Along Chicago's New Skyscraper Row: One Rises, One Descends, and One Just Spreads it Around

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Saturday seemed a good day to check out the progress and three large construction projects that have made the bend of the Chicago River big development central.

See the complete photo-essay, after the break . . .

Pretty Ribbons

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Like a Model T Ford, you can generally have architecture in any color you want, as long as it's gray or black (or white, if you're Richard Meier).  A large part of this, of course, is due to the material's natural hue, or to the fact that black paint is often on sale since no one wants to buy it for interiors.  A larger factor, however, is the basic fact that monochrome has a way of seeming to go with anything, and never being in danger of going out of style, which is more than can be said for Victorian polychrome or post-modernist salmon.

The early skyscrapers that rose up, early this century, at the massive Lakeshore East development on the site of the old IC railyards, followed this safe pattern, classic glass boxes, bland as paste.  2007's 340 on the Park, by SCB's Martin Wolf, broke through with a bit of sculpting, and Jeanne Gang's Aqua blew up the place with its undulating balconies, but both building's fed their distinction through form rather than color.

Now the LSE towers are being upstaged by a rambunctious stump, the new ten-story home to the GEMS World Academy Chicago, part of a rapidly expanding international chain of private schools founded in Dubai in 1959.  Designed by bKL architecture, the 82,000 square-foot structure due to open this September, a year later than originally projected, is known as the Lower School, either because its shorter than the second stage building to be constructed on East Wacker, or because it will serve students from Kindergarten through 4th grade.

The exterior is a combination of translucent and clear vision glass set flush within metal panel spandrels and mullions.  What sets it all apart is a crazy-quilt intrusion of colorful mullions in red, yellow, turquoise and robin's egg blue.

The north elevation of the building is basically a continuous flat surface.  Here, yellow is banished from the palette, and the colored stripes seem a bit passive and inert. Meh.

The southern facade, extending below the street down to the lower-level park,  is much taller, but the way the facade is broken up above the fourth floor and along the open air play area on the roof makes it read as a very horizontal building, pulled skyward by those vertical bands of color.  The counterpoint holds the vertical and horizontal in a satisfying visual tension.

Is it too much?  Not for me.  Will it date badly?  I'd put it at a 50-50 shot.  For now, Gems Chicago has the slightly exhausting charm of a hyper-kinetic toddler, running at the knees of the far taller,  boringly behaved adults all around it, laughing with delight in refusing to be ignored.

Color contemplates color at Lake Shore East.

Read More:

Where Chicago Public Schools deign not tread: GEMS descend on Lakeshore East

Sending Pegasus Aflight : Preliminary bKL design revealed for Buck Tower at 200 North Michigan

rendering: bKL Architecture

Chris Bentley of The Architects Newspaper today gave us the first look at a preliminary design by bKL Architecture for the 45-story residential tower John Buck is looking to construct at 200 North Michigan.  There's no full-up view of the building, but the street level rendering published by Bentley has a definite 1950's, almost Lapidusian vibe, the tower set back on at least three sides from a diaphanous, greenish-blue, shifting toward turquoise base.

The site is currently occupied by the six-story Tobey Building, by Holabird and Root, dating from 1927.  Although faded, it was originally a fairly elegant design, as you can see from this photo from 1964, when both this stretch of Michigan and Zenith televisions were prestige brands.

image courtesy The Chuckman Collection

Along the top of the building is a sequence of engaging relief panels . . .

including the aforementioned winged horse . . .

According to a July report by Micah Maidenberg in Crain's Chicago Business, the building was acquired for $20 million in 2006 by an affiliate of Becker Ventures LLC (no relation, alas), which is Buck's partner on this project.  No word on a groundbreaking date.  The development needs to win the approval of local Alderman Brendan Reilly, who Bentley reports has set his first community meeting to consider the development for September 12.

Studio/Gang's Aqua Refreshes the Chicago skyscraper

 On September 24th, the Art Institute of Chicago will be opening its new exhibition Building: Inside Studio Gang Architects. As a run-up to the opening, we're posting a series of new and newly revised versions of pieces on Jeanne Gang and Studio/Gang Architects.

An introduction to Aqua refreshes the Chicago skyscraper.

Although Jeanne Gang and her firm Studio/Gang Architects have completed a number of important projects since, Aqua remains her largest and most ambitious project do date.  The 81-story tower was largest building ever designed by a female architect, and the distinctive imprint it has made on the Chicago skyline marks it as an instant - and award-winning -  landmark.

Aqua has not been immune to criticism.  It's been noted that inside its sculpted exterior, Aqua is a completely conventional condo tower, and not especially energy-efficient. Valid complaints, that can also be made against a rather massive number of far lesser buildings constructed in the last decade.  In the last analysis, Aqua, like every other commercial project in the city, was built to make money for its developer.  What surprising is not its common shortcomings, but that something with Aqua's bold visual qualities came to exist at all.

And so we go back to the beginning, to the article we wrote in the Chicago Reader all the way back in 2006, before a spade of earth was turned.  I'm publishing it now because it recounts the story of how Aqua came to be, and the process by which Jeanne Gang and her associates at Studio/Gang arrived at the decisions that informed Aqua's distinctive design.

In terms of updates, Aqua was not the crowning endpoint of developer James Lowenberg's career.  Since then, his Magellan Development Group has entered into a partnership with bKl Architecture, the firm bringing together Brad Lynch and former SOM Chicago's Tom Kerwin, to continue to expand Lakeshore East with projects like the 49-story Coast, now under construction.

We also wrote about the Gang and others forming a "third school" of Chicago architecture.  We still have to see how that will play out.  John Ronan continues to create works of  distinction, such as his new home for the Poetry Foundation, but Douglas Garofalo's tragic, early death last year means we'll never get to see all the wonderful things we would have added to the argument.

