While there are hopeful signs of new modernism around the city, there also are some flops
If you had asked most architects 25 years ago whether modern architecture could make a good city, the answer would have been a rousing “no.” Wounded by spiritless steel-and-glass boxes and the social tumult at notorious public housing projects such as Cabrini-Green, the dominant style of the 20th Century was in full retreat, even in Chicago, the nation’s pre-eminent stronghold of steel and glass.
Today, however, modernism is back, powered not only by the shifting winds of architectural fashion but also by things that have precious little to do with high design, including the drop-dead views — and higher prices — that floor-to-ceiling glass makes possible. Yet this revival, it turns out, is far from triumphal. (more…)
