Why Unbuilt Designs Matter
THEY OFTEN ANTICIPATE FUTURE DESIGN CHALLENGES
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Mile-High Illinois Tower anticipated issues facing 21st Century Skyscrapers
“The built environment we inhabit is just the residue of a much greater imaginative world that never saw the light of day, evoking what might have been or still could be — the unbuilt, the lost.” — Rob Wilson
“Even If a Project Fails, the Ideas Behind It Don’t Disappear.” — Atlas of Never Built Architecture [1.]
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Illinois Tower. — David Romero/Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation
Wright’s Design Would Influence the Design of 21st Century Towers
“The Empire State Building would be a mouse by comparison.” — Frank Lloyd Wright
In 1956, at the age of 89, Frank Lloyd Wright invited his patrons to reach for the stars. He proposed a mile-high skyscraper with 528 stories, (later revised to 365 stories), with a gross area of 18,460,000 square feet. Wright anticipated there would be parking for 15,000 cars and 100 helicopters. The tallest building in the world at that time was the Empire State Building. Wright was proposing a tower four times as tall. The tallest building in the world at this time is the Burj Kalifa, built in the 21st Century. It is only half of that height.
Architect Adrian Smith’s designs for the Burj Kalifa and the proposed Jeddah Tower are inspired by Wright’s design, which anticipated many of the engineering problems that Smith would face in building such tall buildings. Wright detailed the building’s features in his 1957 book A Testament. His high-speed elevators would be five stories high in order to serve multiple floors simultaneously. They would be high speed and atomic powered. Wright clearly saw that moving large numbers of people up and down his skyscraper would be a challenge to be solved.
He also knew that wind would be a major consideration and designed The Illinois inspired by the deep taproots of trees. “I detest seeing the boys fooling around and making their buildings look like boxes,” he said. “Why not design a building that really is tall? … Long ago I observed trees after the passing of a cyclone. Those with deep taproots were the ones that survived.” Floors cantilevered off of a central concrete mast, which was “rooted” deep in the ground to resist forces that would come against it.
When Wright proposed his towering building, he had no client. He envisioned it as a mixed-use project and mused that “all of the government offices scattered around Chicago could be consolidated in the tower.”
Frank Lloyd Wright presents a towering rendering of The Illinois at the Sherman House Hotel in Chicago on 26 October 1956. — Source: IBM.com/blog
Broadacre City, as drawn by Frank Lloyd Wright, was an exercise in planning by the architect featuring skyscraper like The Illinois surrounded by open spaces with relatively light density development. — FrankLloyd Wright Rendering
2,977 Voices
Xaver Wilhelmy’s Proposal for a Memorial at Ground Zero
WTC Memorial Concept, Xaver Wilhelmy, Concept Art Watercolour by Bob Kirchman, 2003.
Remembering the attacks of September 11, 2001, Xaver Wilhelmy had an idea for a very unique memorial — one that would have given a voice to each person who perished that day.
It would have been an immense pipe organ with about 3,000 pipes. Some of them made of glass and embedded in the curtain walls of a memorial chapel.
The instrument was designed to be played electronically from anywhere in the world and families of the victims may select pieces to be played on special days.
Each pipe in the organ would have been a unique note, representing a unique individual whose life was lost.
Glass organ pipes in a leaded window. Concept by Xaver Wilhelmy, Art by Bob Kirchman.
Full Scale Construction of Flag Organ Pipes by Xaver Wilhelmy. Photo by Dan DeHass.
“Flight” Concept by Bob Kirchman
Celebrating Flight and Fibonacci
“Shell” and “Pine” Terrazzo Designs by bob Kirchman
Here I created a set of designs for an airport art installation competition. The object was to provide a concept for a sculpture and two terrazzo floor designs.
The competition assignment became an exercise in contextualization for me as I considered the location of the airport in a shore setting and its proximity to the site of the Wright Brothers’ powered flight. A mere half-century after the Wright Flyer, we were reaching for the stars. The airport already had a replica of the Wright Flyer, but now there were companies producing aerospace components along the highway into town. There was literally more to the story.
Manned flight had progressed to transatlantic in that time, and was headed for the moon. The proposed installation was designed to be fabricated in the shop of a local metalworker. The terrazzo floors would be produced by artisans skilled in that medium and would invoke natural forms – the Pine and the Shell.
It was a concept that was extremely enjoyable to develop. Though it did not win in the end, it would have been a stretch to develop on the fixed budget allowance specified. It serves more as an example of what might be done and an approach for developing public art that gives nod to history and place.
The Art of Design Communication
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