Honorable Mention
2014 Skyscraper Competition
John Houser, Parke
MacDowell
United States
This project side-steps the
common stylistic tendencies of computation-driven architecture, synthesizing
our expanding digital toolset with the language of Classicism. At a time when
these digital tools facilitate the generation of novel and varied architecture
form, we embrace nostalgia and acknowledge the inherent, if indefinite,
significance of the Classical elements, genera, and their organization, taxis.
Classicism provides an established register against which architecture might be
evaluated and understood. Thus, amid a preponderance of indeterminate
architectural form, a new Mannerist Project emerges, augmenting and modifying
the Classical kit-of-parts and rule set with computational methodologies.
Located at the site of the
abandoned Chicago Spire, this project is motivated by the city’s history of
tower-building and place-making. While the neoclassical style of the 1893
World’s Fair was not without detractors, none can deny the potency of its
image. Its ordered civic grandeur inspired classically-styled architecture and
city planning throughout the nation, legitimizing a rapidly evolving society
via analogy to valorized ancient regimes.
This building understands
classical form as an architectural means of codifying social structure. The
parallels are overt: a configuration of discrete parts, governed by
over-arching rules of proportion and order. With this in mind, the tower’s deep
classical facade can be evaluated with respect to its deviation from the norms
of the classical canon. Here, the genera are represented faithfully, the Doric,
Giant Ionic, and Colossal Corinthian Orders rendered true to historic norms,
but their organization is heretical. Hierarchy has been reconfigured in this
thickened envelope of cascading classical thresholds. The primacy of greater
Orders over lesser can no longer be taken for granted, sequence is fractured
across multiple elevations, rhythm and symmetry emerge, then disappear. As
such, the building reflects contemporary social structures, where diffuse and
malleable networks have supplanted rigid hierarchical systems.