Bertrand Goldberg: Architecture of Invention

Art Institute of Chicago, through Jan. 15

Even in the city where he left his most indelible mark, the late architect Bertrand Goldberg is known mostly for a single iconic project, said Cassie Walker Burke in Chicago. Marina City, his twin “corncob” towers on the north bank of the Chicago River, have been featured on postcards, on the cover of a Wilco CD, and even in a famous Steve McQueen car chase. But the Bauhaus-trained Chicago native “aspired to be known as more than the ‘round-building architect,’” and the first museum retrospective of his work offers reason to consider the case. Goldberg left an imprint on cities from Boston to Mobile, Ala., mainly through hospitals and housing projects. But most interesting is his futuristic early work, like the “portable” ice cream store he designed for a Chicago chain. The collapsible building, held up by a central steel mast, reveals a preoccupation with structural innovation that remained central to his vision.

Those innovations always served a purpose, said Blair Kamin in the Chicago Tribune. When he wasn’t imagining ways to recycle his buildings, he was “inviting people to form communities.” Marina City was envisioned as a city within a city—an effort to combat white flight by creating within a single complex a vibrant, multifaceted urban neighborhood. In his hospitals, he fought depersonalization by pioneering the construction of “village-like clusters of nursing stations and patient rooms.” Goldberg’s work has long divided critics—some still view him as a “Johnny One Note who couldn’t let go of his signature circle shapes.” He might have been treated better if the “eye-grabbing” skyscraper he designed for ABC’s New York headquarters had been built. But this show proves him to be deserving of “a more prominent place in the broad history of late-modern architecture.”

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