ARCHITECTURAL STUDY TRIPS

GENERAL

GENERAL

Over recent years the Company has organized a number of architectural study trips. These have taken the form of either extended weekend breaks to British or mainland European cities of longer trips further afield.

In the first category have been trips to York, Riga, Berlin and, most recently, Lyon. A report compiled by one of the tour party - Dr Mervyn Miller - is appended below.

In February 2005 a more ambitious tour was organized to Cuba. This took in visits to Havana and Trinidad (both World Heritage Sites), and Ceinfuegos which was aspiring to gain the same status and has since achieved its aim.

There was another long trip in August 2006 to Chicago and Pittsburgh / Fallingwater. This looked at not just the work of Frank Lloyd Wright but also that of many of the founders of modern Chicago. There were side trips to Racine, Wisconsin to look at the Johnson Wax building and Wingspread as well as to Milwaukee to see the Calatrava Art Gallery there and to be shown what has been done in the city by its inspirational Chief Planner - British trained Bob Greenstreet. The visit to Fallingwater was complimented by a visit to the nearby Kentuck Knob - one of Wright's Usonian Homes. In Pittsburgh the group were shown, in addition to Richardson's Allegheny Courthouse, a range of mondernist houses.

A detailed and illustrated report can be seen in the Company October 2006 Newsletter.

LYON TRIP - MAY 2006

Wednesday-Thursday May 17-18

Wet, wet, wet. As usual, this is a personal diary giving my own reaction to what I did and what I saw. It's certainly not meant to be an official record of a long weekend which began and ended with severe wet weather. It was pretty miserable as I drove around the M25 to Heathrow the evening before take-off, and dry but cold as I headed for Terminal 4 early the next morning. The flight out was uneventful apart from some turbulence as we approached Lyon. The captain was confident that there was fine weather ahead. However, Richard Saxon had warned 'it could thunder on Thursday!'. His knowledge of meteorology was evidently superior to that of a BA captain.

It wasn't raining as we headed into Lyon on our coach, but the heavens opened as we approached the central area of the city, running alongside the River Rhone. It's very confusing because the one-way system has different directions on Left and Right banks, so orientation took some time. The Hotel Wilson was quite adequate although not outstanding but was in a handy position for most of what we wanted to see. It was raining as we set out for the Metro station, brandishing our Lyon day tickets, with warnings about not using more than one per day which would have invalidated them. We confidently set off for the platform in the direction of Gare de Vaise and were delighted and disconcerted to see Richard encouraging us from the opposite platform - it was comforting to know that we were in the right rather than our leader. At Vieux Lyon we changed to the funicular up to Minimes. Here the weather launched its worst as we made our way through an important Roman site and took refuge in the Gallo-Roman Museum. This proved to be a real find, although it could have done with a café. Opened in 1975, it was designed by Bernard-Louis Zehrfuss, one of the most important French architects of the postwar period. The museum was cleverly built onto the cliff side above the Roman theatre and ramped its way down from the summit to galleries in which artefacts including stunning mosaics were well displayed. I had actually visited the museum back in 1990. At that date you could exit through the bottom to look at the Roman theatre from the stage end. The lower levels were under reconstruction, including the authentic recreation of Roman villas in ever-versatile MDF.

After that it was a brisk walk past the Notre Dame Basilica to see the spectacular view of Lyon from the terrace, across the River Saone, and beyond across the Rhone to the modern city centre. Alas, the view was shrouded in cloud and rain. I took a look inside the basilica, which was completed in 1894. This kind of architecture was evidently not to everybody's taste but it is certainly the ultimate experience in Roman Catholic kitsch, with a sumptuousness that would not disgrace a Roman bathhouse.

Zig-zagging down the tree clad hillside, there was some basic shelter, but the heavens opened again as I approached the Romanesque Cathedral of St. Jean. Here, the principal attraction for me was the superb 11th/12th century glass of the apse. Long lancets were made up of seven stages of medallions. I rather wished I had taken some binoculars as the individual panels were remarkable, not least the scene where Salome danced before Herod. There she was, in a fetching green gown, doing a back-break almost from a modern hip-hop session.

Once outside, it seemed that the rain had set in. I decided to make my way to the Opera House on the opposite bank, to see what was available for Handel's Alcina, which was to be presented on Saturday evening. More of the Opera House later. Mission accomplished, I made my back through two underground lines and found that it was slightly less damp as I made my way back to the hotel for our local wine tasting arranged by Patricia Stefanovicz.

