Lucien Lagrange, principal of Lucien Lagrange Architects, has added his European touch to several Chicago projects, including 65 East Goethe and the high-rise 840 North Lakeshore Drive.
For his latest project, Ten East Delaware, he looked to the 1920s for inspiration. We asked Lagrange to talk about designing the 35-story high-rise made of French limestone with pre-cast cornice. The neo-classical building features ornamented bases and arches, and while those details are a little hard to see from this rendering, we’re eager to see how it turns out.
“We wanted it to be recognized,” he says. “I think we achieved that because the building has more detail. I think it’s a bit more graceful than the surrounding buildings. It has a quality of its own; it’s more classical. The other buildings are pretty bland surrounding it.”
Lagrange says he likes to put detail at eye level so people walking by can see it. “A building has to touch the ground in a very graceful way so as you come down to the ground, there’s a lot of detail,” he says. “You want to design a building so it doesn’t hit the ground, it sits on the ground.”
Construction on the building started in April, and first deliveries of the 121 units are expected in fall 2009.
This better not suck, LaGrange
Why ar yoo so negative, eh?
We’re grinding out permit sets just as fast as we can.
fat chance on that one, TUP.
I know you guys say leave the 1920’s in the 20’s, but I think (based on the rendering) that this building looks better than many of the modern ccarp being built around ths city. Befpre you jump on me, I do like modern architecture, but many recent projects have diappointed me.
Some advice for Lucien LaGrange: for every building you are about to design, try doing this: take every notion and preconception you have as to what would make for a quality design for a particular project, then do the precise opposite of this. Therefore, roughly 75% of your work would be very high quality and the remaining 25% would be totally cartoonish, laughingly-bad rubbish – in other words, overly sentimental silliness – as opposed to the current situation, in which 25% is high quality (Erie on the Park, Kingsbury on the Park, XO, etc) and the rest is pure, unadulterated junk…