apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I like the design of Lake Point Tower, I just hate it's location. Montgomery Ward was right to try to keep all the buildings on the other side of LSD.

Thompson Center
Marina City (just not a fan!)
River City (ditto)

The former Apparel Mart; which is now the Sun Times building. It is ugly, but nowhere near as ugly as it once was. There used to be no windows on the lower two thirds of the building, just a giant flat concrete wall.

Virtually all of the high-rise residential towers from the last 25 years, which were plopped on top of giant parking structures like a podium, with almost no ground floor retail. Just blank walls to the sidewalk and driveways for their cars. These are found mostly in River North. Especially; the ones from a few years ago; where they had the gall to put “townhouses” on top of the garages. (Like that would make them nicer?)

The hideous apartment building on the NW corner of Dearborn and Lake. It gives POMO a really bad name.

The telephone equipment building on Madison and Canal.

The blue building plopped on top of the vintage base SW corner of LaSalle and Madison.

I could go on and on… But you get the idea.

How could I have forgotten the Thompson Center? Blech. And I also forgot the ruined Soldier Field.

One Inferior Place. Oops, is that supposed to be One Superior Place? Not by a longshot. Instead, a 502-foot-tall sun-stealing monolith, designed in all banality by Loewenberg & Associates for the block bounded by Superior, Huron, State, and Dearborn.

Godzilla called. He wants his gravestone back.

The hideous block of apartment buildings in Cathedral Square near the holy name cathedral. Around Chicago Ave, Huron and Erie (west of Michigan Avenue. All generic creations and a sad attempt at "contemporary" architecture. The worst is the building where Roy's restaurant/blockbusters is. I remembered reading somewhere that somebody referred to it as the modern Cabrini Green. Yuck!

Cyril, that building with Roy's and Blockbuster is none other than One Superior Place. You should read Blair Kamin's opinion of the building in "Why Architecture Matters". He's not a fan, either.

Mid-Continental Plaza! It looms over Michgan avenue like a tombstone, filling a whole block with dreary verticality. I hate it. I've always hated it.

The recent conversion drawings for the building do offer some possible improvement; I wish they'd just take it down and build two new ones.

Thompson Center. i hurts my eyes just to look at it!

I like Mid-Continental Plaza... I am worried the condo conversion is going to screw it up.

i really hate the smurfit-stone building.

i know it's had a few great movie cameos. they were all entertaining.

people argue that it's a very distinctive part of the chicago skyline, but i feel that it may be a bit too distinctive. from many angles it just sticks out like a sore thumb. especially at night. tacky.

I want to cry every time I see the "new" Soldier Field. That stupid spaceship looks so hideous atop Soldier Field. That place used to be so distinctive and such a great part of Chicago. Now it just looks like the aliens invaded...

How about ANY building by Loewenberg & Associates? He's responsible for all of those hideous, generic, sand-colored high-rises in River North...

While I agree that the Thompson Center is generally ugly, it should be noted that those tomato-colored window panels were originally supposed to be white per Helmut Jahn's design. I can't remember whether economics played into the final decision (most likely), but blue and white would have completely changed the dynamic of the structure (in a good way), don'tcha think?