Chicago Prize 2018 CROSSING THE LINE
Big, Soft and Orange
There are approximately 12,000 elevators in the city of Chicago.
Elevators act as the predominate vertical circulation lines of Chicago, spaces all of which are temporarily impossible to escape, thereby creating a situation which is termed the “Elevator Effect”. The “Elevator Effect” generates a location where Racism occurs every 45 seconds world wide. The forms of Racism which occur in this confined spatial condition range from individual to systematic. Are these frequent racist situations predestined before entering the literal space of elevators?
Mies van der Rohe created the blueprint for open core elevator lobbies we see all over Chicago, all over the US, and eventually all over the world. Mies may have not been the first one to have a skyscraper with a core, but he was the first to completely distill the core from the rest of the building in such a complete and isolating way. His blueprint, one which was easily and blindly copied, communicated that a universal spatial arrangement of structured isolation would be appropriate for all public or private entries to tall buildings. This assumed condition projects a false sense of security visually and mentally for the users of Mies’s architecture and its replicated offspring. The users of these buildings translate this sensory information into a modern threshold for racial inequalities before ever stepping into the elevators. All the above falls under the umbrella called Environmental Psychology, the branch of science that studies and explores the influence of our physical surroundings on how we think, feel, and act.
The site for Big, Soft and Orange is not a Mies building, but instead one which is a literal descendant and celebrating its sixtieth anniversary. The Inland Steel Building by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill ((Bruce Graham and Walter Netsch) c.1958), the first skyscraper built in the Chicago Loop after the Depression, is the location chosen because of its extreme illustration of the “Elevator Effect”. Big, Soft and Orange redraws Graham and Netsch’s universal spatial arrangement into a new manual of vertical circulation and material lines for the radical preservation of its outdated ideals.
Big, Soft and Orange
There are approximately 12,000 elevators in the city of Chicago.
Elevators act as the predominate vertical circulation lines of Chicago, spaces all of which are temporarily impossible to escape, thereby creating a situation which is termed the “Elevator Effect”. The “Elevator Effect” generates a location where Racism occurs every 45 seconds world wide. The forms of Racism which occur in this confined spatial condition range from individual to systematic. Are these frequent racist situations predestined before entering the literal space of elevators?
Mies van der Rohe created the blueprint for open core elevator lobbies we see all over Chicago, all over the US, and eventually all over the world. Mies may have not been the first one to have a skyscraper with a core, but he was the first to completely distill the core from the rest of the building in such a complete and isolating way. His blueprint, one which was easily and blindly copied, communicated that a universal spatial arrangement of structured isolation would be appropriate for all public or private entries to tall buildings. This assumed condition projects a false sense of security visually and mentally for the users of Mies’s architecture and its replicated offspring. The users of these buildings translate this sensory information into a modern threshold for racial inequalities before ever stepping into the elevators. All the above falls under the umbrella called Environmental Psychology, the branch of science that studies and explores the influence of our physical surroundings on how we think, feel, and act.
The site for Big, Soft and Orange is not a Mies building, but instead one which is a literal descendant and celebrating its sixtieth anniversary. The Inland Steel Building by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill ((Bruce Graham and Walter Netsch) c.1958), the first skyscraper built in the Chicago Loop after the Depression, is the location chosen because of its extreme illustration of the “Elevator Effect”. Big, Soft and Orange redraws Graham and Netsch’s universal spatial arrangement into a new manual of vertical circulation and material lines for the radical preservation of its outdated ideals.
Location: Chicago, Illinois
Surjan - design scientist
S. H. F. Surjan - project architect
Luca Surjan - creative director
Surjan - design scientist
S. H. F. Surjan - project architect
Luca Surjan - creative director