In celebrating the renovation of a derelict church in inner city Chicago, Nike’s recent advert “The Church” unapologetically elevates the brand to God-like status.

Earlier this year sports brand Nike released an advert documenting the transformation of a derelict church in inner city Chicago into a basketball court. While it’s no doubt a valuable refurbishment and clearly useful to the local community, the advert betrays several underlying problems with the adaptive reuse project.

The advert begins with a young teenager explaining that “Chicago is my home, where I grew up all my life. There’s a lot of gun violence and stuff, it’s not really safe to play basketball outside.” His account is then supported by clips from various local news reports describing the epidemic of gun violence in inner city Chicago. As another teenager explains, people get killed playing basketball outside, “I don’t want to be one of those people” he says.

With the scene set, text appears over shots of dilapidated buildings (presumably those in the surrounding neighbourhood): “In inner city Chicago, a condemned church was given new life, a place for Chicago’s youth to restore their faith in community”. The advert treats inner city decline and gun violence as a given, spending no time dwelling on their causes. Instead, it jumps right into introducing the project that will, in its own small way, help solve the problem.

Outsourcing as a Cause of Inner City Decline

And yet, it is not a stretch to say that brands like Nike have had a hand in such inner-city decline. Prior to the 1970s most US garment companies had their manufacturing operations located in industrial cities like Chicago. Whole communities were built around such industries and whole communities were destroyed when they left to set up shop in other parts of the world where workers were cheaper and less organised.

Nike was one of the early adopters of this practice of outsourcing. Its success led other companies to follow suit. Now, like many other American brands, Nike’s US-based factories account for a fraction of its global workforce (in Nike’s case less than 1%). Aside from its devastating impact on formerly industrial cities in the US, outsourcing has also had the effect of separating people’s consumption habits from the underlying production process, thus enabling the miserable sweatshop working conditions in factories elsewhere in the world to go mostly unnoticed.

Take me to Church

Throughout the advert, “Take me to Church” plays on the soundtrack, beginning with its composer, Hozier, singing gospel-style the words “Amen! Amen! Amen!”. As the advert cuts to scenes of the renovated church, the song reaches its euphoric chorus:

Take me to church
I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies
I’ll tell you my sins and you can sharpen your knife
Offer me that deathless death
Good God, let me give you my life

If this song and the name of the project hadn’t already convinced you of the sacred connotations this advert is attempting to impose upon the project, we later hear from local Reverend Ricardo Bailey, who explains that the church may have been made into a basketball gymnasium but it’s still a church building: “It’s a place where people gather together and share their hopes and dreams. And who knows, what kind of seeds are going to be planted in the lives of those young people when they leave from that place.”

Nike as God

But if this court is the church then surely our God is Nike. Like a God, Nike’s presence in the advert is distant, although there are three subtle clues of their benevolence. Firstly, the advert talks to Heter Myers from Nike Communications, who says that the Church is intended to inspire the next generation “to go after their crazy dreams”. Secondly, all the kits and equipment are produced by Nike. And thirdly, a Nike swoosh merged with “The Church” briefly appears at the beginning and end of the advert. None of these clues, however, tell us definitively that Nike is responsible for the refurbishment.

However, unlike the Christian God who first taketh and then giveth away, Nike taketh and then giveth away. Which is to say, it’s only after its economic practices have ravaged inner city America that the brand has deigned to give a small thing in return. The Church is a good renovation, but it pales in comparison to the damage the company has caused over the past several decades.

Over a series of 10 episodes, USA Today’s “The City” podcast unpacks the complex web of racial and class injustices which have ensured that waste disposal in America has always tended to impact more on people of colour.

Waste disposal may not seem like the spiciest subject matter for a podcast. But in USA Today’s recent series “The City”, reporter Robin Amer and her colleagues have managed to tell a gripping story of the various forces which led to the emergence and persistence of an illegal dump in Chicago. Covering themes such as political corruption, grassroots activism, racial and environmental injustice and criminal enterprise, it is a brilliant dissection of contemporary urban politics.

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The story starts in the early nineties, when the residents of Chicago’s predominantly African American neighbourhood of North Lawndale began to notice hundreds of trucks coming to dump construction waste in an empty lot in their neighbourhood. The lot had formerly been occupied by a factory that had long since closed, a casualty of the deindustrialisation of a once fairly prosperous neighbourhood.

