18. September 2017
All photographs by John Hill/World-Architects
Architect and urbanist Charles Waldheim, with the Harvard GSD Office for Urbanization and Siena Scarff Design, took the Chicago Architecture Biennial theme Make New History to heart and developed alternative scenarios for some iconic Chicago buildings.
The number of famous buildings – skyscrapers and otherwise – within Chicago is staggering: John Hancock Center, Willis Tower, Marina City, the James R. Thompson Center, and 860-880 Lake Shore Drive, to name just a handful. How these buildings compare to their idealized solar-oriented forms is the purpose of Heliomorphic Chicago, which is comprised primarily of a grid of paired buildings spread across the floor of the Chicago Cultural Center’s Yates Hall. It is fun to walk about the models, peering down on the stretched and torqued versions of classic buildings that in many cases aren’t all that different from their originals.
A reimagined Loop with buildings angled for solar orientation is mounted to a partition and greets visitors entering the west end of Yates Hall.