For now, read about how it all started:  Aqua refreshes the Chicago skyscraper.  You can also see photographs of the construction process, from start to finish, here.

Where Chicago Public Schools deign not tread: GEMS descend on Lakeshore East

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 Ten years ago, this is what the press release said:

OWP&P has been retained by the Chicago Board of Education and has generated preliminary designs for the Lakeshore East Elementary School, the first elementary school in Chicago's central business district.  The design for the structure, which will include a community center administrated by the Chicago Park District, plays off the geometry of the park and includes a masonry exterior and a green roof.

Now, Lakeshore East is finally getting that school, but its not public.  Despite the fact that nearest public high school is Wells Academy, three miles away, the Lakeshore East project has become the Chicago flagship for the supply-chaining of education, and the first American outpost for GEMS World Academy.  GEMS was founded in Dubai in 1959, and has become operator of a large number of schools in that country and throughout the United Arab Emirates.  The for-profit company, which claims over 100,000 students in 125 countries, is going on a tear,  expanding to countries all around the world.

GEMS enters Chicago this fall with the preschool  "Little GEMS International", for children 6 weeks to 5 years, the first to open in the U.S.   It's in the building at Belden and Clark best known for its time as the home to a Tower Records superstore.

GEMS education places an emphasis on global citizenship, with a Core Values listing including:

• World Citizenship - Empowering students with a global and local perspective.
• Universal Values - Accepting that we are all different, recognising that we are all the same.
• Leadership - Developing each student’s individuality and entrepreneurial spirit in order to discover their potential.
• Forward Thinking - Developing skills for the future, our educational programmes help students to become flexible thinkers who are able to question existing thinking, adapt and creatively meet the demands of the future.

The company's growth has not been without controversy.

At a time when the Dubai Knowledge and Human Development Authority imposed a freeze on school fees, GEMS managed to get the government to allow it to increase its fees by 30% over three years.  In the KHDA ratings of the countries schools, the lowest-rated GEMS school came in as "Acceptable",  three more as "Good".  Both the second and third-ranking schools were GEMS operated facilities, both moving up from "Good" ratings in 2008-2009 to "Outstanding" for 2010-2011.

"The ideal circumstance, and we look forward to this in GEMs, is that you have an excess of supply," David Wilson, director of Gems Education's Asian schools has declared in an interview. One teacher at a Gems Indian Schools said the challenge was not finding good teachers, but having them agree to low salaries.A teacher advocates website reported that the increase in fees amount to 152,000 dh per month, while the increase in teacher's salary expense was 80,000 per month.

"Our chairman Sunny Varkey doesn't care about profit," Raminder Vig, director of schools at GEMS UK told Education Investor.  "He actually gives money away." GEMS has 10 schools in UK, with plans to open six more over the next 2 years.  Vig says the group has yet to make a profit in the UK.

"Margins are not the same as private schools, so you need a strong philanthropic base, and GEMs has that because our founder has pledged to educate one child free for every 10 we make money from,  Zenna Atkins told the Financial Times Jane Bird in 2010.

One commentator claims "for-profit international schools will be the way of the future."  How many years away are we from having our schools controlled by global corporate conglomerates?  GEMS is the Nordstrom's beachhead.  Can the Walmarting of American education be far behind?

No price tag has been published for the new construction at Lakeshore East, but there's no doubt that it's not being done on the cheap, with not one, but two buildings designed by  bKl architecture, the successor firm to Brininstool and Lynch, with former SOM executive Tom Kerwin.

The first building, fast-tracked for a 2013 opening, will serve students from Kindergarten to 4th grade, will be a 9 story structure just west of the Tides.  It rises nine stories - 153 feet - from a 10,000 square-foot site, with a total of 82,000 square feet of classrooms and facilities.  The entrance is on the lower level of the Lakeshore East Park, along Water Street.  The green roof features a play area.

The real gold plate comes with the second building, to be completed sometime in 2014 on East Wacker Drive, sandwiched between the under-construction 430 foot-high Coast apartment tower, also designed by bKl,  and another residential high-rise to be named later on the now vacant lot to the east.  This school will serve students from grades 5 through 12.  The site is 24,000 square-feet.

 The building rises 13 stories above Wacker.  Although the Lakefront Ordinance document specifies "no basement", the structure actually has multiple floors below Upper Wacker, including 2 levels of public parking, and a spacious"Student Arrival Lobby" on Lower Level 4, with a bus drop off on "sub Wacker Drive."  The expansiveness of the curriculum is inferred by the spaces of the building, which include a large swimming pool (with a viewing deck at the Upper Wacker entrance level), an equally large auditorium, complete with Scene and Stage shops, and a 235 square-foot changing room.  There are separate rooms for instrumental and choral music, a "3D Art Classroom", a room for "Digital Art", a "Black Box" space, and a 3,000 square-foot roof play area on Level 14.

The curtain wall facades feature vertical elements of different widths in three different colors.  It will be interesting to see how these play out.  The color scheme evokes not entirely comfortable memories of the Thompson Center palette.  On the Phase I building, none of the verticals extend the full height of building, which probably serves to de-emphasize the height, but it's hard to tell from just one rendering just how well it will all work out.  The Phase II building is more direct about its verticality.  Like the Phase I structure, it features one setback.  As with the new Lurie Hospital, the playful facade resists resolving into the traditional rectangular glass box tower.

On July 25th, 42nd ward alderman Brendan Reilly will be hosting a community on the project, 5:30 P.M., at the Radisson Blu Aqua Chicago Hotel, 221 N. Columbus.

Hines Point

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Things change.

Discuss among yourselves.

(We'll weigh in later.)

Overview from Blair here.