Lynn Becker’s “Stop the Blandness!” (January 17) raises, seemingly half inadvertently, fundamental questions with respect to both the causes and the possible solutions of Chicago’s increasing glut of nondescript blob architecture. “Would anybody be moving back to the city if the only view out their window were of buildings like their own? No–people come back to be able to look out their window and see that defining skyline.” The key variables here are (1) what people is he talking about? (2) how much knowledge and interest do they have in architecture? (3) what demands are they prepared to make in service of their knowledge and interest? and (4) what can be done to broaden the class of interested stakeholders, their knowledge and interest, and their potential for enlightened architectural activism?
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Becker’s model sets up the Pritzkers and other wealthy and enlightened patrons as latter-day Medicis to stimulate the development of at least a handful of great buildings. The danger of a model so contingent on the continued upwelling of refined taste and amour de soi in the moneyed class is that circumstances may reduce it to little more than a cargo cult. The obvious alternative, of course, would look to the many rather than the few. But how many Chicago residents–even those wealthy enough to move “back” into pricey downtown condos, whom one suspects have on average higher levels of education and more access to coffee-table books and seminars–know or care that much about architectural specifics? Could it be that the majority of this group, although they surely have some sense of the gestalt of the skyline, are more interested in convenience or prestige and couldn’t name more than a handful of Chicago’s great buildings, much less articulate any detailed information about their social or technological history? And do we suppose that hordes of twentysomethings migrate to Lakeview because of their affinity for the aesthetics of the balloon frame? What about the thousands upon thousands of residents who don’t have the luxury of choosing where they live at all?
Andrew S. Mine
