qertmind.blogg.se

So, when my early buildings started expressing structure and colour, they immediately attracted attention. Then everyone was still working within a dogmatic Miesean ‘less is more’ mode. Murphy Associates, the predecessor of Murphy/Jahn, and designing my first independent buildings from the mid-1970s. HJ: Well, these ideas go back to the times right after Mies, shortly after I just started working at C.F. Some critics call you a ‘romantic modernist’ and refer to your architecture as ‘romantic high-tech.’ And you have said the following: ‘We do not construct decoration, we decorate construction.’ How would you define the intention of your architecture?

VB: I think there are architects who will always produce good buildings no matter what the circumstances may be. There are so many simplistic one-liner buildings… There is no emotion, no imagination, no invention. Building now is all about profit-making everything is so calculated. Now it is all about business and they don’t even start before returning their investment. I used to know developers who loved going to a construction site and putting their boots in the mud. Developers who would love to do buildings are no longer around. Vladimir Belogolovsky: Wasn’t it always the case? Helmut Jahn: …There is so much banality that’s being built these days… Not only do you have to have fewer things but with the things you have left you have to do more.’ As Jahn himself says, ‘.anything you don’t need is a benefit.

Jahn’s architecture shook and modernised a number of global cities, and with time and experience, what began as a rebellion against Mies’s ‘less is more’ modus operandi matured into nuanced, measured, though unquestionably gutsy, production of towers, airports, convention centres, headquarters, and, most importantly, public spaces. His 1985 quadrant-in-plan Thompson Center reinvented a mundane government typology into a soaring public place, with its curved coloured glass facade decisively welcoming a postmodernist period to Chicago (one we thought had finished, but now seems to be ongoing, encompassing all of the post-Modern movements as its mere shades and variations.) His distinguished career has been one of twists and turns, and he is not planning to give up exploring new ideas any time soon. I prefer when form follows force rather than function,’ he told me. ‘Architecture is all about going with your gut. My most recent conversation with Helmut Jahn at his Chicago office is a case in point. But to me, common ground means not to think alike – then there is space for discourse. The current insistence on having common ground has pushed so many younger architects into a zombie-like copycat state of mind. The boldest visions now often come from the old guard of architecture – and frankly, I enjoy conversations with them much more. One person survived.In the last few years, something has happened to architects’ willingness to strive for originality. Four people, including the gunman, were killed. On 8 December 2006 a man opened fire in a law office located on the 38th floor of the Citigroup Center. Orbitz Worldwide (NYSE: OWW) maintains its worldwide headquarters on three floors of the Citigroup Center. Citigroup Center contains retail shopping and offices, and is connected to the platforms of the Ogilvie Transportation Center (which unofficially continues to be called Northwestern Station) and thousands of Metra commuters use the facility every day. The building, previously named the Northwestern Atrium Center, was constructed between 19 on the air rights obtained by the destruction of the headhouse of the 1911 North Western Station. Madison (between Clinton and Canal Streets), the structure was designed by the architecture firm Murphy/Jahn in a late modernist style. Citigroup Center is a 42 story, 588-foot (180 m) skyscraper in Chicago, Illinois.