Chicago – Growing Greener and More Vibrant With Each Passing Year
Millennium Park Jay Pritzker Pavilion © Alice Joyce
Gehry Glam! – The Frank Gehry-designed Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago’s Millennium Park: Gehry’s exuberant architecture seems to have taken the world by storm. I’ll personally vouch for the architect’s design of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles. The building proved to have superb acoustics when I heard a string quartet play in the Hall. Even before attending the concert, I’d been won over by Gehry’s exuberant style, impressed by the Concert Hall’s open-air gardens, which are open to the public.
But here the focus is on CHICAGO! In September last year I took in a performance at the Park’s Pritzker Pavilion. Each year during the World Music Festival, venues around the city offer free performances. In the photo above, Tambours San Frontieres is performing one afternoon: A Congolese group now based in Chicago.
Crown Fountain © Alice Joyce
Millennium Park’s Crown Fountain is a crowd pleaser! Upright 50-foot towers deliver a welcoming splash and flow! Jaume Plensa, a Barcelona artist, designed the multi-media water feature.
Chicago Millennium Park Plantings © Alice Joyce
Along the Magnificent Mile – Chicago’s Michigan Avenue, and throughout the landscape of Millennium Park, lush planting beds enliven the scene with the bold forms of grasses, tropical specimens, and brilliant annuals rich with color and texture.
Crown Fountain © Alice Joyce
A shallow pool spans the space between the glass-block towers, their colorful video projections featuring a panoply of faces. 1,000 Chicagoans are featured… their changing expressions create a riveting display.
I fell in love with this park five years ago, and have never stopped wishing for something similar in Toronto.
Wow, that water feature is amazing!!! sort of like a stylized exuberant wetlands. Thanks for showing us this – and I agree entirely about Disney Hall, it’s the only big hall I’ve been in that feels like a small intimate concert. And not a bad seat in the house, acoustically or visually. I love it when people use architecture for something other than just showing off – and this garden seems to be a good example of that, too.
The Crown fountain looks like fun! I have never been to Chicago, but Millennium Park will be a place to see when i visit.
I’m not sure if you know, but I’m from Chicago. Moved to FL only 5 years ago. I remember well when they built Milenium Park. Very cool, indeed! I’ve not been back since we moved south, so these photos warm my heart!
I love that fountain, very cool.