View Full Version : [Chicago] Millenium Park
Took a weekend trip to Chicago. WOW! As always, Chicago continues to offer world class good times. One of the planned trips while we were there was to the fairly new Millenium Park (2004). The following is my humble take with text exerpts from the web page (http://www.millenniumpark.org/):
Overview
Millennium Park is an award-winning center for art, music, architecture and landscape design. The result of a unique partnership between the City of Chicago and the philanthropic community, the 24.5-acre park features the work of world-renowned architects, planners, artists and designers.
Among Millennium Park's prominent features are the Frank Gehry-designed Jay Pritzker Pavilion , the most sophisticated outdoor concert venue of its kind in the United States; the interactive Crown Fountain by Jaume Plensa; the contemporary Lurie Garden designed by the team of Kathryn Gustafson, Piet Oudolf and Robert Israel; and Anish Kapoor's hugely popular Cloud Gate sculpture on the AT&T Plaza.
Since its opening in July 2004, Millennium Park has hosted millions of people, making it one of the most popular destinations in Chicago.
We focused on four items: The pavilion, Cloud Gate, the BP pedestrian bridge and Crown Fountain. All higlighted in the map below.
Frank Gehry, winner of the National Medal of Art, applied his signature style to this revolutionary outdoor concert venue. The Pavilion stands 120-feet high, with a billowing headdress of brushed stainless steel ribbons that frame the stage opening and connect to an overhead trellis of crisscrossing steel pipes. The trellis supports the sound system, which spans the 4,000 fixed seats and the Great Lawn, which accommodates an additional 7,000 people.
This state-of-the-art sound system, the first of its kind in the country, was designed to mimic the acoustics of an indoor concert hall by distributing enhanced sound equally over both the fixed seats and the lawn.
My take is that the structure, although there are programmed spaces behind and around the stage area, does not at all read as a building. A stage set maybe. As three dimensional as the structure is, and boy is it, it is meant to be seen from the lawn and the seats. It is one directional. A little bit of a let down. Viewing it from the lawn and seats is great. Really great! Viewing it from elsewhere, it's a thin face. It doesn't have the impact that it could as you see it from the approaching streets. I see the Gehry @ Case Western Reserve in Cleveland all of the time. The volumes of the shapes give them an impressive power. Not so much if they are thin curved faces held up in the air. It is a destination seen from afar that is hollow. I think that I have a pic from underneath the 'El train' as you approach and maybe you can see what I am trying to explain.
another as you get closer approaching from the west...
What I loved about the pavilion was seeing the details up close and exposed. There's alot of crap going on to put that panel up in the air. I can only assume that the buildings are equally difficult to construct.
Connecting Millennium Park to Daley Bicentennial Plaza, east of the park, this 925-foot-long winding bridge, Frank Gehry's first, provides incomparable views of the Chicago skyline, Grant Park and Lake Michigan. Clad in brushed stainless steel panels, the BP Bridge complements the Pritzker Pavilion in function as well as design by creating an acoustic barrier from the traffic noise below. It also has a 5% slope to allow easy access for people who are physically challenged.
My take: Nice bridge.
The details are very clean.
OH THE BEAN! BE THE BEAN!
Cloud Gate is British artist Anish Kapoor's first public outdoor work installed in the United States. The 110-ton elliptical sculpture is forged of a seamless series of highly polished stainless steel plates, which reflect the city's famous skyline and the clouds above. A 12-foot-high arch provides a "gate" to the concave chamber beneath the sculpture, inviting visitors to touch its mirror-like surface and see their image reflected back from a variety of perspectives.
Inspired by liquid mercury, the sculpture is among the largest of its kind in the world, measuring 66-feet long by 33-feet high. Cloud Gate sits upon the At&T Plaza, which was made possible by a gift from AT&T.
My take: HOLY SHIT! This thing is so kick ass! Simple, clean and mezmorizing. The pics that I have to share can't explain standing inside 'the gate'. It is immediately endless. There is only reflection and it seems to expand endleessly. Add to that the incredible skyline images that you are afforded when you stand back..it great! Everyone gets it. It is completely enthralling. There are a million sites in Chicago. This is in the top 5.
The Bean is what everyone is calling it...
You can see the gate, or portion that you walk through in this pics.
looking like a space ship that has just landed...
Designed by Spanish artist Jaume Plensa and inspired by the people of Chicago, The Crown Fountain is a major addition to the city's world-renowned public art collection.
