Wright Chat

Save Prentice, Save Chicago...

http://www.wbez.org/blog/lee-bey/2011-0 ... rtrand-gol

Prentice ought to be saved. Architectural styles seem to lose interest 30 to 40 years after their heyday, and impulsive action to replace or remodel buildings of such an age often results in regret. Think of all the Deco buildings that were mauled or demolished in the 50s and 60s. Consider LACMA, a carefully thought out museum that had lost favor and was wontonly subsumed by the aesthetically disastrous HHP-designed additions. Prentice may not be the handsomest of buildings by today's standards, but as an honest expression of structure and use, it is worthy of saving.

I do think that the innovation of the centralized nursing station that informs the Prentice plan may have originated at a hospital in Rochester associated with the Mayo Clinic some years earlier, however. I recall such a plan being published in the late 60s/early 70s, a few years prior to Prentice. But the Mayo building did not reflect the plan in its exterior form.

A preservationist's sad, ironic nightmare. From the article:

“With Prentice, Goldberg advanced an innovative plan centered on the human body, with communities of nurses and patients forming ‘villages’ of care in the building’s four circular wings,� said Zoe Ryan, curator of the first major retrospective of Goldberg’s work, which will have its debut at the Art Institute the same month that the hospital is scheduled to face the wrecking ball...

http://www.chicagonewscoop.org/preserva ... -hospital/

It's lovely to see the building spoken of with such passion -- to use one of the terms heard in the video. (I had a part to play in the updating of a Nagle Hartray house out here on the coast, five years ago -- the cap to a cabinetmaking career.)

Nothing is said about possible uses for the structure -- at this early stage. I wonder if anyone has looked ahead to the possibilities . . .

Any ideas here ?

SDR

If specific objects of art & architecture have sociological meaning that contributed directly to broad cultural progress it seems imperative to keep them. They are tangible expressions of human ideas. The concept of a village hospital in urbanized America was radical but came from the simplest of third world nations. Does the average American even know that nurses once wore hats and men could not watch their children be born?

Earth Day proposal:

http://chicago.curbed.com/archives/2011 ... entice.php