Content area
Abstract
A humorous greeting card depicting State of Illinois Center went on sale in Chicago stores not long ago. The card's cover bears a cartoon likeness of the glassy, wedge-shaped building designed by Helmut Jahn. Its printed message reads, "Forgive Me . . . Everyone Makes Mistakes."
It is not really true that Jahn's building is unanimously mocked, however. Furthermore, the card is not the sort of thing you would send to someone who has never been to Chicago. State of Illinois Center hasn't achieved the level of national recognition attained by the work of such Postmodern architects in the East as Michael Graves.
Still, the greeting card reinforces the truth that State of Illinois Center has become the most esthetically controversial office building ever constructed in Chicago. Its functional problems are also turning it into a textbook example of architecture that is scandalously short on user comfort. For these and other reasons, it is time for another critical assessment of this extraordinary building that opened 15 months ago.
Full text
A humorous greeting card depicting State of Illinois Center went on sale in Chicago stores not long ago. The card's cover bears a cartoon likeness of the glassy, wedge-shaped building designed by Helmut Jahn. Its printed message reads, "Forgive Me . . . Everyone Makes Mistakes."
This unkind jest is interesting because of two obvious marketing assumptions: That Chicagoans recognize the building instantly and hardly anyone can look at it without smiling--or worse.
It is not really true that Jahn's building is unanimously mocked, however. Furthermore, the card is not the sort of thing you would send to someone who has never been to Chicago. State of Illinois Center hasn't achieved the level of national recognition attained by the work of such Postmodern architects in the East as Michael Graves.
Still, the greeting card reinforces the truth that State of Illinois Center has become the most esthetically controversial office building ever constructed in Chicago. Its functional problems are also turning it into a textbook example of architecture that is scandalously short on user comfort. For these and other reasons, it is time for another critical assessment of this extraordinary building that opened 15 months ago.
The most highly visible element belatedly added to the structure is a curtain of water that flows down a grubby slab of plastic from the lobby to the concourse level, where it runs across four shallow basins before disappearing. The water display makes a pleasant sound but is otherwise a lackluster failure.
Permanent directional graphics in the building are adequate, and the information kiosks in the lobby are essential even if a bit intrusive, since tourists from all over the world swarm through the building every day (overtaxing the elevators, which were not intended to accommodate so many gawkers).
Ugly pedestal signs used by some of the building's commercial tenants are a blight that ought to be banned. If the state cannot figure out how to display a large abstract lobby sculpture without surrounding it with a rope, the sculpture should be removed. Still, these problems are overshadowed by more major concerns.
When an architect designs any sort of structure, he sets up short and long-term maintenance challenges. Interior housekeeping at the state building seems to be coping fairly well with Jahn's lavish use of glass likely to be touched. Outdoors, however, the thin and brightly colored metal that covers the building's circular columns is already dented, scraped and smudged.
The state building's most serious and frequently publicized problem, of course, is still summer heat against which the air conditioning system is powerless. Dozens of old-fashioned electric fans set up by building managers and individual office workers offer a touch of relief on hot days, yet in some areas there never seems to be enough chilled air.
State of Illinois Center was designed and engineered by a joint venture team comprised of Murphy/Jahn and Lester B. Knight & Associates. At this point, it appears that someone made the profound error of grossly underestimating how much air conditioning tonnage it would take to cool the building. This is far more serious than installing a system that is mechanically balky.
Air conditioning specialists have been trying to remedy the cooling deficiency ever since last summer. Sources close to the project say it will be many more months before means are devised to increase the permanent cooling power by retrofitting. There are a few who believe that the building will never be uniformly comfortable during the summer for a variety of technical reasons. State officials announced last Tuesday that they will file suit against Lester B. Knight to recover the cost of upgrading the system.
Personnel from Murphy/Jahn, Lester B. Knight and the Illinois Capital Development Board may all bear some responsibility for initial misjudgments and the failure to detect them before construction began. But it is surely not unfair to say that architectural decisions invited severe cooling and sun glare problems--even if others were responsible for solving them. The architects, after all, decided on such matters as orienting a huge expanse of transparent glass toward the sun.
Summertime sun glare has been particularly intolerable in State of Illinois Center offices where it roasts the occupants while creating blinding reflections on their computer screens. Several workers tried to solve the problem with sun umbrellas--a gesture not intended as a joke.
Some 1,600 sets of venetian blinds were recently hung on windows in the curved section of the building wall facing southeast. Fixed at a permanent angle, they are practically invisible except at close range. The blinds have cut computer screen glare and reduced air conditioning needs by several hundred tons (a typical central air conditioning unit in a house puts out about three tons). Still, the cooling system remains deficient by a large margin.
In Chicago, at least, the cooling mess has tended to blur public judgment about other aspects of the building. More than ever now, some people perceive the building's huge atrium as "wasteful" when it is actually one of the grandest and most visually successful spatial gestures any architect ever made in this city. Happily, the atrium is also getting intensive use as a year- round ceremonial and performance space.
But while the interior of State of Illinois Center is a brilliant visual success, the building still fails as a chunky and graceless object on the cityscape (a matter about which I have previously written at considerable length).
Helmut Jahn may never again get carte blanche to indulge himself in architecture quite as idiosyncratic for a government client. No other politician is likely to make so risky a design choice as did Gov. James Thompson. (Jahn offered Thompson seven other design schemes--some far more conservative--and Thompson turned them down).
For all that, Jahn remains one of the most formidable architects in the nation and may have even more spectacular surprises in store for clients who need not worry about political constituencies.
His other major Chicago work includes Xerox Centre, the Board of Trade skyscraper addition and the 1 S. Wacker Dr. office tower. At O'Hare Airport, Jahn designed the subway station and the United Airlines terminal complex now in construction. Nearing completion is his North Western Atrium Center on the site of the old rail terminal at Madison and Canal Streets.
Other Chicago commissions are doubtless on the way, and Jahn can also point to work in New York, Philadelphia, Minneapolis and Milwaukee, among other cities. In South Africa, one of his buildings has been completed in Johannesburg and another is planned for Durban.
There is no Jahn style or "look," although an experienced eye can discern continuity in the architect's feelings about form, materials and historicism. He is fond of making stylistic references to the past, but dislikes being lumped in with Postmodernists who share the same design habits.
If there has been a persistent flaw in Jahn's work since he dumped his old Miesian disciplines (vide Xerox), it has been his insistence on a degree of abstraction that robs his work of focus. Some of the most cerebral qualities of Jahn's buildings cross the fine line that separates subtlety from fuzzy ambiguity. This provides fodder for scholars who specialize in semiotics, but does not make good architecture.
What will architectural historians say about State of Illinois Center 50 years from now? How will they appraise it in terms of Jahn's progression to full maturity of form in the turbulent years of Postmodernism?
It would be foolhardy to predict the answers, but it seems likely that the great air cooling fiasco will be forgotten by then. Architecture is a science and a business as well as an art--but who talks about how the inside of the Pantheon still gets wet every time it rains?
CAPTION:
DRAWING: A greeting card pokes fun at the State of Illinois Center's local fame and controversial reputation. (copyright) Chas. Levy Circulating Co.
PHOTO: Joseph J. Annunzio, attorney general of the state environmental control division, and William W. Frerichs, assistant division chief, use an umbrella to battle heat and glare from the sun. Tribune photo by Karen Engstrom.
PHOTO DRAWING
Copyright Chicago Tribune Co. Aug 10, 1986