Chicago was no exception

At this point, Amer proceeds to explain the wider context in Chicago at the time. The early 90s was a moment when many cities were beginning to start reinvesting in their downtown neighbourhoods after years of disinvestment, “white flight”, and urban blight. Chicago was no exception. In the previous four decades, the city had lost nearly a million inhabitants and hundreds of thousands of jobs, in a process which had seriously impacted on neighbourhoods like North Lawndale. Yet in 1989, Chicagoans elected a new mayor, Richard M. Daley, who campaigned on a promise to spark a renaissance in the inner city.

The whole dumping operation was shady from the start

As the series website explains, “highways are rebuilt, old buildings demolished, new parks and skyscrapers erected.” But, it continues, “all that rubble has to go somewhere, and its destination isn’t a landfill or a recycling centre. It’s a pair of vacant lots in a black, working-class neighbourhood called North Lawndale.”
As Amer explains, the whole dumping operation was shady from the start. Trucks were coming to dump their waste as late as 3am, some had altered license plates, and the man running the operation, John Christopher, drove around in a shiny Limousine.

John Christopher plays an important yet elusive role throughout the series. A lifelong associate of the Chicago mob, he had spent much of the 1980s in prison after he was caught defrauding the city of Chicago by issuing fake invoices for snow clearing work carried out during the famous blizzard of 1979.

This alone should have ended any career he might have had planned in waste disposal, legitimate or not. But after leaving prison, Christopher became a mole for the FBI, after feeling abandoned by his mob associates, for whom he had kept quiet during his time behind bars. He was then quickly identified as a highly valuable informant due to his many connections to corrupt Chicago city officials. As such, he was able to proceed to develop a criminal dumping enterprise with relative impunity.

“Environmental racism”

As the series proceeds, however, the story deepens and widens, until listeners are left in no doubt that the scale and importance of this problem is beyond the responsibility of one man. Rather, this problem, which Amer refers to as “environmental racism”, is characterised by the widespread and continuing abuse of impoverished and disempowered communities of colour across America.

If there is one drawback of the podcast it is that it stops short of condemning the economic system which clearly enables the kind of environmental racism seen in North Lawndale. Amer instead attributes it to “the overlapping layers of corruption and apathy, the failures of individuals and institutions, the deep-seated legacies of segregation and racism…” She’s right of course, but the fact that these things impact much more acutely in America than other developed countries is left unexplored. This is perhaps expecting too much from an mainstream news organisation like USA Today, and it’s enough that its choosing to pursue these sorts of stories in such sharp detail.

A second series has been announced, to be broadcast later in the year. This time the city in question is Reno and it looks set to be another excellent exploration of the conflicting forces that are always in constant battle for a city’s soul.

A building that reflects the personality of an individual; a building that houses the work of said individual – American presidential libraries serve this purpose. Their design varies, just as much as the personalities they represent. The former Presidents of the United States each have a dedicated library where documents and materials are kept that relate to their respective careers. The 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama, spearheads the development of the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, his and his wife’s hometown. The Obama Foundation chose Jackson Park in Chicago’s South Side as the site for the planned building. While dedicated to the Obama Presidency, the center is intended to offer room for everybody.

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Renowned architect couple Tod Williams and Billie Tsien received the commission to design the center. Michael Van Valkenburgh is responsible for the landscape design, in cooperation with Site Design Group and Living Habitats.

Breaking with tradition

In May 2017 the Obamas presented an early conceptual vision of the center to the public. It comprises a building complex featuring a museum, a forum and a library that are arranged within a campus surrounding a central public plaza. The museum resembles a towering obelisk. It is the tallest of the three individual buildings and features spaces for exhibition and education as well as offices. The forum and the library will be situated in one-storey public buildings including an auditorium, a restaurant and green roof terraces. An additional fourth building towards the south of the main cluster of buildings is supposed to house a sports center.

The planned complex doesn’t resemble a traditional Presidential Library. Or a storehouse with an aesthetically pleasing exterior, yet bland interior. It won’t even serve to store Presidential papers. Instead, digital versions of documents will be available in online formats. The actual, physical documents will be deposited in a facility of the National Archives and Records Administration. The Obamas have their own idea of what the library is supposed to be: a living meeting point for the community, embedded in local and global networks. A place where kids from the South Side can advance their own personalities.

