| one more, ends in a quasi-pessimistic note again.
| is it that america is responding (finally) to Koolhaas'
| 'rejection' of America?
ref
http://mail.architexturez.net/+/In-Enaction/archive/msg01472.shtml
Since the opening, Robertson and I have joked about "slacker details."
This is a campus center, not a museum. If the details were too precise,
you'd wind up with an uptight space. At Helmut Jahn's sleekly modern
dorm next door, the students have taken to chalking the sterile concrete
corridor walls with a rainbow of colors. They don't need to do that in
the campus center. The messy vitality is built right in.
So is the wit. The center's iconic tube resembles a fallen tree trunk
that crushed a one-story Miesian box.
The building's strengths have turned out to be conceptual as well as
physical. Its design isn't based on structure, which was the Miesian
way, but on human activity. It's "program-driven," as architects say.
The diagonal pathways slicing through the center couldn't be more
different from conventional corridors. They open to activities around
them, encouraging chance meetings, an essential byproduct of the density
of urban life. Interior spaces like the food court are a pleasure to
inhabit, endowed with a generosity of space and natural light even
though they are below ground and crammed into the middle of this
sprawling building.
It has been said that works of architecture ideally should be reviewed
three times: first, when their design is unveiled; second, when they
open; and third, after they've been in use for a few years. I praised
the center's design after Koolhaas won the commission in a 1998
architecture competition, wasn't entirely happy when the finished
building didn't uphold the Chicago tradition of transforming ideas into
art, and am making my peace with the center now.
Bones outweigh blemishes. God should be in the details, yes, but it's
just as important that She be in the grand design.
cont'd....
http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/arts/chi-0611250235nov26,1,7116839.story?ctrack=1&cset=true