There might have been nothing so remarkable about this summer's Olympics than the event's return to its ancestral Greek home.

Chicago architecture is returning to its roots. The city that birthed the careers of luminaries like Daniel Burnham and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe is benefiting from a new wave of design quality after a dry period in the last two decades.

advertisement

"Chicago fell into a funk in the 1980s," said Michael Kaufman, principal and executive vice president of Chicago-based Lohan Caprile Goettsch Architects Inc. "Design became somewhat aimless, and postmodernism took hold."

But new directions are being pursued, and the revival is playing out in a number of ways.

The annual Midwest Construction survey of design firms in Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin found billings for the top-130 companies in the tri-state regional last year were $1.6 billion.

The survey also found that worldwide revenues for the top design firms were $3.9 billion in 2004.

Olympic Design Quality

Talent from wide-ranging sources is making the renewal happen.

Local designers are conceiving inventive projects, such as Helmut Jahn with his State Street Village residence hall. With its exposed concrete, steel and glass, the project on the Illinois Institute of Technology campus has become a living laboratory.

Thomas Beeby created an appealing space with the Joan W. and Irving B. Harris Theater for Music and Dance in the city's Millennium Park. Drama is created by the interplay of the discreet theater and the flamboyance of its neighbor, the Jay Pritzker Pavilion.

Los Angeles-based Frank Gehry is one of the out-of-towners breaking ground in the Midwest. The Pritzker Pavilion he designed is drawing crowds to Millennium Park to see its billowing panels of aluminum and steel. Another nonnative, New York's Rafael Viñoly, crafted the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business with its wine glass columns fashioned in steel.
And young architects are shaping fresh designs. Jeanne Gang of Chicago-based Studio Gang Ltd. dressed the Chinese American Service League's Kam L. Liu Building on the Southwest Side in titanium based on research she had done during three trips to China.

The Response

The public in Chicago appears to be buying into the trend - literally.

"Chicagoans have shown a desire to live in more contemporary buildings," said Lucien Lagrange, founder of the Chicago design firm bearing his name.

"Look at the weekend paper's real estate section."

Lagrange's own 24-story Erie on the Park condominium features chevron bracing to express the structural steel frame. Ralph Johnson of Chicago-based Perkins & Will uses shadows and light, instead of a wall of windows, to create drama at a prominent location immediately west of the Kennedy Expressway for his 39-floor Skybridge at One North Halsted condominium.

"There are a number of architects who are getting very close to having facades with no visible steel at all," added Alice Sinkevitch, executive director of the Chicago chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

Even Chicago Mayor Richard Daley is pushing the envelope with his announcement at the national convention of the AIA this summer in Chicago that public buildings in the city will be certified to meet the Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design standards.

The design community has already offered projects meeting LEED standards, including Chicago Center for Green Technology, a structure in the Garfield Park neighborhood with solar panels, rainwater collection system and recycled building materials. The recently renovated Center for Neighborhood Technology in Wicker Park has similar elements.

All this energy has lured the Congress for New Urbanism from San Francisco to Chicago and attracted former Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist as its leader.

Other Midwest cities are picking up on the trend of dramatic new designs. Indeed, Milwaukee might have lead the way with the Santiago Calatrava-designed addition to its lakefront art museum.

"There is an interest not to have the status quo and to push things a little bit," added William Browne Jr., president of Indianapolis-based Ratio Architects Inc.

It might be fitting that local university architecture programs are attracting more students.

Steve Sennott, assistant dean of architecture at IIT, said enrollment in the undergraduate program this fall on the South Side campus is 110 students, nearly a tripling over the 38 students who enrolled in 2001. The school's graduate program has also seen an increase.

He attributes the rise to the recently completed State Street Village and Rem Koolhaas-designed McCormick Tribune Campus Center projects and IIT's Mies heritage.

"In the fall, we made some calls to other Midwest universities to get a read [on enrollments]," he added. "Some are holding steady and some are seeing small increases."

A Stable Market

Helping to sustain the design vitality is an improving market.

"People are busy but still concerned about what's coming after the projects are finished," the AIA's Sinkevitch said. "Opportunities continue, but it is not a boom period like it was five years ago."

All the interviewed firms except one said backlogs have increased this year compared with the same period in 2003.

Other good signs are that each interviewed firm had stable or rising billings, and each has hired architects over the last year.

Nearly historical low interest rates should continue to drive projects in the residential area, said Ted Strand, vice president of Chicago-based Solomon Cordwell Buenz & Associates Inc.

On the downside, design service fees appear to remain stagnant due to the intense competition to land work.

"We don't understand how some firms can possibly do a project for the fees they are quoting," Lohan's Kaufman said. "That's creating a cancer. You can't do it perpetually."

Let's See Action

Design firms are acting in response to the market situation by expanding their geographic base.

For example, Ratio has merged with Severns, Reid & Associates, a design firm in Champaign, Ill.

"We felt we needed to focus on the institutional and complex work" available in the town where the University of Illinois is located, Browne said.

Lohan Caprile Goettsch has gone far afield by opening offices in Dallas, Berlin and Shanghai, China, Kaufman said.

Architects are getting solicitations from suburban business and political leaders to revive their moribund town centers.

In the Chicago area, Downers Grove, Park Ridge and Lake Zurich are researching residential and retail redevelopment, Lagrange said.

"In Lake Zurich, we are planning 700,000 sq. ft. of space, which is like a Park Tower," he added. He was referring to the 67-story building in the Loop completed in 2000.

In city centers, mixed-use developments continue to be popular because of the ease of securing financing. A good example is Trump Tower Chicago, the project the flamboyant developer has planned for the site of the Chicago Sun-Times.

"The formula today seem to have hotels and condos mixed together," Lagrange added.

 

Useful Sources Several Midwest affiliations of the American Institute of Architects provide designers and engineers an opportunity for networking and learning. They include: AIA Chicago, 312-670-7770 or visit www.aiachicago.org on the Internet AIA Illinois, phone 217-522-2309 or visit www.aiail.org AIA Indiana, phone 317-634-6993 or visit www.aiaindiana.org AIA Northeast Illinois, phone 630-527-8550 or visit www.aianei.com AIA Wisconsin, phone 608-257-8477 or visit www.aiaw.org

Top Design Firms Complete List
Top Design Firms Breakout List