Gunzlingr
06-26-2003, 08:10 AM
I've seen erector sets assembled by 4-year-olds with more architectural cohesion than the New Flying Saucer At Soldier Field. Coming in from the south on Lake Shore Drive, I see 2003 plopped into 1924, Eminem doing the Charleston, Lindy piloting the Concorde, Al Capone dueling al-Qaida, the Colosseum swallowed by the Apocalypse and the future smoked out by your great-grandfather's pipe.
It's ugly. It's incongruous. It's creepy.
And it's ours.
The good news is, football will remain squarely on the lakefront, where it should be, preserving one of Chicago's enduring identities and the tradition of seeing the breath of bloody warriors on winter Sundays. The bad news is, we have yet another laughingstock stadium to defend nationally, a bizarre clashing of glass, steel, curvy angles and those classic Greek colonnades that are almost older than Irv Kupcinet. Even a klutz like me, who has a hard enough time drawing a stick figure, knows you don't shoe-horn a space-age shell into the walls of the only major pro sports venue designated as a National Historic Landmark. There had to be a better way--such as giving the new structure a retro look, featuring the bricks that are so prominent at the impressively rehabbed Lambeau Field and several 1990s-built baseball parks. Then, maybe the melding of old and new wouldn't have been an eyesore.
more (http://www.suntimes.com/output/mariotti/cst-spt-jay25.html)
It's ugly. It's incongruous. It's creepy.
And it's ours.
The good news is, football will remain squarely on the lakefront, where it should be, preserving one of Chicago's enduring identities and the tradition of seeing the breath of bloody warriors on winter Sundays. The bad news is, we have yet another laughingstock stadium to defend nationally, a bizarre clashing of glass, steel, curvy angles and those classic Greek colonnades that are almost older than Irv Kupcinet. Even a klutz like me, who has a hard enough time drawing a stick figure, knows you don't shoe-horn a space-age shell into the walls of the only major pro sports venue designated as a National Historic Landmark. There had to be a better way--such as giving the new structure a retro look, featuring the bricks that are so prominent at the impressively rehabbed Lambeau Field and several 1990s-built baseball parks. Then, maybe the melding of old and new wouldn't have been an eyesore.
more (http://www.suntimes.com/output/mariotti/cst-spt-jay25.html)