Back then, people at City Hall pushed what they thought the mayor wanted: neo-traditional brick and stone boxes. Of course, with tight budgets, high rise residential developments tended to end up as painted concrete enclosures with punched windows sitting atop massive, unfriendly parking garages, a far cry from traditional. Since then, a few things have happened reversing this trend: the zoning ordinance was rewritten with new parking requirements (among many other things), the Chicago building code developed its own energy code, and the mayor came to embrace contemporary architecture. These had the effects of, respectively, masking parking structures behind pretty facades or other uses (such as townhouses), requiring more efficiently insulated enclosures than painted concrete, and making glass and metal walls the enclosure of choice.
So now we have Magellan Development and Loewenberg Architects - the greatest proponents of the old trend - designing glassy buildings and hiring small design firms to doctor up the exteriors of their buildings. But as much as I like this new-found embrace of contemporary architecture and glassy buildings, I can't help but wonder if it's just a new wrapper for the same old thing. And with few of the latest glass residences complete, it's difficult to say if the final product measures up to the drive behind this change from painted concrete to glass.
Much of this thinking was spurred by a few new developments that caught my eye as I flipped through the free daily rag at the Italian deli down the street. Below are some brief comments on each.
R+D 659
The first is R+D 659, located at the corner of Randolph and Des Plaines and designed by the neo-Moderns at Brininstool + Lynch. Even though the rendering is fairly preliminary, it gets the main idea across: glass is class! We can see many of the elements characterizing this new wave of residential developments: cleverly enigmatic name, full-height glazing, horizontal spandrel panels, inset balconies, and a bold design gesture, in this case a red ribbon rising from the lobby to the top of the building.
The advertising pushes the development as "Residential Daring", though I fail to see what's daring in the design, one that resembles many other glass boxes either under construction or in the works.
Emerald
The second one is Emerald on Green Street by Pappageorge/Haymes. This project sets itself apart by billing itself as a "green" project by "using environmentally-responsible materials...unit finishes feature eco-friendly paint and products such as bamboo flooring and beautiful fabrics made from recycled fiber...even our marketing materials utilize recycled paper and soy inks." But unfortunately this commitment to sustainable design doesn't extend to the building exterior, a mix of full-height glazing, protruding balconies, and natural stone accents at the corners. While it's not clear if the project is aiming for LEED certification, it is clear that "green" is limited to product selection and doesn't go where it needs to go, towards reducing energy consumption through design and alternative energy sources.
SoNo
The third and last project goes by the nauseating name SoNo. It's located just South of North Avenue and is designed by Booth Hansen, who also designed MoMo. See a pattern? While the newspaper has a pretty picture of the sales center model, the project's web page is limited to an abstracted elevation, meaning today's discriminating buyer doesn't really need to know what their future home will actually look like. These twins seem to be almost kissing, a condition that will make for reduced privacy in the end units staring into the adjacent end units. Which of course makes me think of the oft-repeated phrase, "people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones." In this case you shouldn't throw stones, because the people across the way can throw them right back at you.
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