Really bad photos of the renderings the Chicago Children's Museum doesn't want you to see. (original) (raw)

At a September 10th meeting at Daley Bicentennial Plaza, Chicago Children's Museum architect Mark Sexton presented a full set of renderings of Krueck and Sexton's proposed design for a new 100,000-square-foot museum in Grant Park. Unfortunately, as part of its slippery and cynically deceptive media campaign, CCM has withheld all renderings from the media except extremely wide-angled views that deliberately de-emphasize the building's impact on the park.

Krueck and Sexton Architects also does not include the renderings on their web site, but they have signed on to Mayor Richard M. Daley's "all opponents to the museum are racists"campaign by posting links to four articles regurgitating Daley's spurious, gutter-politics rants. The links include news reports from the Trib and Sun-Times on those very calculated mayoral tantrums, but, of course, no links to those same papers' strong condemnation of the mayor's tactics and fervent opposition to the museum's move to Grant Park.

These two admittedly pathetic photos are the best I could get from my vantage point in an outside hallway which I shared with local residents who had been banished from their own community meeting when it was hijacked by CCM supporters. They more accurately depict how a human being - as opposed to a high-flying bird or low-flying airplane - would actually experience the park with the CCM's building inserted into it.

The first rendering is of the large central courtyard; the second of the soaring, stalagmite-like skylights required to bring light into the museum's subterranean halls. Note how those skylights, up to 51 feet in height, rise many times higher and overwhelm the human figures inserted into the rendering. Even with all their oblique bluriness, the photos of these renderings demonstrate that, contrary to the claims of the museum, the structure would create a fatally intrusive presence in the park. If the museum doesn't agree, they should release ALL the renderings, which I will be glad to post on my web site. Let the public decide.