The Obama Foundation has a highly idealistic goal: the center is supposed to be a safe and inviting place that inspires people to learn and to foster change in their own communities. According to Obama Foundation Board Chair Martin Nesbitt, “the center will be a place of action, not only for reading or listening.”

Design choices raise concerns

However, the plans haven’t only received praise. The choice of the site in particular raises concerns. Preservation activists expressed their opposition after the plans were made public. In their view, the planned center endangers Jackson Park, designed in 1871 by Frederick Law Olmstead, the legendary landscape architect who created New York’s Central Park. The complex will occupy roughly 20 hectares of Jackson Park. The nonprofit organization “Friends of the Parks” demanded that an unoccupied area bordering another park in Chicago should become the site for the center, rather than Jackson Park. Their demand was not met. However, the Obama Foundation revised their initial plan. Instead of an above-ground parking garage that would have consumed even more of the local green space, the decision was made to create a below-grade parking garage. The redesign also includes 400 new trees for Jackson Park and more on-site playgrounds. According to Obama, “the majority of the campus area will be open and publicly accessible. It will be a place for all seasons, with intertwined landscapes, a hill for riding sleds and quiet places for reading or reflection.”

The new plans were submitted to Chicago’s Plan Commission for permit. The City Council will also need to approve the plans before the Obama Foundation starts groundwork on site. The aim is to ensure that the Presidential Center doesn’t fundamentally alter the character of Jackson Park. According to Crain’s Chicago Business, the project will cost an estimated 350 million Dollars US. Private donations are supposed to cover the design and construction costs. The Obamas hope to open the center in 2012.

From doubt to confidence

The debate over the parking garage has quieted down. However, preservation activists are still worried about the center’s impact on this historically important landscape. According to Martin Nesbitt, the green spaces that will be covered by buildings will be replaced. Cornell Drive, a six-lane road passing the park’s western lagoon and golf court from the Midway Plaisance to South Shore, will be converted into a green space. “The place that we intend to develop will be an integral part of Jackson Park. The team’s intention is to integrate the project into the park. In return, the center serves to unleash the park’s full potential”, Nesbitt says. Charles A. Birnbaum, President and CEO of the Cultural Landscape Foundation, responds: “Cornell Drive is an element of the Olmstead design and as such a listed park landscape.”

Intentions and hopes, but also doubts remain that the center’s integrative concept will actually draw together all those impacted by it – even those who worry about the existing landscape.

The Chicago Architectural Club has announced its annual Chicago Prize. The open idea competition is in search of visionary concepts for an area that is located 10 miles south of downtown Chicago, directly on the shores of Lake Michigan. Closing date is 10^th January 2017.

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The former U.S. Steel site is more than 1,600,000 m² in size and has stood vacant since 1992, when the plant was closed. Since then, all industrial buildings in the area have been demolished but due to problems between the owner and the project developer, no permanent usage was found. A proposed redevelopment project was placed on indefinite hold in February 2016. Meanwhile, the area, which is surrounded by water on three sides, has been used for parking and music festivals.

Requirements of a future development
The Chicago Lakefront has been defined by its commercial and industrial legacy but also by its modern recreational and cultural utilisation. These conflicting interests have created an ongoing dispute about the land use along the city’s shoreline. Therefore, a proposal for the peninsula should satisfy the public demand for a readily accessible and civic use of the area, but also the need for new housing and commercial areas. The adjacent Lake Shore Drive, which is the backbone of Chicago’s traffic, disrupts the pedestrian accessibility between the urban landscape and the shoreline, and must be taken in consideration. The Millennium Park, which garnered much positive public feedback, showed how important such projects are for the citizens.

Conditions of the Chicago Prize
The Chicago Prize was founded by the well-respected Chicago Architectural Club to improve the cityscape of Chicago and to engage artists, architects and designers throughout the world. It comes with € 3,000 prize money and is also open to students.

More information about the competition

With his Isolated Building Studies, sociologist David Schalliol is seeking the visual confluence of his interests in urban dynamism, socioeconomic inequality, and photography. By using uniform composition in photographs of Chicago buildings with no neighboring structures, he wants to draw attention to new ways of seeing the common impact of divergent investment processes on urban communities.