We were all agreeably mellow as we set off for dinner at the Restaurant de Fauviere, by the side of the basilica, with a spectacular view across to the city. The light seemed to penetrate the mist rather better than did the buildings in the daylight view. The meal was good, but not outstanding, and we ordered taxis for the return trip as the funicular stopped working at 10 pm.

Friday May 19

Once again, we set off in a straggling crocodile to the metro station at the sinisterly named Guillotiere Station, crossing this time to Bellecour on the left bank of the Saone, between it and the Rhone. We made our way on a different line to Croix-Rousse, in the heart of the former silk-weaving district. Monsieur Jacquard, the inventor of the card punch loom, which enabled the weaving of spectacular patterns, was commemorated in a statue, which we saw as we exited the metro. We visited one weaving establishment, well set up with a variety of antique looms, some of which are still in use. The punch card mechanism clearly provided inspiration for the development of the tabulator in the late 19th century, and, ultimately, for computers. I wasn't tempted to buy anything, particularly ties, which I seem to have abandoned these days in any case. Mostly they were garish in colour and overpriced.

We pottered down the hill and emerged in the Place des Terraux, flanked by the Musee des Beaux Arts and the Hotel de Ville. We made a welcome coffee stop alongside a fantastic 19th century fountain, with horses drawing a chariot charging across the basin, and emitting steam from their nostrils every ten minutes. Others bought tickets for the opera, across the far side of the Hotel de Ville. Then it was lunchtime and we sampled the diversity of Lyonnaise cuisine in the many restaurants behind the quayside of the Saone.

The weather had improved all morning and remained bright-ish and breezy for the cruise around the confluence of the Saone and Rhone. Both rivers were in spate and rising due to the heavy rainfall which augmented the melting snows from the alps. The trip provided a good perspective on the urban form of the city, Vieux Lyon on the right bank of the Saone, with the 18th century extension down the peninsular of Perrache on the left bank. We emerged into troubled waters at the confluence itself around the Presqu'ile, which really was an island until the end of the 18th century. The site has been cleared of industrial buildings and walls and is set for the construction of a major new museum designed by Rem Koolaas. No construction was visible as yet.

The boat then swung into the Rhone and headed north beneath a succession of bridges. On our right (Left Bank) was the site of the original Cite Industrielle, designed by Tony Garnier (1869-1948), who was City Architect before the Great War, and then in private practice locally, prolifically building in the interwar period. His vast Abattoir de la Mouche, constructed 1909-13, has been refurbished as an exhibition hall, and I marked it down for a future visit, as it was barely visible from the boat. This district, along with much of the Left Bank has been undergoing comprehensive regeneration for at least twenty years.

The original crossing point of the rivers were made in the Middle Ages and Lyon developed as a classic trade crossroads - north-south along the rivers, and east-west along the highways. Both original bridges were originally timber and periodically rebuilt over the centuries so only the historic route survives. However, the 19th century rebuilding of the various bridges created a riverside fit to rival Paris. It had also been embellished with embankments and the spectacular, and now under refurbishment, open air Nautical Stadium. Near the Pont Lafayette, the boat turned around and sped southwards along the Rhone which was fast flowing, and seemingly rising even as we sailed along. We returned against the current along the Saone.

I decided to take advantage of the early evening opening of the Gericault Exhibition at the Musee des Beaux Arts. Born in the 1790s, the artist came to prominence in the early 19th century, particularly with his shocking representation of 'The Raft of the Medusa', a ghoulish representation of a shipwreck where survivors had been so desperate that they indulged in cannibalism. Gericault was a strange and morbid individual. The exhibition was appropriately subtitled 'The Madness of a World'. Even normal subjects such as portraits seem to have unquiet overtones, particularly those of children. The main picture, The Raft, was conspicuous by its absence, although there were many sketches for it and a small oil esquisse. Perhaps the Louvre in Paris declined for political reasons to lend such a prestigious work to provincial Lyon.

The evening dinner was just across the river on the Perrache side and was a typical 'bouchon' restaurant just off the Charite with its spectacular fountains.

