Chicago has always been an important economic center in the United States, known as the "supermarket of the United States", with many "firsts" in the United States and even in the world: the world's largest stock options exchange, grain trading market, livestock trading market, and the world's busiest international airport. , the largest railway and highway hub in the United States, convention and exhibition center, futures exchange... All of these will make many people think that it is just a bustling and noisy metropolis, and there is no expected scenery. In fact, Chicago is not only an industrial city, but also a tourist city, leaning on the vast and tranquil Lake Michigan to the east, as well as huge city parks and magnificent museums, which are full of modern atmosphere and preserve traditional colors. It still maintains the artistic pursuit of aesthetics, which is the biggest feature of this city.
The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 was a major event in the city's history. Legend has it that there are many reasons for the fire, such as it is said that a cow kicked over an oil lamp. Due to the strong wind in Chicago and the fact that many buildings were made of wood at that time, the fire spread very fast. In a short period of time, the downtown of Chicago was shrouded in the sky-high fire, and the city center was basically completely burned. The fierce fire left the firefighters completely helpless, and finally gave up and evacuated the burning area. Two days later, the fire extinguished itself. The fire destroyed more than 17,000 buildings, including the Opera House, City Hall, etc., more than 90,000 people were homeless, hundreds of people died in the fire, and 1/3 of Chicago's wealth was reduced to ashes.
However, the city was soon reborn after the fire. Countless donations poured in from all directions, and countless people began to rebuild the city. Twenty-two years after the fire, Chicago hosted the World's Fair, and what people saw was a brand new city. The reconstruction after this fire has produced a group of famous modern architects, who are historically called "Chicago School" architects. They started building skyscrapers out of steel frame structures. They abandoned the Gothic or pure classical architectural style, and began to pursue a concise and bright modern style, and pursued the vertical height of the building; some architects adopted the integration of classical factors on the basis of modern architectural style, and made classical style and modern style. The structure is organically combined and called "neoclassicism". Their efforts created a precedent for the modern architectural art style and influenced the architectural style of the United States and the whole world. Chicago has become the city with the earliest, largest number and newest styles of high-rise buildings in the United States. Since then, the design of high-rise buildings has formed a world-famous "Chicago School". Today, many architects from around the world come here to visit this capital of modernist architecture and art, which may be an unexpected result after the Great Chicago Fire.
Architecture in Chicago is mainly divided into two styles. The former, called Neoclassical architecture, is mainly from the period of rapid development from 1885 to 1935. These neoclassical architects created a precedent for modern architecture, widely used steel frame structures and high-rise buildings, but inherited many classical architectural styles in the decoration of buildings, and widely used Gothic, Bell tower or portrait style decoration. These buildings are solemn and steady, with their own different decorative styles, blending into the atmosphere of history, and have a noble and elegant temperament. Another category of buildings were built after 1950, these buildings are completely modern buildings without classical elements in the style, basically straight cubic structures. This class of buildings formed what is known as the "Second Chicago Architectural Style". In 1963, a daring architect, Fajr Khan, adopted a new architectural form for the skyscrapers here, which he called the frame. It not only reduces the load-bearing beams of the original building and expands the usable area, but also enables the outer walls of the building to be fully opened, which greatly increases the light-transmitting area of the building. Some buildings using this construction method have a dark glass wall shape throughout, like a gleaming lens; some buildings have a woven steel structure, like an iron tower, standing high; Covered with silver-white aluminum material, it looks as dazzling as white jade. Buildings in the form of cubes began to appear from here and influenced trends in architecture throughout the world. Some buildings after the 1980s and 1990s have a post-modern architectural style: a twin tower looks like a corn cob; another tower blurs the traditional cubic structure and becomes a streamlined shape. the spiral structure. The architecture of Chicago is amazing, and here is the Museum of Modern Architecture! They stretch on both sides of the Chicago River and stretch out on Michigan Avenue, cascading and dizzying. Never before has a city been so ingeniously designed as an expo park of such a building.
Chicago Tribune Building
In 1922, the Chicago Tribune wanted to build a new headquarters office building, so it solicited designs from all over the world, and offered a $50,000 prize, with the goal of designing "the most beautiful and eye-catching building in the world at that time." ". The prize was won by two architects from New York, John Howell and Raymond Hood. Hood later also designed the famous Rockefeller Center in New York. They adopted a neo-Gothic skyscraper and designed a beautiful Gothic flower crown on top of the Tribune Building, which firmly locked everyone's sight. Completed in 1925, the 141-meter-tall building has captured the world's attention with its exquisite architectural style and eye-catching Gothic corolla, which is a milestone in the history of American architecture. Its designers were also influenced by Art Deco, which was popular at the time, and embedded various fragments of historical buildings collected from all over the world on the wall at the bottom of the building: such as the stones of the Pantheon in Greece, the Colosseum in Rome. Stones, fragments of Egyptian pyramids, a brick from Notre Dame Cathedral, a stone from the Tower of London, a stepping stone from the White House in the United States, and a stone from the Great Wall of China, and a warrior brick from a temple in Luoyang, Henan, China . A total of 136 fragments of famous historical sites from around the world are embedded in the walls. Moreover, these historical fragments are still being embedded, newly embedded are fragments of the collapsed Berlin Wall and a piece of steel from the World Trade Center in New York that was just bombed by terrorists. There is also a stone from the moon on display here. Since NASA has full ownership of all the moon stones, this stone cannot be embedded in the wall and is only displayed in the gift shop here. The building is designed as a historical event exhibition hall, and the famous fragments of history are slowly embedded in it, which itself carries a unique historical value and weight.
