![]() ![]() So, when my early buildings started expressing structure and colour, they immediately attracted attention. Then everyone was still working within a dogmatic Miesean ‘less is more’ mode. Murphy Associates, the predecessor of Murphy/Jahn, and designing my first independent buildings from the mid-1970s. HJ: Well, these ideas go back to the times right after Mies, shortly after I just started working at C.F. Some critics call you a ‘romantic modernist’ and refer to your architecture as ‘romantic high-tech.’ And you have said the following: ‘We do not construct decoration, we decorate construction.’ How would you define the intention of your architecture? VB: I think there are architects who will always produce good buildings no matter what the circumstances may be. There are so many simplistic one-liner buildings… There is no emotion, no imagination, no invention. Building now is all about profit-making everything is so calculated. Now it is all about business and they don’t even start before returning their investment. I used to know developers who loved going to a construction site and putting their boots in the mud. Developers who would love to do buildings are no longer around. Vladimir Belogolovsky: Wasn’t it always the case? Helmut Jahn: …There is so much banality that’s being built these days… Not only do you have to have fewer things but with the things you have left you have to do more.’ As Jahn himself says, ‘.anything you don’t need is a benefit. Jahn’s architecture shook and modernised a number of global cities, and with time and experience, what began as a rebellion against Mies’s ‘less is more’ modus operandi matured into nuanced, measured, though unquestionably gutsy, production of towers, airports, convention centres, headquarters, and, most importantly, public spaces. His 1985 quadrant-in-plan Thompson Center reinvented a mundane government typology into a soaring public place, with its curved coloured glass facade decisively welcoming a postmodernist period to Chicago (one we thought had finished, but now seems to be ongoing, encompassing all of the post-Modern movements as its mere shades and variations.) His distinguished career has been one of twists and turns, and he is not planning to give up exploring new ideas any time soon. I prefer when form follows force rather than function,’ he told me. ‘Architecture is all about going with your gut. My most recent conversation with Helmut Jahn at his Chicago office is a case in point. But to me, common ground means not to think alike – then there is space for discourse. The current insistence on having common ground has pushed so many younger architects into a zombie-like copycat state of mind. ![]() The boldest visions now often come from the old guard of architecture – and frankly, I enjoy conversations with them much more. We still have work to do.In the last few years, something has happened to architects’ willingness to strive for originality. “As we continue to see stores close, residents being forced out of the West and South sides of Chicago, fewer access to options like heathy food and medicine and other necessities. Two hundred twenty-three of them were West Siders,” he told the crowd. ![]() “In our most recent history, the city saw the closure of predominantly Black schools where 1,000 Black children are still missing as a result of that horrific act. ![]() For decades, Black communities were “disregarded and disinvested” with an impact that “still reverberates today,” he said. Although African Americans have made “incredible progress” since being “freed from the bondage of slavery,” Johnson said Chicago’s Black community “still reels from systemic racism and regressive policies that have held us back.”īlack people “still grapple with the history of redlining and contract-buying and building highways through Black neighborhoods, further segregating and isolating our people,” he said. ![]()
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