Overthinking Architecture

"Up and down, Up and down,  I will lead then up and down. I am feared in field and town. Goblin, lead them up and down." -- Puck, in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act III The up and down elements of a structure are in theory vertical, but Chicago in 2021  oblique structural elements are becoming visible for everyone to see. (It seems to be happening worldwide.) Maybe oblique members have become newly available in structural analysis software. Are oblique elements a new fashion statement? Are they attempts at humanizing engineering or dehumanizing architecture?  I don't know, but I sure see a lot of them lately. The use of angled beams in structures has been around more than a century, but such members were always hidden. (Flying buttresses may be related to cross-bracing, and once flying buttresses were subjects of  disdain.) Cross-bracing was highly visible in San Francisco's Maritime Plaza (originally Alcoa) of 1964 and in Chicago's 875 Michig...

I walk around Chicago looking at the built environment, and I write about what I see: why are the structures the way they are, what are common features of the structures I see, what materials are they made of, the history of humman occupation of Chicago, how the world we live in now is different from the world in which the structure was designed, and so forth.  While I am overwhelingly Chicago-centric, I try to be aware of buildings elsewhere in the world. Sometimes I read about some structure out in the wider world that reminds me of something around here.  I've seen several instances of structures that make me say "I've seen that before." I'll dedicate a blog post to each instance. The first pairings reflect (1) a plan based on repeated octagons, (2) the building elevated above street level by circular pilotis, and (3) "brutalist" massing: simple geometric shapes frequently repeated, sometimes with variations that emphasize the repetition. The Johnston...