Wrigley Building
Opposite the Tribune Building is another unique building, which is home to the headquarters of the world-renowned chewing gum manufacturer Regley. The company's "Wrigley" chewing gum, like Coca-Cola's Coke, has almost become an icon of American business culture. The Wrigley Building was constructed and completed at almost the same time as the Tribune Building. It adopts the form of twin towers and is divided into a south building and a north building with different heights. The south building has 30 floors and a height of 130 meters. The place is connected by a sky bridge, and the whole style adopts the style of the church and the decoration of the French Renaissance. The surface of the building is made of bright enamel material, and the whole building is in the sunlight, showing the milky white color of chewing gum. Standing on the opposite square and looking at the sky bridge in the middle, people can't help but marvel at the shocking beauty of this architectural art. This kind of beauty cannot be described in words. This visual impact can only be experienced by being there.
The Chicago Mercantile
Exchange is a very large building. Looking up from the Chicago River, it looks like a huge castle, which is the famous Chicago Mercantile Market. When the building was completed in 1930, it was the largest building in the world at the time, covering an area of 372,000 square meters, a third larger than the Beijing Bird's Nest Stadium, occupying nearly two blocks of Chicago. Location. The idea of the Marshall Feld family who built this behemoth was to try to concentrate Chicago's retail industry in one big market, making it a large wholesale market, a concept that may have become the prototype of the earliest supermarket. In order to build such a "largest building in the world at that time", the architect had to use "the method of building a water conservancy dam" to build it. To this end, many rails and large-scale transmission and transportation equipment are specially laid, and the method of large-scale concrete pouring is used to put the building industry into the machine age. The building consumed a total of 3 million cubic meters of concrete, 60,000 tons of steel and a total of 64 kilometers of pipes. After completion, the building had 13 large warehouses with different functions, the largest indoor trading floor in the world at the time, and a 25-story central building with a total of 4,000 windows. The building has actually become a veritable "city within a city". The record for the "world's largest building" was held until 1943, when it was surpassed by the Pentagon in Washington. Since then, the Pentagon has been overtaken by other buildings. Today, the Guinness Book of World Records ranks the building out of 20.
An interesting fact about this building is that it was purchased in 1945 by Joseph Kennedy, the father of former US President John F. Kennedy, and held by the Kennedy family for nearly 50 years. "In memory of those outstanding American businessmen", Joseph Kennedy erected eight giant bronze heads in front of the building in 1953, which were the famous sales giants in American history, known as the "Business Hall of Fame" . Today, these heads stand on the banks of the Chicago River, gazing silently at the river and the buildings of Chicago.
Twin Towers
Among Chicago's cascading, cube-like towers is the Twin Towers. It consists of two 179-meter-high 65-story cylindrical buildings, which are shaped like two corn cobs. The lower half is a spiral parking lot, and the upper part is an apartment for accommodation. The protruding balconies just form the appearance of corn petals. The design of this spiral parking is unique to these two buildings. When it was completed in 1964, it was billed as the tallest apartment building in the world at the time. Its shape subverts the traditional cubic building model around it and is unique among these high-rise buildings. The lower 19 floors of the two cylindrical towers are spiral parking lots, providing 1,792 parking spaces. The entire 20th floor is an automatic laundry room, and the 21st to 60th floors are apartment-style housing, with a total of 900 apartments. On the top of the building are many utilities including a theatre, gymnasium, fitness centre, swimming pool, ice rink, bowling alley, department store and several restaurants, and on the ground floor there is a small boat dock for small yachts. Someone joked that you could just live in an apartment without going out, have everything, and be self-sufficient. Such a building has actually become a "super apartment", a "hoarding city", a self-sufficient "small city", which has changed people's traditional way of life to a large extent, making the so-called convenience, enjoyment and The automated "modern way of life" has become a trendy way of life for young people after the "World War II" in the United States.
Millennium Park
Adjacent to the Art Institute of Chicago and the shores of Lake Michigan, Millennium Park is a great pride of Chicago. Covering an area of 24.5 hectares, the park is said to be the largest rooftop park in the world because it is erected above the Illinois Central Station. This is to emulate the design of Grand Central Station in New York, and hide the entire station underground, thus solving the problem of urban railway stations being both unsightly and cluttered. Construction of the entire park began in 1998 and was not completed until 2004.
Millennium Park is an open, iconic park of the 21st century. Due to the influence of post-modern design style and trend of thought, many designs here have the characteristics of openness and interaction, which is a new representative of the "Chicago School". There is a unique sculpture in the park called "Raindrop". The artist made a "raindrop" out of highly polished pure steel, 5 meters high and 110 tons, resembling a huge drop of mercury. When tourists approach this huge "raindrop", they can clearly see themselves and the surrounding buildings, which are reflected on the steel ball. The steel ball clearly reflects the classic buildings around Millennium Park and the blue sky above Lake Michigan. Tourists and sculptures form an interactive relationship, no longer like traditional sculptures, just a single presentation that people can only enjoy quietly.
On the other side of Millennium Park is the Crone Face Fountain, which consists of two erected large glass curtain walls with electronic video screens. The video screen shows the faces of different people, men, women, old people, and children, all of whom are ordinary citizens of Chicago. When the face on the screen pouted, a spring of water sprayed from its mouth into a pool in front. The faces on the display can be added or changed, and the citizens of Chicago can see their faces here.
Close to the lake, Grant Park and Millennium Park are connected together. This is the largest and most secluded leisure place in downtown Chicago. In the center of the park, there is a large-scale illuminated fountain built in 1927, the Buckingham Fountain, which is 85 meters in diameter. The central water column and hundreds of water splashes around it change with the computer-controlled jet, reaching a height of 45 meters. At night, all kinds of lights shine from under the fountain, dazzling and spectacular, becoming the highlight of the night view of Chicago.
The 2016 Olympic Games will be held in Chicago, and she will surprise the world with the strength and beauty of modern architecture.
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