seattle bothers me less than most modern, streamlined architecture. Glass skyscrapers are much better looking, but the EMP at least tries to inspire positive human emotion in its viewers.

http://sites.google.com/site/valchristie2/GoSEA-emp_exterior.jpg

- An absolutely beautiful photograph. I had to study it just to see if it was real:

http://penbleth.com/post/820584211/someones-going-to-have-lavender-honey

- “Evolution isn’t Libertarian” by PZ Myers (This post leads to two articles):

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/07/evolution_isnt_libertarian.php

“Now where I do agree is the description of Darwin the man. Charles Darwin was an upper middle-class businessman, cautious and prosperous in his investments, involved in the welfare of his community. He was also, for his time, a social liberal who promoted great causes, like abolitionism. He was the perfect figure of a classical liberal.

“However, that says nothing about his science! Peter Kropotkin was an anarchist, Theodosius Dobzhansky was devoutly Eastern Orthodox, Richard Lewontin was a Marxist, Francis Crick was an atheist — these are factors in their personal journeys through science, but they are not the lens through which we should look at their actual work…and if their work only makes sense as libertarian science or Marxist science, then there is a deep flaw in it. We are always looking for the answers that transcend the circumstances of personality and politics, and are suspicious of those dependent on prior bia