Rahm Emanuel seems determined to see
George Lucas’ museum of the visual arts – what one Hyde Parker more accurately
describes as “The George Lucas Museum of
Perpetual Adolescence” – built on the Chicago lakefront. Chicago is full of
go-getters, and VIATechnik, a firm that offers technical
services to architects, sponsored ”an unofficial contest to design an appropriate building to house it.
Such contests are a chance for young architects and designers to attract
attention if not commissions. The results of this one were announced recently and reported by the essential Lynn Becker on
his Architecture
Chicago Plus blog. The winner was a recent IIT School of Architecture grad named Mircea Eni. Writes Becker:
Eni’s proposal circumvents the growing controversy
over placing the museum on a lakefront site by lifting up the entire building
above the landscape. According to Jury member Mike Ellch of Related
Midwest, as the site is on “a museum campus meant to be enjoyed by everybody”
the winning design “has a park that is accessible to everyone, and this is very
important to this design, that’s why we liked it.”
Well, George will never go for it.
He’s an old-fashioned guy. I’m inclined to agree with James
Pallister of Architects Journal, who in 2009 wrote
Star-Wars creator and amateur architect George
Lucas has been accused of rather too closely following the designs of media magnate William Randolph
Hearst’s ‘Xanadu’ Castle. He should have looked closer to home for inspiration:
his Star Wars films are full of wonderful
architecture.
Architects’ Journal selected what it regarded as the top ten Star Wars buildings, several of
which have “inspired” actual structures. One not cited by the magazine was Aldera, the capital city of Alderaan, which, as it happens, stood beside (or rather inside) a lake.
This article appears in Jul 3-9, 2014.
