Review: Marina City: Bertrand Goldberg’s Urban Vision, by Igor Marjanović and Katerina Rüedi Ray and Bertrand Goldberg: Architecture of Invention, by Zoë Ryan, ed.

Abstract

Marina City: Bertrand Goldberg’s Urban Vision New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2010, 176 pp., 105 b/w illus. $35, ISBN 9781568988634, by Igor Marjanovic and Katerina Ruedi Ray. Bertrand Goldberg: Architecture of Invention New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press and the Art Institute of Chicago, 2011, 192 pp., 140 color and 75 b/w illus. $60, ISBN 9780300167047, by Zoe Ryan, ed.. In 1967 a group of five buildings bearing the name Marina City opened for business on the north bank of the Chicago River. The city greeted the addition enthusiastically, and on two levels—cultural and social. The arts community recognized the pair of sixty-story towers that dominated the new complex as architecturally unprecedented in Chicago. Unlike most of the city’s tall buildings, they were cylindrical, not rectilinear. They were constructed of concrete, not steel. Forty-two stories of residences with balconies above were served by fourteen stories of parking ramps immediately below, and the edges of both were curved. The designers did not intend the resemblance, but the public could not help likening the elevations to a pair of giant corncobs and enjoying the comparison. So much for Chicago’s early, fascinated response to the vision newly materialized on the river. No less important, especially to the city’s movers and shakers, was the probable demographic impact of Marina City on the inner city. Chicago had recently witnessed a major population shift, with downtown steadily losing numbers, and economic and political clout, to the suburbs. For a variety of reasons Marina City promised a reversal of these fortunes. In 1959 William McFetridge, head of the Chicago Janitors’ Union, approached local architect Bertrand Goldberg with a request that Goldberg design a new headquarters for the union in downtown Chicago; the union would provide the financing. Conversations led to the proposal for a building that would combine commercial and residential facilities, with the understanding that housing would be made available to office workers in the downtown area, thus bringing new life to that section of the city. The result would be, in Goldberg’s words, “a 24-hour environment” (Ryan, 34). With the passage of time, the building became five buildings, consisting of apartments, an office building, retail …