The good, bad and ugly in recent works

The big news in recent Chicago architecture is that there's so little news, according to an informal poll of a dozen local architects and designers on the good, the bad and the ugly of the last two years.

Thanks to the economic downturn, building has virtually dried up in the city traditionally known as a hotbed of innovation--and controversy.

Few downtown office towers ignite much enthusiasm. Then again, few have been built this decade.

The latest, Kohn Pedersen Fox's Chicago Title & Trust Building at 161-171 N. Clark St., gets raves from Richard Becker of Becker Silverstein Associates in Highland Park-"an elegantly detailed" neoclassical effort, he says.

But Paul Florian of Florian-Wierzbowski Architecture dubs it "mediocre:...