Revisiting The Skyscraper: Jeanne Gang's Aqua Tower

It’s difficult to differentiate between the hundreds of almost identical-looking skyscrapers dotting along Chicago’s beautiful skyline. While varying in height, the majority of the skyscrapers are black, gray, white, rectangular, and often quite indistinguishable from their neighboring structures. Now, enter Jeanne Gang: a successful yet accessible award-winning architect who set her sights on reinventing what architecture can do for the tiring urban landscape. Her first-ever skyscraper is Aqua, a mixed-use residential high-rise on 200 north Columbus Drive, which was completed in 2009. Aqua manages to discreetly breathe in new life to Chicago’s growingly stale condominium scene, standing silently like a nerdy quiet high school girl among a hoard of loud and athletic jocks.

Gang, an Illinois native, received her bachelors in architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and continued her education at Harvard University, where she graduated with distinction. She went on to work with famed architect Rem Koolhass in the Netherlands before founding her own Chicago-based firm, Studio Gang, in 1997. Within its fourteen-year life span, the firm has won countless awards and captured global audiences and continues to do so. Their work is even on display in several museums, national as well as international. In the world of contemporary architecture, where standard and uniform designs are abundant, Studio Gang pushes their designs to the limit without dramatically going over the edge.

Jeanne Gang already had several Chicago ventures under her belt before she began to conceptualize Aqua like the Brickweave House, a media production center for Columbia College, a boardwalk at Lincoln Park Zoo and many others. She is no stranger to the history and familiar forms that have dominated Chicago since the turn of the twentieth century. It should not be a surprise, then, that developer Jim Lowenberg selected her when he had something new in mind for the area in between Millennium Park and Lake Shore Drive. Having received that opportunity, Gang certainly took this project to new heights—Aqua is now the tallest building in the world designed by a woman at 859 feet.

When viewed at eye level, Aqua is not as impressive as one is led to believe from all the publicity and praise. It blends in with its surroundings and seems quite like any other ordinary high-rise. Its only distinctive feature is a break from the linear forms that typically allow audiences to distinguish between the different floors of the building. The balconies seem broken up by ambiguous organic shapes that look as if they are slowly trickling down the sides of the structure.

Aqua’s eloquence can only be experienced when looking directly up at it. Viewers are instantly drawn toward the building’s façade, filled with a beautiful arrangement of undulating balconies that rhythmically surround the rectangular glass building, a reflection of nearby Lake Michigan. Studio Gang’s website refers to it as “a vertical topography shaped by the forces of the city.” The now famous balconies have been altered and stretched by Gang so that people can get the most of their view of the city around them as well as underneath them.

She stays true to her design philosophy—function should not be sacrificed for a new innovative architecture. In fact, as interesting as the wavy features are, they merely mask typical construction of a skyscraper. Yet the subtlety of the design and how Gang slightly tweaked an unexciting feature of a high-rise and completely reimagined in is astounding.

The building has been designed for residential use, but now a Radisson Blu hotel is slated to open in 2012. With an endless number of amenities including a rooftop garden, exercise areas, and views to die for, Aqua makes the most of its location and sustainable design. Although long famous before Aqua’s construction, this is certainly Gang’s breakthrough moment. After recently being awarded a MacArther Genius Grant, Gang is a rising star who is not afraid of using architecture’s limits to create unlimited possibilities. 

Revisiting the Mona Lisa

What's so damn great about the Mona Lisa?

Painted between 1503 and 1506 in Florence, Italy, the Mona Lisa is arguably the most famous painting in the world, as well as an instantly recognizable icon of present-day visual culture. But of all of Leonardo da Vinci's great works (and there are many), why is it the Mona Lisa? Afterall, it's just another portrait commissioned by a wealthy patron in the early 16th century. Lisa Gherardini Giacondo is seated in the center, hands delicately folded, with an ambiguous expression that slightly borders on a sly smile. She is situated in some kind of natural, outdoor environment as vague as her emotion.

How boring.

