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Architect and planner Dirk Lohan would like to make Chicago user-friendly.
"That's basically what motivates me," he says. "When I walk on the sidewalk and stumble into a pothole, I get very upset. You go into a new office building and everything's marble and shiny and bronze, but the sidewalk outside is crumbling. I know the reason is money, but why can't our modem society raise the money?"
Potholes are hardly his main concern. Although he is among Chicago's most prominent architects -- his latest work includes the oceanarium addition to the John G. Shedd Aquarium and a luxury apartment building at 420 E. Ohio St. -- Mr. Lohan's interest in Chicago's total urban environment has gradually superseded even his regard for building designs.
"Architecture is boring," he says with a chuckle. "A building doesn't make a city. Many buildings make city life. That's why I'm interested in the larger picture."
So, Mr. Lohan has turned his sights to loftier goals. Beginning with his master plan for the Cityfront Center planned development skirting the north side of the Chicago River from west of Michigan Avenue to Lake Shore Drive, Mr. Lohan is determined that the river will become the most important focus of development in the foreseeable future.
At the same time, he has created a museum campus plan that would reorganize traffic, parking and landscaping in the area between the Adler Planetarium, the Shedd Aquarium and the Field Museum of Natural History.
The plan, which would reroute northbound Lake Shore Drive traffic to the existing southbound lanes and make the inter-museum area an open pedestrian campus, has been adopted by museum officials as a long-range goal, although the Park District has no immediate plans to implement it.
And, as a staunch advocate of an open shoreline and a planner concerned about shoreline erosion, Mr. Lohan proposed a plan several years ago for an enclosed breakwater system. He also advocates extending Lincoln Park up to Evanston along the current Sheridan...