johnB wrote:I was walking by the CCTV building the other day when they joined it at the top. Pretty amazing seeing the huge shower of sparks flying down. Even more amazing considering they've constructed half of the thing in the last three months.

Chicagoans would do well to check out the Koolhaus designed student centre at IIT. Good stuff, his first building in the U.S., if I'm not mistaken.

Wow.

The student center at IIT is nice to look at from the outside. That whole Mies-planned campus is an architectural gem. This Helmut Jahn building is there, as well. I'd like to go there with someone who knew more about such things than I do.

I did a tour of Seattle's library. The inside space didn't feel like it was well-worked out, but it's really powerful from the outside. The CCTV building is visually the best to me.

The very coolest library I have been in is the Beinecke, Yale's rare books library, designed by Gordon Bunshaft. Holy fucking shit! The walls are made of translucent marble! And there's a copy of the Gutenberg Bible! No pens allowed!
On-line tour here. Gordon Bunshaft. Salut!

Bunshaft.

I love all the extra odd space in the Seattle Main Library. The feeling isn't so much like a giant vaulted interior, it's more like the interior area of a forest canopy with a non-logical layout. When you spend an hour or two in that building, the time seems to move along rather nicely, and you aren't really bothered with other people's stink or noise.

The interior is very easy on the body - the building itself doesn't create stress.

itchy mcgoo wrote: That whole Mies-planned campus is an architectural gem.

Some of it is (as a graduate I'm kind of allowed to comment). I like the Arch building, the library, and the union since they are much more "Mies" than the pedestrian buildings like Chem and Met. I particularly like the old Admin building (that monster sandstone structure on 33rd and the highway), but I'm far more about the old style than the new. My house is 143 years old...what do you expect...

The new Student Center is a vast improvement over what was there in the '80's, so props to Rem for that. The Jahn building is easily one of the most God-awful ugly buildings I've ever seen. I know this isn't about Mr. Jahn's work, but he always gets a Crap from me. We have one of the finest Archetecture and Design programs in the world, but that edifice is the best we could do? C'mon...

For big giant overpriced icon-buildings, Koolhaas is pretty good. That being said I think the last thing we need is big giant overpriced icon-buildings.

He's articulate and offers insight, but I fundamentally disagree with him about the applicability and extent of his insight. Some architects can redefine the question of what to build, in ways that challenge the economic context that proposes building particular things in particlar ways. Koolhaas answers that question in ways that are kind of cool to look at/read, but that are very flattering to the vanguardist pretensions of the people that ask it: the same cadre of asshole subsidize-the-rich local elites that are fucking up your city as we speak.

If you're about "How should we build giant expo centres that fully reflect the huge scale of and experience of working in a swoopy vertiginous globalized economy", call him. If you want to get coherent answers about why cities seek to build expo centres that are giant, or are operating at a blown-out and alienating built scale, and are seeking to insert themselves in particular globalized economies in particular ways -- all of which, I'd argue, are questions that architects can and should ask -- call somebody else.

I'm cross-benches on this one.

djimbe wrote:Some of it is (as a graduate I'm kind of allowed to comment). I like the Arch building, the library, and the union since they are much more "Mies" than the pedestrian buildings like Chem and Met. I particularly like the old Admin building (that monster sandstone structure on 33rd and the highway), but I'm far more about the old style than the new. My house is 143 years old...what do you expect...

they recently renovated crown hall - looks gorgeous now.

renovations of the main building (like, making it ADA compliant, putting bathrooms on each floor, replacing the scary as hell elevator, etc) start in 2008 - big anonymous donation there. also a big push by the new president of the university.

some of the non-iconic mies buildings (the ones that were done in yellow brick due to the war effort to conserve steel) are also being tweaked... the ones on 35th & dearborn were completely gutted (can't change the facades due to their architectural relevance) and turned into a pretty impressive tech park.

have heard from the students that the jahn building is hella overpriced and overrated.

the koolhaas student center was not officially completed - overspending and waste... looks great from the outside, but on the inside it's clear that they left some things out (like ceiling treatments to reduce noise, landscaping, etc).

the rumor is that these touches were going to cost three million bucks or so - when the university (which very nearly went bankrupt back in the 90s and is still running at a deficit -- which is why we all have our raises capped at 1.5%/annum) allegedly wouldn't pony up, koolhaas allegedly went awol. again, strictly hearsay from the students.

hench wrote: (a buncha stuff about the campus buildings)

That's all cool information. Thanks! I don't really keep up on the school much at all now (I was class of '89). I was away for much of the new construction, but now my studio is 2 blocks from campus, so it's in front of me more often. I suppose I could go walk through the buildings without being noticed too much, but I just don't...

hench wrote:have heard from the students that the jahn building is hella overpriced and overrated.

the koolhaas student center was not officially completed - overspending and waste... looks great from the outside, but on the inside it's clear that they left some things out (like ceiling treatments to reduce noise, landscaping, etc).

the rumor is that these touches were going to cost three million bucks or so - when the university (which very nearly went bankrupt back in the 90s and is still running at a deficit -- which is why we all have our raises capped at 1.5%/annum) allegedly wouldn't pony up, koolhaas allegedly went awol. again, strictly hearsay from the students.

A fawning article about the student centre from Metropolis mentions a few odd-sounding cost cuts: the building is supposed to "extend about 30 feet farther to the south... but that section was scrapped to save money. In its place there is a plot of grass and a sand volleyball pit". It also mentions that the lack of ceiling treatment was a deliberate choice to expose the green drywall. There's an odd line about "a bowling alley with all-glass walls that sliced across the building", that was deleted for cost reasons and "replaced by a hanging garden".

Helmut Jahn can get it. Hate that guy.