Yet for some reason, six million people insist on flocking to the Louvre Museum in Paris each year just to see her, where it is a part of its permanent collection. Even when they finally get to the room where the piece is hung, they can forget about getting close. Hoards of people in small bunches stand around it, fighting anybody who interferes with their ability to take their soon-to-be Facebook picture next to it. Most give up easily and accept the fact that they got a fifteen second glimpse and move on. But what it really comes down to is the experience--not the fact that you saw the Mona Lisa, but the fact that the Mona Lisa saw you.

Why not visit the other portrait galleries where other bored rich wives are on display? John Singleton Copley's 1771 painting of Mrs. Thomas Gage is also a crowd pleaser; why not stand in line for that? Sure, da Vinci used a new technique of blending light and shadow in the Mona Lisa but other artists and other works of art exhibit new approaches all the time. The Mona Lisa's popularity just got the best of her.

Bragging to friends about seeing the Mona Lisa can only get you so many cool points. Until the vast majority of the world's population beings to appreciate the painting for what it actually is instead of treating it otherwise, be prepared for disappointment.

Black Dogs by Jason Buhrmester

Money, sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll. These four things are, of course, the best things in life. And this book has got them all.

Set in suburban Maryland in the 1970s, Jason Buhrmester’s Black Dogs: The Possibly True Story of Classic Rock’s Greatest Robbery follows a group of young men as they plan their get rich quick schemes with oftentimes failing results. Told with wit, this short novel outlines Buhrmester’s idea of the events that may have led up to the true yet still unsolved mystery of who and how someone stole $200,000 from Led Zeppelin.

The plot unfolds through the eyes of the main character, Patrick. Patrick seems to be the only upstanding citizen with a conscience in his deadbeat town who actually had the means to get out of it and start a new life in New York City. However, he quickly goes back to his old ways moments upon his arrival thanks to his neighborhood high school friends who still rely on breaking the law to make a living. Alex, the other main character, was just released from prison after getting caught during a heist in which Patrick was able to get away. The two reunite at Alex’s welcome home party, along with their other friends Keith, Frenchy, and Danny, who, according to Buhrmester, are “guys who got the ‘burn out’ part down but forgot the ‘fade away.’”

Headed by Patrick, they concoct an ingenious plan to rob Led Zeppelin of the thousands of dollars that they reportedly get in cash after playing each show. Little do they know, it is going to require much more work than one night of mischief to actually succeed in robbing a legendary rock band. The group encounters a series of obstacles along the way, realizing that they need to rip off more people and businesses than ever in order to get remotely close to the big money. Just throw in some Black Sabbath, drinks, a holier-than-thou religious killer biker gang led by the gruesome Backwoods Billy, and the boys are officially in for the misadventure of their lives.

In real life, nobody sympathizes with criminals. Criminals are considered to be a bunch of bad apples who should be kept away. Now, either readers are just too used to the fact that their protagonists are always the good guys, or Buhrmester can fool anybody into feeling sorry for anyone. Although the characters’ incriminating pasts are established at the very beginning, audiences will grow to love--and even empathize with them--regardless of how many times they have gone to jail or how many people they’ve scammed. The bond between the group grows stronger as they continue caring for each other and learn how to place absolute trust in another as each distraction complicates achieving their main goal. One is instantly drawn into the distinct and vivid personalities of the individual and can find a part of themselves in that person, whether it’s a desirable quality or not.

Buhrmester also has a talent for crafting every scenario down to the very last detail so well that readers will find themselves racing next to the crew down the hallways of the Drake Hotel, hearts pounding and scrambling to find the money, all while trying not to get caught. His choice of language is so accurate and precise that if this book were to be adapted into a movie, a screenplay would be completely unnecessary. Buhrmester takes his time carefully laying out the groundwork so that every character, place, and object is well defined and has a purpose in the overarching story. The real action doesn’t even pick up until more than halfway through the narrative (but it’s worth the wait).

This work of fiction is a fun and quick read for anyone in the mood for some lighthearted entertainment. Although the book’s storytelling and plot devices are juvenile in nature, it surpasses the predictable category of young adult fiction. Adults will recall their smoke hazed teenage years, when the only thing that really mattered was the music and where the next party was going to be. Black Dogs captures the essence of adolescent culture in the 70s so that this generation’s youth is able to read it and appreciate it. Let's just hope they realize it's a fiction novel and they don't get any ideas.

