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Jul. 14--As it approaches a crucial city vote next week, the Art Institute of Chicago is putting a new focus on a welcome element of Renzo Piano's original proposal for expanding and renovating the museum. On the north side of the passageway that runs over the Illinois Central railroad tracks, the Italian architect would strip off limestone walls and replace them with glass, exposing the passageway's trusses and opening views to Millennium Park as well as the trains running below.
Called Gunsaulus Hall and built in 1916, the two-story, east-west passageway houses arms and armor exhibits on its lower level. But it's dimly lighted and contributes to the sense that museum-goers are traveling through a giant maze. It's also something of an eyesore, a hulk of masonry that would be at odds with Piano's elegant steel, glass and limestone new modern wing, now under construction and scheduled to open in 2009.
With the Art Institute planning a Piano-designed pedestrian bridge that will begin near the southwest corner of Millennium Park's Great Lawn and bring parkgoers over Monroe Drive to the roof of the three-story wing, Gunsaulus Hall's shortcomings will become even more evident.
So it's good news that the 620-foot-long bridge, which has received appropriate refinements since it was unveiled last year, is just one aspect of the plans that Art Institute leaders will bring to the Chicago Plan Commission next Thursday. They also are expected to discuss the proposed changes to Gunsaulus Hall, which were spurred by the introduction of the bridge into the museum's plans.
The Art Institute's trustees have approved the changes in concept and are seeking cost estimates for the work. It would come on top of the estimated $350 million it will take to build and endow the museum's expansion, including the bridge.
Matched original building
Gunsaulus Hall was designed by Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge, the Boston firm that shaped the museum's refined, restrained temple of art along Michigan Avenue. The hall is essentially a bridge, covered in limestone meant to match the original museum. The wisdom of Piano's plan is that it would dispense with beaux-arts cosmetics, exposing much of the bridge for what it really is.
According to museum spokeswoman Erin Hogan, most of the north-facing limestone walls of Gunsaulus Hall would be removed. On the first floor, glass would be placed behind the bridge's steel trusses. A new interior wall of undetermined materials would be built above. The hall would continue to be a gallery, though it's unclear what it would house.
The plan, part of Piano's original 2001 Art Institute proposal and later put on the back burner, offers several advantages, though at this point it looks painfully sketchy and superficially resembles those bridgelike Illinois Tollway oases where highway drivers stop for fast food.
But its trusses are gutsier than those on the Tollway oases and the design, if properly detailed, would aptly echo both the modern wing's transparency and its clear expression of structure.
And by opening Gunsaulus Hall to daylight and views, Piano would considerably improve the east-west route that extends through the museum from the main Michigan Avenue entrance to Columbus Drive. That's in keeping with the broader import of his plan, which was never simply about adding a new building to the museum, but instead reconceived its interior as a small city.
The changes to the pedestrian bridge, Piano's straight-lined answer to the snaking curves of Frank Gehry's BP Bridge on Millennium Park's east end, also make good sense.
Design changes
Piano's pedestrian bridge has been widened to 15 feet from the too-narrow 8 to 9 feet of Piano's original plan. Its side walls have been changed to stainless steel mesh from glass to allow the wind to slip through them. Its underside is now rounded, like the hull of a ship, which seems right for a lakefront span. And it is to have a heating system beneath its aluminum planks, which should allow it to remain open all winter, unlike Gehry's bridge, which has been forced to close after heavy snows. The planks will be textured, the museum says, to improve pedestrians' grip and repel skateboarders.
As winning as all this sounds, there remain unanswered questions about a key aspect of the museum's plans: How it intends to get pedestrians who opt not to use the bridge across Monroe. There promise to be lots of them, including museum-goers who will park in Millennium Park's underground garage and take elevators to street level. Forcing them to double back to the bridge's entrance, a whole block north, makes no sense, especially in the winter months.
In the past, Piano has pushed for a midblock stoplight and crosswalk, but city transportation officials have been cool to the idea, saying it would slow traffic. For his part, the architect hasn't been keen on using an existing tunnel beneath Monroe to make the link between the garage and the modern wing. "There are currently no developments on alternate ways across or under Monroe," Hogan says.
The impasse offers the prospect of museum-goers dodging cars -- not a very artful way to enter the Art Institute.
bkamin@tribune.com
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Copyright (c) 2006, Chicago Tribune
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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