A recent NY Times article explores and critiques that city’s current “boomlet” of high-flying residential buildings designed by big-name architects. Ouroussoff is ambivalent about the designs of the “preening, sometimes beautiful, sometimes obstrusive towers,” and much of what he writes, I think, could and should also apply to Chicago:

“But the city has also been starving for innovative architecture. And to my mind the greatest residential projects of the last decade have managed to balance aesthetic freedom with a nuanced understanding of their surroundings. Rather than mimic period styles, such buildings are a physical expression of the needs and demands of the environments they inhabit.”

And the kicker, which nicely sums up my reaction to many of Chicago’s brand-new condos (I like to look at them, even when I don’t actually like them):

“We all like to look at pretty baubles, even if they tend to be hollow. But a generation from now we may look back at these condo buildings as our generation’s chief contribution to the city’s history: gorgeous tokens of a rampantly narcissistic age”

Few of Chicago’s new condos are gorgeous, but many are so aggressively novel in design that it’s hard to not think of the word “narcissism.”

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