>
You’ve seen X / O: the rendering, now look at X / O: the video. Kargil Development is hyping its South Loop high-rise (sales open Saturday) with some whizz-bang little videos at the development’s Web site, X /O Condominiums, (click on “X / O video”) featuring starchitect Lucien Lagrange and a cameo by Gail Lissner of housing analyst, Appraisal Research Counselors. In one video, Parisian-born Lagrange reflects on his difficult childhood in occupied France in the 1940s, before turning to the topic of Chicago’s “Sahss Loop.” The South Loop deserves “modern, avant-garde, cutting-edge design,” Lagrange says.
A virtual tour video should be of interest to anyone curious about how this development will fit into this historic section of the South Loop. The video pans up a computer-generated South Loop street of low-rise buildings, before X / O finally appears at the end of the street, a giant in the land of the munchkins. The video pans over the proposed townhomes that will sit at the base of X / O, which some South Loopers say are sterile and out of keeping with the broader streetscape. Judge for yourself. I think they look bland and not as strikingly modern as the developer has suggested they will be, but they aren’t shown in a lot of detail.
In a previous interview with us, Lagrange defended the height, scale and design of his two towers, describing them as architectural innovations and noting that nearby Glessner House, now a landmark, once was considered avant-garde. Memo to Kargil: you should sex up your videos with a little Pink Floyd.