Saturday May 20

For many of us, Saturday proved to be the architectural highlight. The Dominican Convent of Sainte Marie de la Tourette is a building we have all known since we were students. I remember hearing the rapturous accounts from my older contemporaries who managed to locate and visit the building, which was quite difficult in the early 1960s. I prided myself on having visited the Pilgrimage Chapel at Ronchamp in 1961, but the words of wisdom from my elders was 'ah, but you should see La Tourette'. In many ways the epitome of Corb's sculptural style, the building was closely related to the succession of Unites d'Habitation, beginning with the Marseilles block in 1945-52. This building exploited the geometry of the modulor, with its cellular elevations, sculptural roof and the building raised above ground on robust pilotis. Several of these buildings were constructed and in addition to Marseilles, I have visited those at Nantes-Reze and Berlin. The convent was commissioned in 1953, for a remote hillside site in eastern France in Eveux, above the little village of L'Arbresle, 25 km west of Lyon.

We set out with a sense of expectation through the undulating countryside and arrived shortly after 10 am. Preconceptions can be misleading. For me, the building appeared smaller than I had expected, but we approached from the uphill side, and it is set on a steeply graded hillside, only revealing the full mass from below. Regrettably, we did not have time to make our way down to the lower end of the site to view the impact - a pity. The building was arranged top down according to our guide, with the rooftop grass promenade constituting the open air cloister (we didn't see that either), then two floors of individual cells for the monks, below which were teaching rooms and library, a social level below that on the far side with the refectory, then ramps down into the church, which was the only part of the complex to be in touch with the ground - the rest being raised on pilotis. The outer perimeter was square, with the central quadrangle occupied by the geometric volumes and connecting links of the subsidiary parts of the building. The construction was both in cast reinforced concrete, and some prefabrication, particularly the cladding, with exposed black stone aggregate panels, of the two floors of cells. The moulds for these were, apparently, brought direct from Nantes-Reze.

The concrete now shows its age, but it was very roughly cast in the first instance. Some of the more delicate elements such as the 'harmonic' mullions of the windows of the refectory, and corridors, using a geometric system devised with Iannis Xenakis, were flaking away, and had been very rough from the start, with chipped arrises. Textured whitewashed pebbledash was applied to certain parts of the building and appeared to have weathered reasonably well. Internally there had been inevitable problems with leakage, particularly around the rooflights of the side chapel of the church. Detailing was chunky or crude, according to your opinion. The lack of precision of the slit windows along the corridors, together with the direct glazing of the 'harmonic' windows added to the basic sculptural quality of the building. Corbusier's 'Beton' was very 'brute' in this instance.

Despite these evident defects, it was an exciting architectonic experience, both outside and in. Corbusier was always a rationalist when it came to the use of geometry and this was evident both in terms of the subdivision of the elevations, but also in the use of geometrical solids, particularly pyramids. It was only around the entrance features, with the twin visiting pavilions (now the bookshop) and the outer wall of the church, that free curvature came into play.

The original vision was that of Father Alain Couturier, who set aside Corbusier's agnosticism in favour of his perception of the sacred quality of Corb's architecture. The building was to provide a spiritual training centre for novice Dominicans in the Lyon region, 'to house one hundred hearts and one hundred bodies in silence'. Corb visited the site first in 1953 and the building was completed by 1960. Regrettably, it doesn't seem to have been operating at full strength for more than a decade, and there are now only eight residents rattling around in this vast concrete extravaganza. Retreats, weekend courses and visits help to keep the place ticking over, but the long-term future certainly will need to involve comprehensive restoration before too long. Our rather limited experience of the interior omitted the cells - rather a pity as I should have thought that there were enough empty ones to give us a taste of their austerity and we made our way down to the church for the midday service.

The congregation was swelled by people who apparently were on a residential course. The height and narrowness of the rectangular church made an impressive acoustic for chanting and singing, but the verbal parts of the service were inaudible. Nevertheless, the church does have a certain monumental quality which, with its verticality, relates to gaunt Romanesque chapels. Some relief from the prevailing gloom is given by the rooflights to the side chapels which are painted in primary colours. These provide circles of coloured light within a blue-painted ceiling and a golden yellow panel on the end wall. Corbusier's colours are not subtle and I personally found the green, used in various places including the curtains for the refectory and the cupboard within the pyramidal oratory to be rather unpleasant. After the service we made our way to the refectory for a simple but good lunch, featuring local lentils and gammon. The rose wine was also welcome.
Altogether a worthwhile, if rather mixed experience. To many of us, in our student days at least, Corbusier seemed to be the greatest architect of the 20th century. I'm not so certain now. Many years ago Louis Helmann drew a cartoon set in heaven with the angels commenting about the Almighty's irrational behaviour. 'God's rather confused today - he thinks he's Le Corbusier!'. No comment.

