Blair Kamin looks ahead to the most newsworthy events in 2020.
Architecture is the inescapable art, touching the super-rich, the struggling poor and everyone in between. The coming year will underscore the field’s broad impact as major buildings, urban plans and historic preservation battles take shape.
Here’s a look at what’s coming up:
Make way for a new skyline standout: The Jeanne Gang-designed Vista Tower, which will be Chicago’s third-tallest building and the world’s tallest building designed by a woman, will officially take its place on Chicago’s vaunted skyline.
Flaunting a striking curvilinear silhouette and a remarkably thin top made possible by hidden engineering features, Vista consists of three interconnected tiers of varying heights at 363 E. Upper Wacker Drive.
The 1,191-foot hotel and condominium tower is expected to welcome its first group of condo owners in the third quarter, according to the project’s Web site.
A new base for Willis Tower: Ever since Willis Tower opened in 1974 as the Sears Tower, its base has been a modernist fortress, seemingly designed to repel passersby.
That will change in the third quarter with the debut of Catalog, a 300,000square-foot emporium that will add five levels of shops, eateries and event spaces to the landmark 1,451-foot tower, which was once the world’s tallest building.
Seattle-based SkB Architects and the Chicago office of the global firm Gensler are the designers for Catalog, whose name alludes to the legendary Sears, Roebuck and Co. catalog. Portions of the revamp, like a new Shake Shack at 316 W. Jackson Blvd., already are open. The $500 millionplus project is scheduled to be complete sometime in the third quarter.
Chicago takes Manhattan: Speaking of supertall skyscrapers, Chicago architects Adrian Smith and Gordon Gill have designed a new one for Manhattan’s “Billionaire’s Row” — the Central Park Tower, whose roof height (1,550 feet) gives it the wonky distinction of having the Western Hemisphere’s tallest roof.
Located on West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park, the ultra-thin, ultra-pricey residential tower rises above a Nordstrom department store at its base. A dramatic cantilever maximizes views of Central Park. Completion is anticipated for fall 2020, according to a spokeswoman for the architects.
A Thompson Center sale looms: Expect a major historic preservation battle to break out when state officials ask developers to submit plans to redevelop the James R. Thompson Center, the controversial, Helmut Jahn-designed state office building in the heart of the Loop.
Preservationists want to save the controversial postmodern landmark, which opened in 1985. They’ve floated a Jahn plan that would maximize the site’s zoning and revenue potential by attaching a hotel and residential tower to the center. State officials, who want to sell the building to bring in much-needed dollars, have indicated no preference for whether the new owner preserves or tears down the 1.2 millionsquare-foot structure.
The request for development proposals is expected to go out next summer, and the state wants to be under contract with a buyer by the end of 2020.
The Obama Center’s endless slog: Will they ever break ground for the
Obama Presidential Center?
When May rolls around, it will be three years since New York architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien unveiled their initial design. Since then, the project has been mired in controversy over everything from its location in Jackson Park to what benefits it will (or won’t) deliver to the surrounding area.
A federal review of the project, required because Jackson Park is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is expected to grind on through the first half of 2020. A federal decision on the project’s environmental impact should come by summer, according to the city of Chicago’s latest timetable.
New plans for the South and West sides: Under the leadership of Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s planning commissioner, Maurice Cox, the city will press ahead with its $750 million “Invest South/West” initiative to revitalize 10 battered business districts on the South and West sides.
Following a December kickoff for three South Side areas (Englewood, Auburn Gresham and New City), city officials will hold more community meetings for three West Side areas Jan. 18 (Humboldt Park, Austin and North Lawndale). More meetings will follow Jan. 25 (Quad Communities, South Shore and South Chicago) and Jan. 31 (Roseland).
In addition, the city announced last year that it would hire seven urban planners, bringing its total number of planners to more than 30 — the highest count in recent history, according to Curbed Chicago.
The move is part of Cox’s push to make planning proactive rather than reactive, especially in areas of Chicago where a lack of investment by developers often lead to a lack of attention from City Hall.
Can this Wright cottage be saved? The fate of an endangered Frank Lloyd Wright-designed cottage in Glencoe could be determined soon.
Village officials in the north suburb have been in talks with the local historical society and other parties about moving the structure, a one-story frame house built in 1913 for developer Sherman Booth, to a nearby park in Glencoe. But it’s unclear who would pay for the move, which is likely to cost tens of thousands of dollars.
Last spring, new owners filed for a permit to tear down the cottage, which sits west of Sheridan Road at 239 Franklin Road. Yet no teardown can happen until the village approves plans for a new home at the site. If a demolition were to occur, it would be the first Wright home to be torn down since the 2004 razing of a modest beach house in Grand Beach, Michigan.
The Farnsworth House, once more: Can there possibly be anything new to say about Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s much-celebrated Farnsworth House and the fraught, ultimately antagonistic, relationship between the architect and his client, Chicago nephrologist Edith Farnsworth?
We’ll know come March 17 with the publication of “Broken Glass: Mies van der Rohe, Edith Farnsworth, and the Fight Over a Modernist Masterpiece.” Publicity for the book, a Random House hardcover, promises it will shed new light on the iconic mid-20th century design and the “previously overlooked” story of its protagonists. The author, Alex Beam, is a Boston Globe columnist.