[sentinel]

Sadly, the O'Hare global terminal design has been altered pretty significantly; the wooden slat ceiling with glazing reveals was lovely in theory, but far too impractical because not only it would have required large amounts of glass for all of the reveals in between, the amounts of conditioned air required to move through such a large volume would have been massive and impractical and required a very expensive HVAC system that would also have been burdensome to maintain over the years.

I have not seen the latest design since I left my last firm so things may have been changed slightly, but of what I did see last time, the new roof structure is more monolithic with maybe two dozen (or more) punched openings spread throughout the structure. The six-pointed "Chicago star" is still in the middle of the structure, and the overall massing of the terminal is basically the same. Don't know too much about the design of interior spaces other than it is possibly very clean and bright, but I don't think it has the same nuance as the previous Studio Gang design. God is in the details indeed, and who knows, maybe the interior spaces will be very lovely, but we'll see.

While it is unfortunate that the original, competition-winning design was not feasible (especially given current and near-future market conditions), I feel like the Foster and Partners and Calatrava designs would have fared far FAR worse in terms of eventual VE, because those interior volumes were even larger and would have required more complex and expensive mechanical and structural systems.