O’Hare’s Terminal 5 needs rescuing from a redesign
At the very time Chicago’s Union Station has escaped a boneheaded plan to plunk an ungainly apartment high-rise on its roof, another of the city’s most prominent transportation buildings faces its own threat.
Since it opened 25 years ago, the International Terminal at O’Hare International Airport, also known as Terminal 5, has formed a sleek yet symbolic gateway to the transportation complex, especially for drivers approaching on Interstate 190.
The terminal’s central feature, a vaulted, 800foot-long ticketing pavilion, spectacularly evokes the arc of flight as well as old airplane hangars. It also communicates that the building is a work of civic architecture, like the classically inspired Union Station, even though it is a work of modernism.
In 1994, the terminal, designed by Ralph Johnson of the Chicago office of Perkins+Will, won an honor award, the highest form of recognition, from the Chicago chapter of the American Institute of Architects.
But the city of Chicago’s planned $8.7 billion O’Hare expansion, which would be the largest revamp in the airport’s 73-year history, could inflict visual harm on this carefully calibrated work of architecture.
Fortunately, that’s going to be avoided at Union Station, for which developers will unveil new plans Tuesday after their initial one met with a critical drubbing from me, other architecture critics and scores of sidewalk superintendents.
The current outline of the O’Hare expansion, which took on higher visibility Tuesday after Mayor Rahm Emanuel said that picking an architect for the project would be a top priority before leaving office, calls for a new hotel and other structures, including a parking garage, in front of the building.
All are likely to disrupt or block the view of the terminal. They also would break up its clean-lined simplicity, turning the graceful design into something that resembles an ungainly, multilegged sea creature.
Stressed-out travelers who care only about function might well respond: “So what?”
Yet O’Hare, whose original terminals were designed by Chicago’s C.F. Murphy Associates, has a distinguished architectural past. And it deserves an equally distinguished future in which form is synthesized with function, not sacrificed for it.
In an interesting twist of fate, Perkins+Will is one of the firms that will compete for the expansion project, which calls for demolishing O’Hare’s aging Terminal 2 and replacing it with a stateof-the-art global terminal that can accommodate both domestic and international flights.
Under the plan, Terminal 5 would be renovated and expanded. Delta and other carriers would share the terminal with several international carriers.
Johnson declined to comment. Karen Pride, a spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Aviation, which runs O’Hare, insisted Friday that the renovation and expansion of Terminal 5 will not mar its architectural character.
“The changes would be compatible and respectful of the terminal’s architecture,” Pride wrote in an email that stressed the changes are not yet designed.
Her email added, “Consideration will be given to sight lines from the access roadway to the Terminal 5 campus as part of the design process for these structures.”
The department has set a Thursday deadline for firms to submit their qualifications for the expansion. Three other firms — Gensler; Skidmore, Owings & Merrill; and Jahn, whose namesake Helmut Jahn designed O’Hare’s United terminal — also plan to vie for the project.
An evaluation committee, whose members have yet to be named, will pick up to five finalists.
As for Union Station, Riverside Investment and Development will reveal new plans for the historic railroad terminal at a public meeting Tuesday. Amtrak, the station’s owner, last year selected the Chicago-based developers for a $1 billion-plus redevelopment of the station and property around it.
As I’ve reported, the new plans eliminate the seven-story apartment addition, which was designed by Chicago architects Solomon Cordwell Buenz. A hotel with 400 rooms is still proposed for the floors above the station’s passenger facilities.
The plans, which are supposed to be finalized this weekend, also show a structurally expressive office tower, with large triangular elements at its base, on the block south of the station. An outdoor plaza would be located on the block. Chicago’s Goettsch Partners designed the tower.
I’ll reserve comment on the tower plans until they’re complete. But the decision to protect the architectural integrity of Union Station — a step advocated by Emanuel and Ald. Brendan Reilly, 42nd, in whose downtown ward the station sits — is a good one, worthy of a huge sigh of relief.
Let’s hope it sets a precedent for the future of O’Hare’s International Terminal.