The Avery Review

Jonathan D. Solomon —

Helmut Jahn’s James R. Thompson Center and the Aesthetics of Postmodern Citizenship

This paper was first presented at “The Aesthetics of Citizenship” conference at the University at Buffalo in the Spring of 2015.

Courtesy of JAHN.
“The locals are calling it the spaceship and the Star Wars building. When it was dedicated a few weeks ago, the atrium was draped with a huge banner reading ‘A Building for Year 2000,’ and since then the crowds have come to gawk as they have not at any new building in downtown Chicago in years.”

—Paul Goldberger in “Futuristic State Office Building Dazzles Chicago,” New York Times, July 22, 1985.


“People take a building personally when they are paying for it.”

—David Breskin in “The Master Builder,” GQ, May 1985.

Jonathan D Solomon is Associate Professor and Director of Architecture, Interior Architecture, and Designed Objects at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His drawings, analytical and counterfactual urban narratives, appear in Cities Without Ground (ORO, 2012), and 13 Projects for the Sheridan Expressway (PAPress, 2004).

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