Imagine the rush if you could take a building you really hated and just blow it up.
Most of them were ecstatic.
“He thinks it’s wonderful, but he’s reluctant to publicly name a building to blow up,” said Thomas Beeby’s secretary. Beeby designed the Harold Washington Library. “He suggests you call Stanley Tigerman.”
“I don’t believe in blowing up buildings, not even the worst,” he had huffed when we called. “I think it’s not what architects do. They try to make something out of nothing. So I ain’t that lighthearted. Sure we all have our least favorite people, food, buildings, but I’d just as soon that the buildings I hate remain there, for me to vent my angst on. Otherwise I might vent my angst on someone else, I might decide I want to blow you up. I like having buildings that I hate. Then I can say nasty things about them.”
“That’s Stanley,” he said calmly. “Stanley would always take the opposite side, you must understand that. You can answer by saying ‘Mr. Tigerman, blowing up is no better or worse than bulldozers, and Mr. Tigerman has bulldozed my campus.’ How do you like that?”
(1) 150 N. Michigan. 1984, A. Epstein and Sons International Inc. Popular among ordinary folk, the distinctive building with the diamond-shaped slashed top, formerly known as Associates Center and recently renamed Stone Container Building, is loathed among architects. Out of 29 votes, it took four, with three more architects volunteering it as a second choice.
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“It’s in all the postcards of Chicago,” complained Laurence Booth of Booth/Hansen & Associates.
