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Here's what you see when you walk through the front doors into the Thompson Center. As I mentioned, I used to come here a lot, but I don't think I've been since before the start of the Pandemic. It used to be open to the public, and there was a food court on the basement level -- that railing up ahead is a big circle looking down on it -- but the state sold the building sometime in the last couple of years, and it's been closed off. It was recently opened for a limited time by a local art group for art displays, so Robin and I swung by to take one final look at the space.
I find it both awesome and horrifying.
Don't think of the building as that big blob you see from the outside. Most of that blob is the glass enclosing a massive atrium. The part of the building that's actually a building is just a narrow horseshoe running along the block's west and north sides and part of the east. Which, if you think in terms of use-of-space, means that most of the building isn't building, and is kind of useless. I mean, it's great to have an enclosed town square where people can gather in great numbers regardless of the weather -- I personally used it exactly that way for years -- but there are big drawbacks for that if you actually want people to work here.
For one, the design creates a huge bubble of air enclosed by glass manufactured well before the glass industry had taken any steps toward energy efficiency. The glass, which is all behind me, was angled toward the south, so it caught all the sun's heat in the summer. And you might think that would be great in a Chicago January, but in winter the sun rarely rises above the neighboring buildings. The space was expensive to cool and expensive to heat, and though the state spent a lot of money attempting both, it never really managed either.
Also, many of the office spaces were open to the atrium, which was meant as a statement from architect Helmut Jahn about government transparency. The effect of Jahn's statement was a bunch of people working in half a room without a wall. Many of the actual offices were just open-air cube farms looking down on a food court patronized by thousands, and that makes for a noisy place to work.
The ultimate result of all this was that about a decade ago, the state started looking at different options for unloading the place and moving on. This led to lots of controversy -- there are people who absolutely love this building, and Helmut Jahn had a lot of local architecture groupies -- but the deed was done in early 2022. The state of Illinois sold the building to Google, which is going to tear much of the thing down and transform it into a more usable headquarters. These weekend openings for this little art show was the last chance anybody who knew this place would have to see it.
Jill Downen and studio assistant Grace Hong walk down the steps and stretch their arms to check the height of their reach against the wall. The final sculpture will be just out of reach for people walking up and down the stairs.
man könnte meinen man schaut durch ein riesiges fenster.
die sichtbare fassade ist vom altbau, an der neue hörsaaltrakt angegliedert ist
Shadyside Presbyterian Church. Wooden beams will make this space recall the coffered ceiling in the lantern in the sanctuary. The apse makes this an interesting space - and surely added to the design challenge.