photo courtesy reallyboring via creative commons license
I’m not sure if I agree entirely with Chicago Tribune’s architecture critic Blair Kamin when he says, “You let go of the past if you can build something better.” Specifically he was talking about how Meigs Field appears on the 2009 “Chicago Seven” list from Preservation Chicago. Blair says,
“Preservationists aren’t going to do themselves much good if they champion examples of postwar modernism such as the Meigs Field terminal. PC calls the steel, glass and precast masonry terminal ‘delightfully modern.’ I call it second-rate.”
You gotta appreciate his honesty and bluntness.
But what about his statement “You let go of the past if you can build something better”? Do you agree with that? I’m not sure if I entirely agree with it, because there’s something to be said about history. But I can tend to be too sentimentalist and not enough progressive.
Is Kamen saying they should build something better on top of the Meigs terminal? I’m going to have to agree with him — from the outside, it is rather lackluster.
I think it all depends on what your standard is for “better”, but I pretty much agree with him. You can’t just keep everything stuck how it is today; there are a lot of things that should be replaced.
Well, given Chicago’s track record of things that are supposed to be “better” (Soldier Field, anyone?), I don’t really have faith that this could be improved.
I disagree with most of Blair Kamin’s columns, which are a taste I’ve never acquired. However, he’s right about the need to move forward.