The fountain consists of two 50-foot glass block towers at each end of a shallow reflecting pool. The towers project video images from a broad social spectrum of Chicago citizens, a reference to the traditional use of gargoyles in fountains, where faces of mythological beings were sculpted with open mouths to allow water, a symbol of life, to flow out. Plensa adapted this practice by having faces of Chicago citizens projected on LED screens and having water flow through a water outlet in the screen to give the illusion of water spouting from their mouths. The collection of faces, Plensa's tribute to Chicagoans, was taken from a cross-section of 1,000 residents.
The fountain, which anchors the southwest corner of Millennium Park at Michigan Avenue and Monroe Streets, is a favorite of both children and families. The water is on from mid-spring through mid-fall each year (weather permitting,) while the images remain on year-round.
My take:
Any urban planners out there? This is the most interactive public space that I have ever seen! People that are in the water, sitting and watching, or driving by are engaged. I've never seen so many folks just having a great time. There is alot of whimsy is this piece. The sound of the water makes it natural somehow. The shape and the images (movies really) that are projected onto the towers make it personal and human. The close ups of the people are very interesting. The technology is sophisticated.
Then, the images, every last one of them, pucker their lips, and a water spout comes out of thier mouths. The place goes crazy! Kids scream with delight and people all around grin like they are dying to be children.
The movies go in cycles. Water runs down 3 sides of the towers constantly. The close ups of the faces just blink and lick thier lips, then they pucker and the spouting of the water. Finally, the image dissappears and a huge volume of water pours over the top and down all sides. A new image is projected and the cycle restarts.
peolple living it up on a summer day...
The purity of the tower is striking.
OK. That's about all I got. Chicago's Millenium Park, in short, is a must. It is a world class public space. If someone can do the google thing for me, that would be great.
Getting there: Go to chicago and ask anyone! It is on Michigan Ave, right downtown, just south of the river on the east side of the street.
I am trying to post my first kmz file...crossing fingers now.
Did I post this is the wrong place? Maybe the travel section would have been better, seeing that I traveled to get there, took some pics, and didn't post any information about the details of photography. Sorry.
Did I post this is the wrong place? Maybe the travel section would have been better, seeing that I traveled to get there, took some pics, and didn't post any information about the details of photography. Sorry.
Moved. Nice thread!:rock on:
Did I post this is the wrong place? Maybe the travel section would have been better, seeing that I traveled to get there, took some pics, and didn't post any information about the details of photography. Sorry.
slap slap :) I saw you last night posting this but you were in the middle of doing it... so I figured we would move it once you finished with the initial posting... I have been wanting to get up to Chi-town but haven't yet... I have heard this park is pretty cool... thanks for sharing it...hopefully I can head that way sometime soon...
msalvarez
14-08-2006, 17:54
slap slap :) I saw you last night posting this but you were in the middle of doing it... so I figured we would move it once you finished with the initial posting... I have been wanting to get up to Chi-town but haven't yet... I have heard this park is pretty cool... thanks for sharing it...hopefully I can head that way sometime soon...
tsk tsk tsk!:D
My wife and I were there for only the weekend. We used to go a couple times a year (pre-kids). We had to pick a couple key items to see, because of time constraints, and this made the list. We were really glad that we did.
I noticed that you checked it out last night, too. I was posting so fast, I thought that I was blocking peeps from getting in. I was pretty excited about sharing this trip with PPB2. My wife spent a few minutes teasing me about it. Glad that you like it.
Thanks for moving it, digdoi. My bad.
Sounds like a very cool place... and here is a a image from GE that shows you park area and its immediate context... how many pics did you actually take while there? I would probably have to buy another 2 gig sd card if I went... looks like there is just some amazing views and things to capture there...
Any trip to a metropolis can get expensive, but the time was right. Flights were $49 (US) each way, and the hotel, which was amazing and 1 block from the Hancock building (see my new and improved avatar) was only $149 (US) a night. Giddyup! So, we went. Kids at the grandparents + a box of condoms + and a digital camera = priceless good times and architectural bliss.
I should use my 'inside voice' sometimes, when I start thinking about condoms. Sorry. See last inappropriate post.
Thanks for the post - great pics and insight.
I've loved Chicago since the first time I visited a 'big city' in the sixth grade. It has all the vibrancy of a big city, but the people just seem more real and the pace slower to me than New York, probably because I am from the midwest, it has more familiarity to me.
Haven't made it to the millenium park yet, though.
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