“What a time to be talking about public space,” said Chicago architect Douglas Garofalo the day after the United States went to war in Iraq. But when uncertainty and dread reign, thinking about making things better is a welcome salve, and a large audience had come to the Museum of Contemporary Art to hear Garofalo’s thoughts on what could be done to lighten the effect of the MCA’s hulking tomb of a building on its surrounding Streeterville neighborhood.
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Behind the pumping station on Michigan Avenue, an underused parking lot is hidden behind a high stone wall. A second lot off Pearson is demarcated with metal rope. Seneca Park, to the west of the MCA, is fenced in, as is the MCA sculpture garden. Lakeshore Park, east of the MCA, is enclosed by wrought iron, the tennis courts within it caged by chain-link. Even along Chicago and Pearson, each unit of parkway is protected by its own midget metal grating. To a pedestrian hazarding a stroll, “Keep out!” screams from every turn.
The demolition of the old Illinois National Guard Armory in 1993 offered a last chance to reclaim some continuous open space on the strip, but it was thrown away with the construction of Josef Paul Kleihues’s overbearing mass. Although the MCA’s interior spaces have been widely praised, its exterior is a forbidding, blocky, blank-walled palace, designed to overawe its surroundings and managing it in the most banal way possible. Originally, bright multistory banners brought relief to the facades, but the metal frames that held them have stood empty since neighbors complained about the noise they made banging about in the wind.
Garofalo’s team began with research and observation, studying everything from how people approach the museum (70 percent come on a diagonal from the southwest) to wind strength in the plaza (which they tested by flying a kite). From this, the concept of a “woven carpet” began to evolve: lightweight, 8- to 12-foot-high forms with soft lines and surfaces that would segment the barren plaza into a series of outdoor rooms and support a range of cultural programs.
Ultimately, Garofalo sees the project as “a net to catch people.” He mentions positioning components beyond the plaza, to draw traffic in from Michigan Avenue, but even without those he has his work cut out for him. Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s Altes Museum in Berlin, from which Kliehues modeled the MCA’s grand staircase, faces a great lawn that engages with the building. The MCA faces a fenced-in park that doesn’t appear to want anything to do with it. Perhaps it should consider a capital campaign to replace those empty banner frames with giant video displays.
