For an engaging piece of hilarity, everyone should read a little profile that Crain's ran this week on Lagrange. Written by a Robert Sharoff, he of the comically-titled "Lucien Lagrange: The Search for Elegance"!!!! No kidding, the words Elegance and Lucien Lagrange in the same sentence - no, a title of a book!! This schlocky, hacky, junk purveyor needs to stop his efforts to help design in Chicago. We really don't need the 'help'! So he's out at VOA, and now he's found an apparent even greater fool to hire him on. All he is really is a businessman, not a designer - and frankly, the public track record that's out there (bankruptcy, thank goodness) suggests that, in the end, not a very good businessman at that - his trick is preying on unsophisticated design taste of certain high net-worth individuals......not bad work I guess, if you can find it, but boy is karma a bi$*h!! Good riddance hopefully soon, and may this new venture end in misadventure!
Also, for the record, let me say that - I know there are those in these forums who think otherwise, but still - there would still be something deeply wrong with Lagrange if he were a talented designer (his overall portfolio, and the Ritz project thoroughly demonstrates he is anything but) in a traditionalist, or classical motif. For brand new construction, ground-up development, it simply has no place in the modern world, in contemporary Chicago........there simply does not exist a good faith, rational, compelling argument to support it. At a first-pass, high level, it's terribly flawed in a very basic, almost philosophical sense. Period.
__________________
It's simple, really - try not to design or build trash.
Last edited by SamInTheLoop; May 31, 2012 at 3:11 PM.
|