Quote:
Originally Posted by SamInTheLoop
I hope you don't actually believe this. If you do, you're deluding yourself. His portfolio of faux historisist junk speaks completely to the contrary. Trying to somehow equate AM Stern with the talent of an Adrian Smith is just embarrassing.
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He's not deluding himself; rather you, TUP and others who only discuss architectural design in absolutist terms are deluding yourselves in thinking that only ONE type of architecture is appropriate for a massive metropolis like Chicago.
Sam, as much as I appreciate your input and opinions on lots of items within the forum (in addition to that of others, such as TUP), sometimes your are not served well by taking on immutable positions related to design. I have to remind myself of this oftentimes as well, and I work in this silly profession, but variety is the spice of life...and in this instance, I personally would rather see a RAMSA design than a PoMo/Lucien LaGrange shlockfest because Stern DOES have the credibility and the know-how (he's the f**king Dean at Yale, for Chrissake!! Get over it), and he knows his clients and market extremely well.
Whereas his most recent building a la Defense in Paris is kind of amazing and very contemporary (Exhibit A in showing that he CAN design contemporary architectural statements), his residential projects, most notably his high-rises in Manhattan tend to be more of what we see for this massive phallus planned for Chicago, because he was hired to cater to a very specific clientele that the developer wants to attract: wealthy, most likely late 30s - early 50s, Waspy transplants (either outside of Illinois or from the suburbs), moving to the City for the first time for work, social needs/desires; more importantly, catering to clients who really don't care about argument of pioneering contemporary vs. historist neo-traditional pastiches, because frankly, IT DOESN'T MATTER.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, many in these forums cannot see the forest through the trees when it comes to high-rise construction. AMLI's river north tower design sucks, but it's providing housing for hundreds of new residents who can afford it and more importantly WANT to live there and are bringing in countless new dollars to the immediate surrounding economy. And the same thing goes for this RAMSA-designed tower: considering that it's a seemingly well-designed highrise that will potentially command sizable rents and sales figures, in addition to expanding the core-City population and the attached wealth that comes with that, isn't it still a win-win, regardless of it not being a 'modern masterpiece' of glass, steel and concrete?
A lot of intelligent, sophisticated and worldly people who can afford to live in any type of building/unit/house they want are turned off by avant-garde contemporary design; it can be seen as cold, unforgiving and at times very unlivable. And if that's all that you are designing or your developer/client is trying to market, you're unnecessarily diminishing you're pool of potential buyers because of a fetishistic mentality that only ONE type of design is appropriate for a high-end market.
But that's just my opinion.