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Isolated buildings are particularly useful for the exploration of neighborhood transformation and its social correlates, because they are immediately recognized as unusual. As urban buildings, their form illustrates their connection with ad­jacent structures: vertical, boxy, an architecture confined by palpably limited parcels. When their neighboring buildings are missing, a tension emerges: The urban form clashes with the seemingly suburban, even rural setting. Thoughtfully engaging the landscape requires further investigation to resolve this tension: Why is this building isolated? It is from this fundamental friction that the Isolated Building Studies launches.

View the full article in Topos 97.

In Chicago, the new Maggie Daley Park and Chicago Riverwalk exemplify the trend for cities to build high-profile works of landscape architecture to spur reinvestment in historic urban cores. In this era of decreased federal and municipal funding for such projects, private investment is increasingly called upon. As a result, and as a range of new spaces in Chicago demonstrate, the landscape architect has emerged as a mediator between commercial interests and civic responsibilities. 

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High-profile landscape architecture projects are by now obligatory tools for American municipal governments seeking to attract investment dollars and jobs. The narrative of outmoded infrastructure or former industrial land turned park is by now well established and the discipline of landscape architecture has emerged as a leader in their design. Catalyzed by these new public spaces, American downtowns and nearby neighborhoods are experiencing what the popular press and scholars alike herald as a “return to the city” or an “urban renaissance.”

But whose renaissance is it? Who is returning? It is urgent to frame these spaces historically and geographically to take stock of the effects recent works are having on the spatial, social, and ecological dimensions of American cities. Reframing the urban as a multi-scalar process producing historically specific moments of urbanization, not just a politically bounded aggregation of individual objects, helps productively complicate this popular narrative.

The Right to Open Space

Chicago typifies the aforementioned changes. However, when considered against the backdrop of the city’s civic-minded 19th- and 20th-century public open space and infrastructure projects, its recent landscape transformations beg questions regarding agency, equity, and design. From the city’s very inception, Chicago’s citizens and civic leaders demonstrated a precocious awareness of the value of open space. On an 1839 map drawn up by Canal Commissioners, a portion of the Lake Michigan lakefront was set aside as open space and labeled “Public ground forever to remain vacant of buildings.”

It eventually became Grant Park and its status as an open and free space is protected by law. Likewise, an ethos of publicness pervades Burnham and Bennett’s 1909 Plan of Chicago, which to this day has an astonishing influence on local planning and design decisions.

With its legacy of equitable open space and strong record of consistently building infrastructure, parkland, and architecture of significance, the latest era of Chicago parks is a locally specific version of national trends. […]

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Maggie Daley Park

As a Master of Landscape Architecture degree candidate at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, Michael Van Valkenburgh proposed a thesis investigating aspects of children’s play in Urbana’s Carle Park. Thirty-six years later and 130 miles northward, his trademark passion is unmistakable in the colorful carnival of custom-designed children’s playground equipment at the new Maggie Daley Park. The topographically rich 28-acre park, which opened in December 2014, is already a premier regional destination for families with young children. Connected by Frank Gehry’s BP Pedestrian Bridge to the west, it is an accessible counterpoint to Millennium Park.

The Bridge to Nowhere

While Millennium Park filled in the northwest corner of Grant Park and helped fuel a flurry of investment in its vicinity, Maggie Daley Park supplanted an existing park: Daley Bicentennial Plaza. The park replaced a below-grade parking lot in 1976 and was formally consistent with Burnham’s early 1900s Beaux-Arts vision for Grant Park: outdoor rooms created by formal allées of trees and ornamental flower beds. As Millennium Park’s popularity soared, Daley Bicentennial Plaza persisted as a quieter retreat for neighborhood residents. Aside from major city festivals like Fourth of July fireworks gatherings, the area was so subdued relative to Millennium Park that Gehry’s bridge was dubbed “the bridge to nowhere.”

By the mid-2000s the leaking roofing membrane of the garage beneath Daley Bicentennial Plaza needed to be replaced. After the City of Chicago privatized four Grant Park parking lots in 2006, $65 million were set aside for building a new garage and rooftop park and an invited competition was held for its
redesign; construction on the winning scheme by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates began in October 2012. […]

Chicago Riverwalk Expansion, Chicago, USA
Client: Chicago Departement of Transportation
Landscape Architects: Sasaki Associates
Construction: 2012-2016

Maggie Daley Park, Chicago, USA
Client: Chicago Park District
Landscape Architects: Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Inc.
Construction: 2012-2015

For more information on the Riverwalk and Maggie Daley Park, read on in Topos 94 – City Visions.