Snowing--I Could Do Whatever I Wanted If I Wanted

Stream the album here

Add Snowing to the list of hundreds of contemporary bands that directly and poorly emulate their sound from mid-90s Midwest emo bands. It is painstakingly obvious that the Pennsylvanian foursome listened to too much Cap’n Jazz in high school and decided to hop on the current emo revival bandwagon, minus the stereotypical notion that one has to be perpetually sad. Music style aside, Snowing’s first full-length album I Could Do Whatever I Wanted If I Wanted is a 29.1 minute long collection of poorly curated and constructed songs.

Released this past year as a follow-up to their widely circulated five-track demo/EP, Fuck Your Emotional Bullshit, this latest release has proved to be classic Snowing—boring and repetitive. Every single song sounds exactly the same with no particular unique parts that help listeners make distinctions between them other than a line or two of occasional vocal chants. It is impossible to tell whether or not a song has completely ended because the next track is its exact equivalent; this poor excuse for a band may as well have released an album with eleven duplicate tracks of one song. Because of this, the album lacks the feel of being a whole entity and lyrically ends up sounding like an assorted mix tape compilation consisting of someone crying about his most recent break-up, being caught up in an unfortunate situation and, strangely enough, decided that the act of reading House of Leaves was important enough to warrant its own song.

Besides lacking any emotional depth, Snowing is also musically forgettable. The vocalist’s jagged high-decibel wailing may be piercing and striking at first, but it gradually blends in with messy versions of the characteristic and overused mathy guitar work reminiscent of a string of 8-bit video game music (in the same key, nonetheless). Imagine hearing your fifteen-year-old son’s first ever punk band playing a show in your suburban garage—ten times faster while drunk—and you have the entirety of I Could Do Whatever I Wanted If I Wanted. By the end of each song, the constant whining becomes inaudible as the violent crash of so-calling “singing,” screaming, and instrumentation collide together like a predicted earthquake. It may sound the exact opposite of dull, but after hearing identical noises for precisely 29.1 minutes, it can get old.

Fans of Cap’n Jazz, Algernon Cadwallader, Grown Ups and the like should give this album a quick listen if only just to become familiar with this band who has made a small but well-known name for themselves in today’s emo scene. What they will discover is a group of guys whose only goal seems to be playing in a band “just because” and an eleven-song album dedicated entirely to unskilled guitar playing and complaining. Snowing plays songs for the sake of playing songs, and to them, there really is nothing more. 

Evenings--North Dorm EP

Stream the EP Here

Charlottesville, Virginia native Nathan Broaddus, performing under the moniker “Evenings,” is one of the many trying to pursue projects which dabble with the possibilities of electronic music. Where he succeeds is where others try and fall short. His “North Dorm” EP, although not a full-length album, exhibits Broaddus’ full musical prowess and his strong desire to creatively advance ambient and electronic music.

Unexpected heavier beats (which have an almost hip-hop quality to them) accompanied with supple tones and whispered vocal samples mixed in with samples of sounds found in nature distinguish his music from other run-of-the-mill ambient acts whose sound gets soft, repetitive, and boring—fast. Most ambient music serves as a mood piece; mere sounds to fill up the space between walls or the air next to your ears. Rather than utilizing sounds that will eventually tire and stagnate, Broaddus brings simple beats to life by carefully paying attention to each quality and arranging them in such a perfect manner that one cannot get tired of hearing them. He also avoids falling into the trap of producing overly digitized sounds and maintains an earthy ambience throughout the whole EP.

The first track, “Still Young” lets listeners know immediately that they are listening to something new and unconventional, as their ears are met with strong yet not overpowering drum beats paired together with electronic beats and the eventual “chorus” of repetitive guitar strumming. “Babe” and “Favorite Maze” are the more mellow tracks which echo the style of the first, followed by my personal favorite “Friend [Lover].” “Goodbye Forever” is an appropriate way to the end the album, which eventually fades away and ends with a chorus of crickets.

Relaxing yet stimulating, the best time to listen to Evenings is, in fact, evenings. Take a listen after a long day of work or school; you will be lulled either into a deep meditation or be provided with a soundtrack for productivity.