If you had to choose a single word to characterize well-known architects as a group, you’d be unlikely to choose “humility.” Frank Lloyd Wright, for example, is quoted as having said that “Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose honest arrogance and have seen no occasion to change.”
If you ask architects to select their best building the answer, as often as not, will be “the next one.” X/O Condominiums was perhaps Lucien Lagrange‘s next project when he channeled Frank Lloyd Wright by describing it as his “finest achievement.”
We selected X/O as the best new high-rise of 2007. The signage (above) was still in place when we visited the site yesterday, but the project remains unbuilt, and Lagrange has retired from the scene.
Was X/O’s “Future of the South Loop” tag line uncannily predictive?