Towards the end of the 19th century, when Chicago was the fastest-growing city in the world, it was also, arguably, the most architecturally adventurous. Louis Sullivan was creating organically ornamented towers; Daniel Burnham was building steel-framed mega-blocks; Frank Lloyd Wright was hybridising Arts and Crafts, Japanese and proto-deco Prairie styles; the modern office block and skyscraper were both emerging; and the city’s upper-middle-class houses were a riot of invention and eccentricity.
At some point around half a century later, however, the city became enthralled with the work of Mies van der Rohe, newly arrived from Germany and thoroughly worshipped in his adopted home city. Chicago practice SOM began to produce mini-Mieses for the city, and the minimal, Miesian glass and steel block became Chicago’s new architectural motif, steamrollering (almost) everything else.
