Quote:
Originally Posted by the urban politician
^ Uhhh, once again, are you talking about the same "capital of architecture" that once had a gas station at this site, and has massive strip malls all within a one block distance of the station?
So here I am, the guy from Apple, scoping the site, and across the street I see a strip center with a CB2 and street level parking. Down the street I see a forgettable Crate and barrel with massive parking lot. Further down, I see a scene that is pretty much anywhere USA--Barnes and Noble, Best Buy, etc etc with seas of parking. Having seen that, I'm supposed to say "ahhh, this is clearly the capital of architecture! Lets build a masterpiece here worthy of its distinguished pantheon of neighbors!". Nope, don't think so.
Chicago gets what it deserves with this one, sorry.
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That just makes zero sense. A city isn't entitled to aspirational architecture because a neighborhood was in car suburbia, or too near housing projects, in the past? Because developers cheaped out or built in a recession in the past?
And you suggest the Apple real estate people come into a city with their blinders on, ignorant of their surroundings, and base all of their decisions only on the immediate 2-block radius, without understanding the greater neighborhood/city they are in (which is highly relevant to the expectations of the people who will actually be coming to the store)? Or that the fact that a major national-scale retail design firm like Bohlin Cywinski or Gensler, that understand this isn't Kansas City, isn't involved?
They obviously recognized the site is a rather special one, because they got the entire block and surrounding streets re-done. After all, they chose it in large part because they wanted to support public transit -- so their approach implicitly envisions a future for this area that is more pedestrian oriented, where the strip centers eventually get redeveloped.
This design has nothing to do with what Chicago "deserves"; Apple is supposed to be a leader in design and sustainability, not a follower; there was nothing here that got held back because of Chicago. Matter of fact, in a different sense, Chicago happily did get what it deserves: $$$ spent by Apple on fixing a decaying subway station.
Even though this non-downtown site might not merit a super-expensive design, this attempt was too much on the other end of the spectrum. I understand however that Apple probably saw they were spending $4 million on the subway station so they decided they would go cookie-cutter on the building design. I understand the business decision and I don't fault them on it, but it doesn't mean there is no room to fault the architects.
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