Yo’s truly was chatting with George Pappageorge of Pappageorge / Hames fame (anyone else get Madonna singing ‘Pappageorge Haymes, I’m in trouble deep’ in their ear when they hear that name?) We were talking about the Museum Park campus of high-rises his firm designed for The Enterprise Companies in the South Loop.
Yo was curious about how such a mega-project was pulled together. Pappageorge tells us that one of the challenges was designing high-rises that complemented the townhouses that MLC Companies designed in the Central Station community, near Museum Park, and the august institutions of the Museum Campus itself. He says Museum Tower I, (third picture) II and III were designed in a classical language, using cornices, columns and classical proportions in a modified, simplified version of the museums themselves.
When I put to him David Hovey’s earlier comment about “applied decoration, ” Pappageorge said Hovey’s statement was valid, but “One can also say that we don’t need to be compelled to reject our traditions.” More after jump.
“In this broad marketplace there is room for a variety of expressions,” he said.
Pappageorge says Tower IV is the true transition between the more classical high-rises and the modern-looking One Museum Park East (first picture) and One Museum Park West. Tower IV (second picture) has traditional elements – an expressed concrete frame that perpetuates the notion of a base, a middle and a top – but it also has expanses of curbed glass curtain walls, that “instill the modern idiom,” the architect says. This curtain of glass paves the way for the One MP east and west buildings and two other high-rises (still to be designed) that will line Roosevelt Road.
On the topic of One Museum Park east and west, Pappageorge says they were designed with a modified single-loaded corridor, meaning the corrdior runs down one side of the building rather than through the middle, as is typically seen. In the case of both buildings, the corridors and elevators are located at the rear, giving all of the units views to the east and north, a vista from Soldier Field to Millennium Park.
Pappageorge is excited about how Museum Park is creating a south wall for Grant Park along Roosevelt Road, and says that when the remaining Museum Park high-rises are completed, Millennium Park / Grant Park will be nicely enclosed, like Central Park in New York. The new, not-yet-designed high-rises will sit at Roosevelt Road near Michigan Avenue, and, unlike the One Museum Park buildings, will include commercial tenants, including a grocery store and a restaurant, to tie them into the Michigan Avenue retail scene. 