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I stumbled on this West Rogers Park development by accident yesterday and can’t seem to get it out of my head. It haunts me. Designed by Hanna Architects, the building was a 2007 entrant into the Illinois / Indiana Masonry Council’s Excellence in Masonry competition. (No, it didn’t win any prizes.)
Sunrise Equities, the group behind the West Loop’s Pure, is the developer of this colorful project at 2140-52 W Devon Ave. According to their Web site, prices start in the $270s and the building is more than 70 percent sold. The Sunrise Web site also features a very small artist rendering, which, contrasted with the finished product, is one of the more extreme concept / execution comparisons we’ve had in a while.
The brick balconies bear an obvious resemblance to the “weird cracked out tetris things” we encountered at Pulaskiview and Chicagoview II, but I haven’t been able to link Hanna Architects to either of those projects.
Regardless of who started it, this Tetris-style architecture seems to be taking Chicago by storm. What is the appeal of this peculiar design, and why has it become a standard for mid-rise condo developments on Chicago’s North Side?
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{ 14 comments }
Nintendo? Looks more like Legos to me.
well, it’s different. most people I know are sick and tired of the same old, same old, so I suppose this style is an attempt to distinguish projects from all the other lame 3 and 4 unit brick-facade condo buildings cluttering up the north side. I appreciate the fact there is at least some depth the design offers, the flat facade is what results in the much-maligned “condo canyon” effect.
I am startled to find that I think the reality is actually an improvement over the rendering.
I think this sort of architecture is coming from the desire to do something interesting with balconies. There are too many new construction condo buildings with balconies on the front that just create these overwhelming horizontal shelves. This is an attempt to break up that massing by having the strong horizontals blend into vertical elements. This creates visual ambiguity, and doesn’t give your eyes a simple place to rest in the composition.
I’d like to see better detailing and clearer distinction between solid elements and voids. The materiality is pretty boring, but at least they differentiated the shapes by changing brick colors! They probably had to do brick to appease the NIMBY neighbors anyway…
The facades have to be of non-combustible material. Brick is the easiest to get through the city, for that reason it’s used heavily.
The short answer for using this hideous, uninspring and continuously reproduced architecture (a Hanna staple, whereby one can see the same exact design and floor plan replicated throughout the northside)is that the plan is pre-approved and thus gets through the building permit process much faster than a new plan; at least sixty days faster. On one hand it is hard to fault the small developer who needs speed of execution to make his numbers work, but on the other hand, these developers should be banned by local alderman from using these pre-approved plans, as they destroy all individuality and creativity in neighborhood architecture. And these guys wonder why their units don’t sell. If the building, the floor plans and finishes are the same all over town, then location and price are the only determinitive factors. The small developers need to take a cue from a group like Ranquist Development who is breaking the mold.
Note: Brick is not mainly used because of fire protection; it is used because of union power and the fact that half of these small builders are brick layers, and they get a masonary fee out of the development budget i.e. hidden profit center.
Simon Deery,
If Chicago had followed your recommendations in an earlier day we wouldn’t have the streetscape we do.
There’s no more sameness in building design today than there was in any earlier period in Chicago.
Ranquist is quite good even if their minamilist aesthetic isn’t always carried out with the necessary extreme attention it needs. I agree they come much closer than most of the infill to acutally be a spark at dawn.
Sorry, Simon, I’ve done projects without brick and it wasn’t a labor issue, it was a fire protection issue with the city. Caveat; we used union labor, but the city was very stringent on the fire ratings of the siding.
Funnily enough, he also just described how the bulk of bungalows and two and three-flats were built; from stock plans. That’s how vernaculars begin and become vernaculars; repetition of somethng that works or is popular or local reason…
Sheridan –
Totally agree about the development of certain “styles” in a number of neighborhoods, but God help us if “Nouveaux Tetris” ever makes it into architectural history books…
It won’t.
It’s ridiculous to say the use of brick is exclusively related to the fire protection requirements of the Chicago Building Code. There are literally hundreds of materials that can be used. But if you try to get, say, a rain-screen metal panel building built in a typical North Side neighborhood, you can expect to make waves with the neighbors, block clubs, Alderman’s zoning committee, etc.
I’d love to see the architecture of low-rise condos in Chicago lifted to a higher level, but the economics ususally don’t work out for developers. We have a hard enough time convincing clients to use a curtain wall system instead of a window wall system on large towers with hundreds of units! Even Donald Trump skimped on his curtain wall, opting for the ugly Chinese glass you see on the Trump Tower today. It’s sad that the city is getting mucked up by a bunch of bland, uninspiring, condo buildings, but the economics of building housing is the major culprit.
Joe -
Are you saying that the Chicago streetscape is good or bad? I’m guessing that you think it is good. I do also, to an extent. I think there is more mas production today than earlier periods, with the small building market being dominated by a few architects, builders and developers. Part of the reason for this is that the barriers to entry with repsect to cost are so high today. My overall point, however, is that I despise the small market whereby every 3, 4 and 6 flat has the same exterior design i.e. brick, punched out windows and juliet balconies, the same floor plan, and the same finishes. I’m not sure why people need uniformity so bad. Isn’t that for the suburbs? Some of the best juxtipositions in the city are between the old and the new (see banana republic building next to the ralph lauren building). The trend to go modern, or atleast unique, needs to reach down to the small buidling market. Has anyone seen Berlin or Amsterdamn lately? If they can do it, so can Chicago.
Simon Deery,
I love Chicago streetscapes, and have photos of many of them at Flickr.
Many of those streetscapes are the product of far greater mass production than we see today simply because there was more vacant land available in earlier periods.
Uniformity makes for economy in building, and it’s the affordability people need more than the uniformity.
I generally avoid expressing opinions on aesthetic issues. My experience has been that the vast majority of developers and architects prefer to build projects they can be proud of but need to build projects that people can afford. When these objectives conflict, as they almost always do, affordability prevails.
I also think that much of what we see built today is a result of a shift in buyers’ preferences, and it’s buyers that drive the market. My gut tells me that mid-market buyers (i.e., most of them) have become more selfish when it comes to trading off private amenities (their interiors) for public ones (the exteriors of their homes). Developers have little to say about these shifting preferences and have to respond to them.
I personaly like the building it is different.
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