On the one hand buildings look best when they rise from a-single, flat, unobstructed plane: but, on the either, people need some articulation of the floor to encourage them to stop and sit down and they need a barrier against the surrounding masses of building. There is thus an unresolved conflict between architectural values and public use. ![]() But, it is a great social success and is thronged with people all the time. Apart from this, the plaza is an untidy piece of design: seen from above, it is a mess. There is no good functional reason why a building should no come down to two ground floor levels, but it produces an uncomfortble, able, ambiguous effect. The sunken area of the plaza runs into the base of the building, suggesting uncomfortably that rats have got at the foundations. This is elaborately articulated, at three levels, with broad flights of steps, a fountain, clipped hedges-and much else besides. This aquarium effect is most pronounced in the Federal Plaza, and it was doubtless to offset it, and to give people something vivid and striking to look at, that the authorities installed the Calder Flamingo.įlamingo, created by artist Alexander Calder, a 53-foot tall stabile located in the Federal Plaza in front of the Kluczynski Federal Building in ChicagoĪn opposite approach was used by Perkins and Will when, in 1973, they built the plaza lying at the foot of the First National Bank of 1969. But as these ground floor interiors are themselves treated as extensions of outdoors the effect to the man in the street is rather like being in an aquarium: the view through is impressive, but not interesting or cheerful. The new buildings on these first plazas are transparent at ground level, so that the pedestrian gets the bonus of views into and through the adjacent ground floors. These first plazas are valued, but not much used: there are seldom more than a few sprinklings of people in them and these are scurrying along. On the other hand it does nothing for the people using the space, who feel exposed to the towering banks of windows rising above them and have no reason to stop in it. Without question this is the most architectural solution, in that it allows the surrounding buildings to rise straight off an unambiguous base. The first solution was to pave it flat as in Mies van der Rohe’s Federal Government Plaza, and C. This raised a new problem for Chicago: what to do with these extra parcels of land? Buildings therefore were allowed to go higher still, provided they stood back to let in more light and air. ![]() Much of the planning effort in down-town Chicago during the last fifteen yean has been spent on trying to undo this. As skyscrapers grow ever taller, how can they sensitively meet the street?įirst published in AR October 1977, this piece was republished online in August 2015Ī grid-iron plan, high density, and a fixed plot ratio produced the canyon street.
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