There is not many things better than the sound of children's laughter and seeing them play without reserve or self-conscientiousness. We meandered about Millennium Park today after doing school stuff for the first several hours. The eighteen of us layed on the green, bug-less, grass of the lawn (where we will return this evening for a free outdoor concert) in Millennium Park at the Pavilion by Frank Gehry. After half an hour-ish and slightly reddened faces and arms, we strolled down to the big bean sculpture thing. It is highly reflective and seen in photographs and postcards and such. It was humorous to see children and grown children play with their distorted reflections as they touched, ran around, layed underneath, and took self portraits. We then walked down to street level where there is this water park of sorts. There is a long, rectangular plaza covered w
ith a couple of inches of water which is continuously fed in different manners by two tall elements (that display digital images on the surfaces) on either end of the water play scape. Children cannot help but run to it and in it, even if that means just playing in their undies. Kids that knew each other not become fast friends here; everybody is welcome to whatever game another created. Hmm, why do children understand and practice so well what we mature, thinking adults cannot? Let's learn to play again - with everybody ... or at least remember to actively practice out loud laughter.
Welcome now to Chicago. I am here with my architecture studio class. We are competing in a design competition for a nature/birding center on Northerly Island in Chicago. So we have come here to do site observations and regular architectural touring. Chicago is a good place to do that sort of thing- they have more physical history (in the form of buildings) than we do in Texas (and more specifically, San Antonio), but not as much as many places in Europe.Anyway, so we arrived on Thursday at just before noon. We checked into the hotel (which is right on the edge of downtown on Michigan Ave. and Congress). Then we headed to a Thai place for lunch and on to our site for observation. We made it to the far side of the 90+ acre peninsula before it began to rain. Five of us decided that we could out run the impending rain and took off running down the bike/running paths. We did not beat the rain - the front of me was dry, the back of me was soaked. Good times. We then went up to the top of the Sears' tower (once the tallest building in the world) to catch the city from above. The day ended with going to the self-proclaimed best Chicago-style pizza place. That was Thursday.
Friday (yesterday): long day. We rode the L ($2 per ride!) to IIT- Illinois Institute of Technology ... awesome campus. The student center is designed by Rem Koolhaus, and Crown Hall (architecture building) by Mies Van deRohe, which we study in our arch. history class. We took the L again to University of Chicago. We walked the blocks that encompass the school and walked a short couple of blocks to Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie house - an architectural icon. And understandably, the rest of the world outside architecture nerds has no idea. Ten of us walked about 40 minutes to an Italian restaurant uptown, had great food, lots of laughs, and got out about 11pm. Another good day.
And now it is today (Saturday). We will be heading to the site again shortly and then about noon-ish hit up Millennium Park.
