Navy Pier Pierscape
Team X | Xavier Vendrell Studio
The project proposed by Team X celebrates the physicality and elemental nature of Navy Pier as a Pier: of the water not of the soil: built on pilings not landfill: lively energetic place pulsating over Lake Michigan: muscular pierscape punctuated by an array of engaging hospitable places-cum-neighborhoods.
History is the present
There is no other city in the world like Chicago, city of poets and pragmatists, realists and dreamers. Ethnic kaleidoscope of new and generational immigrants, citizens all. Slick urbane metropolis and "raw slangy town."1 Sentimental and cynical in equal measure. Where untempered optimism, moxie and sheer force of will makes the impossible possible. "For always our villains have hearts of gold and all our heroes are slightly tainted."2
Were Navy Pier a poem: a ballad: an idyll: a sonnet: an ode: a slam: it would be composed of water: waves: wind: punctuated with sunlight: moonlight: starlight: citylight: poem for all seasons: quintessentially Chicago: resonant with diurnal and nocturnal rhythms of a Midwestern latitude.
Endnotes_
1. Albert Halper, "Young Man Remembering Chicago," ON THE SHORE, 1934.
2. Nelson Algren, CITY ON THE MAKE, 1951.
Meghan FerrillTeam X | Xavier Vendrell Studio
The project proposed by Team X celebrates the physicality and elemental nature of Navy Pier as a Pier: of the water not of the soil: built on pilings not landfill: lively energetic place pulsating over Lake Michigan: muscular pierscape punctuated by an array of engaging hospitable places-cum-neighborhoods.
History is the present
There is no other city in the world like Chicago, city of poets and pragmatists, realists and dreamers. Ethnic kaleidoscope of new and generational immigrants, citizens all. Slick urbane metropolis and "raw slangy town."1 Sentimental and cynical in equal measure. Where untempered optimism, moxie and sheer force of will makes the impossible possible. "For always our villains have hearts of gold and all our heroes are slightly tainted."2
Were Navy Pier a poem: a ballad: an idyll: a sonnet: an ode: a slam: it would be composed of water: waves: wind: punctuated with sunlight: moonlight: starlight: citylight: poem for all seasons: quintessentially Chicago: resonant with diurnal and nocturnal rhythms of a Midwestern latitude.
Endnotes_
1. Albert Halper, "Young Man Remembering Chicago," ON THE SHORE, 1934.
2. Nelson Algren, CITY ON THE MAKE, 1951.