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Originally Posted by chicubs111
So i guess your saying NYC is really the capital of modern architecture and Chicago is just a nice collections of buildings but nowhere near as daring with its designs?
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If modern architecture means oddly shaped buildings with unusual aesthetics, then yes, NYC IS the American capital of modern architecture.
If modern architecture means using new materials and technology to attempt cheaper, more efficient construction with an interest in social engineering, then it’s Chicago.
That’s the point.
If a region gets too stuck on aesthetics and novelty, it misses the boat on the deeper underlying societal trends. At almost every point of the past decade, NYC has the most flashy or iconic example of particular building design styles, but it’s very slow to respond to changing lifestyle preferences.
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The Hancock Building didn’t start out with a developer saying, “I want a black trapezoidal building with giant X’s! It’ll be iconic!”
At first the developer wanted separate regular office and residential towers, but there wasn’t enough space on the lot. So the architects decided on a tapered tower with offices that needed large floor plans on the bottom, and condos that needed more light on the top. Exterior trusses made for flexible floor plans and cheaper construction.
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860-880 Lake Shore Apartments sparks the use of steel and glass for residential towers. Viable because of WWII concrete and steel production surplus.
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Marina City was the tallest (and I think first) post-war urban residential high rise. That’s what was so sensational about it; it was a conscious attempt to use the fantasy of a high-rise “City within a city” lifestyle to reverse urban flight. But it’s the forerunner of residential skyscrapers with parking podiums.
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Perhaps Chicago modernism today is best demonstrated by having built Rush University Medical Center to ensure the city had the ICU capacity to respond to pandemics and not be forced to put patients in hallways and gift shops as seen in other large cities.