November 02, 2002
Can we do better than SUV architecture?
We're a group of architects who think it rather odd that today in Chicago, a city with so much great architecture, we choose to design, build and purchase new town homes that ignore design basics and misuse materials like split-faced concrete block. The block, the cheapest material available, is unfinished and unless sealed by scrupulous contractor, absorbs water providing conditions for mold growth. We think that many of the new town homes resemble behemoth SUVs: they are bursting at the property lines, comfortable at their neighbors' expense and are often an exercise in bloated kitsch...
Can we engage good design and architecture, not only during Sunday visits to house museums, but during our everyday lives? Chicagoans from the 1830s to the 1960s courageously embraced this attitude. Our city is blessed with the products of this engagement. They are the balloon frame house, the early skyscrapers of Louis Sullivan and Charles Atwood, the first mixed-use buildings, and the innovative post-war high rise apartment buildings of Bertrand Goldberg and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Can we rediscover this adventurous attitude, the forward-looking vision that gave us new, exciting works of architecture? Can we resist merely regurgitating the past so that we, like those Chicagoans from the 1830s or the 1950s, can create something of our own that will inspire future generations?
Can we do better than SUV architecture?
Tell us what you think. Please participate. Join us for a discussion and lively debate of the current state of architecture in Chicago and the new residential construction.
Posted by huchting at November 02, 2002 01:00 PM
Hey, ya' know, they're even puttin' up those monstrous things in my neighborhood. That rough-face concrete block they use on the sides is UGLY! But I didn't know that it absorbed water. Yuck!
Hopefully you'll build an alternative and we'll have a choice.
Writing from down south but a northerner in attitude. Just discovered the web site.
100 years ago all Chigacoans were living the new adventure of creating a city on the edge of the prairie and the lake. Agriculture and Heavy Industry. This vitality in the business arena (new industries) does not seem present today. The established business does not want the new just the proven. The varied community reflects this attitude. It sounds like you have those that are moving back into the city who are building their fortress of stability similar to the SUV's which are their fortress vehicles of choice. I ask, what is parked in front of these new behemoths you mention. We have the same thing here in the south only sprawled to the limits of the horizon. I fear that bravado is gone. Brave actions can be taken only by those who have acknowledged their fears and accepted them, but not by those who hide from them in a semblance of secure vision. Yours is not an isolated story.
Someone has to take the lead and show them the way of a more confident future. I imagine someone must be doing this somewhere in Chicago? Of course it could all be the fault of the Masons.
A consumer group announced today that mold was the leading cause of a 13 percent jump in the median cost of homeowner's insurance last year.
I wonder what role unfinished rough-faced concrete block had in this jump?
Wow, this site is great. Finally an Architecture/Design site based in Chicago. I'm a new resident in East Village (next to Wicker Park and West Town).
This issue is hitting home to me. This neighborhood is wonderfully unique in the integrity of its architecture and the way streets and walkways have been planned that actually look beautiful and help build a very neighborhoodly community.
However, I've also noticed many poorly envisioned and built (what do you expect from a building designer and not an architect)SUV housing monstrosities that are mirror images of one another. It's sad, really pathetic.
Haynes
SUV houses and SUVs have always struck me as bloated, like a parasite that sucks up oil and natural resources to enrich itself at the expense of its host and its neighbors. This is happening not just in USA but in China and Europe as well. People have given up on the possibility of good community living and are turning inwards, ever more so becoming isolationists.
Having lived through four seasons of demolition and construction in my neighborhood, I've witnessed the cacophony of shrieking saws and swirling split-faced concrete dust that has destroyed the integrity and character of much of Chicago's north side. The sense of peace and tranquility replaced by the girth of excess. Unreasonable facsimiles.
