Architecture and a Rant

As I believe I have mentioned before, architecture may be one of my favorite art forms. And Chicago is a town that is ripe ground for seeing, understanding and appreciating it even more. This town is so different than New York (as I believe I already mentioned this week), but the fact that I could spend $32 and take a 90 minute boat tour along the Chicago River and see over one hundred buildings with nearly every major style imaginable.

So I sat on the deck, and listened to a 90 year old docent (ok, that was mean -- she couldn't have been a day over 75) read the script and improvise about the various structures along this strip of water flowing around downtown. And I did what I do: I took pictures, particularly of those things that struck me.

Each of these buildings struck me, from the Aqua (above) which is a beautiful, neo-Modernist highrise residential tower with these totally funky balconies that are laid out all over the place on the building. What is very interesting is that the rhyme of the apparently organic layout is that it allows the building to withstand the Chicago/Lake Michigan winds in a more effective way than the traditional vertical alignment buildings can. And my favorite fact about the building: it is the tallest structure in the world designed by a woman. That alone makes it totally rock in my world.

The second picture is a bit of color change on the underside of one of Chicago's river bridges. The entire length of the river is crisscrossed by these steel bridges which rely on a cool weight balance system to raise them quickly with a reasonable amount of energy. Each bridge is a little different, and each has a different bridge house where an operator determines when it is time to raise the bridge to allow tall river traffic to pass through the downtown and mess traffic up.

My final two pics are of other things that struck me -- one with the Chicago flag flapping across the scene of two more residential structures along the river, while the final one is the reflection of the old Merchandise Mart in the windows of 333 Wacker Drive, which offers a relatively impressionist sketch of the old on the face of the new.
I have to say the most disappointing part of my trip is how freaking strip mall this place is. I am so disgusted by the fact that you can't go hardly any where (NYC, San Fran being exceptions) that you can find truly unique stores. I hate it!! (Sorry, this really chaps my ass, so I have to get it out...) I was walking downtown and found maybe one unique place and then it was chain restaurant this, and mall store that, and ugh... it was AWFUL!

I love that you can walk the length of Broadway and, with a few exceptions around Times Square, find at least one unique store in every block. I am not necessarily shopping but I like to find interesting and different and that was the hardest, and most disheartening, part of this exploration of Chicago. All this amazing art soaring to the sky, and not enough eye candy and tsotchkes to take home and collect dust or give as a gift...