St. Romain en Gal was bound to be somewhat of an anticlimax. We made our way down, close to the Roman aqueduct which had been omitted from the itinerary as likely to delay our arrival back at Lyon for those who were going to the opera in the evening - and travelled down to a very full Rhone, which appeared to be likely to burst its banks before too long. The Archaeological Museum is a spectacular building, lightly connected to the ground on pilotis, which does least damage to the historic ground below. A large Roman city had been laid out along the banks of the river, then, apparently, abandoned, in favour of the development of Vienne on the opposite bank. Warehouses and villas had been excavated, and skilfully recreated in models and a video presentation. Superlative mosaics had been excavated and lovingly reassembled in the museum. The remains of central courtyard gardens, together with a very fine range of flushing multiple-seater lavatories could be visited in the grounds outside the museum. It all showed just how important the Roman settlements in the Rhone Valley had been, although we did not see evidence for the spectacular theatres which have survived elsewhere, as at Orange. Finally, we boarded the bus for a short journey back to Lyon, where seven of us were going to a night at the opera.

We departed for the Opera House in taxis. The architect Jean Nouvel had rebuilt within the footprint of the 19th century house, retaining only the loggia and the foyer above in its original state. On entering the impression was one of wholesale blackness. We had heard that there was a good view from the enormous arched roof superstructure but found, surprisingly, that the restaurant didn't open until 8 pm, half an hour after the curtain went up. Clearly opera-goers are not supposed to be hungry, or vice a versa. We made our way down to the bar in the depths below the foyer. Blackness was all pervasive. It would probably make quite a good permanent setting for a cabaret version of 'Orpheus in the Underworld'. Indeed, this is also a minor auditorium for concerts and recitals. Access to the upper floors is by a series of escalators, and then it was through a bright scarlet circulation corridor around the perimeter of the stalls, and into the main auditorium - back to black, so to speak. The auditorium seems immensely tall and indeed has six levels of galleries around the traditional horseshoe plan. Those who suffer from vertigo surely should not venture to the gods.

One of our number, Tom Ball, had purchased a ticket for one of the galleries and his experience was pretty awful, having been shown to the wrong seat by one of the attendants. He didn't like the production at all and left at the interval. The remainder of our party was in the stalls, my seat was central and I had a pretty good view of all that went on. The seats also were black. The attendants looked rather like camp versions of old-fashioned cinema usherettes, only many were ushers, clad in black tee shirts advertising the production, over long swirly black baggy trousers, with a side slash, revealing vivid red. Rouge et noir is obviously the overall theme of the house. We sat expectantly for the beginning and the curtain, which appeared to be satin-finished panels of stainless steel arose to reveal a dingy set. Perched on a platform in front of the stage, rather than in a pit, was the orchestra, a period instrument group, which I found were excellent throughout.

It always seems rather pointless to present an 18th century opera - this one actually premiered at Covent Garden in 1735 - with production values which reflect some political message, with a set that in this case resembled a grand town mansion, as it might have looked after being converted into the headquarters of the Secret Police of a Communist state, say the Stasi. The costumes too were of the postwar period - fashionable chic of East Berlin c.1962. The plot, as was the production, was impenetrable. I had seen Alcina once before at the English National Opera. People asked me about the plot - I replied that I couldn't remember, but that the music, and the singing, were pretty good. The latter were tonight. Alcina is a sorceress holding many in thrall from her magic island kingdom. Characters come and go, some as 'travesty' roles of women singing men's roles, originally written for castrati. One of our party, Jaki attempted to rationalise the plot in terms of a modern setting in a Maltese brothel. She probably got as close as anybody to understanding the action. The libretto, which included the full words of the opera, together with a blow-by-blow account of each scene and the use of French surtitles didn't help elucidate matters either. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it all, and I am usually a fierce critic of much contemporary opera production.

The singing was absolutely glorious, led by the Alcina, Catherine Nagaestad, who appeared as a vamp in a rather sexy little black dress, and was clearly cast as a nymphomaniac rather than an enchanter, by the current producer. The other major principal was Bradanante, sung by the robust Swedish mezzo-soprano, Ann Hallenberg. This was a trouser role for a woman, married to Ruggeiro but dressed as her brother, Ricciardo. Such is the stuff of confusion, and it wasn't really cleared at the end when Ricciardo who had been captured by the sorcery of Alcina broke the urn which dissipated the illusion of the palace of Alcina which was engulfed by water. With joy, all the victims of her magic retrieved their human form. Actually, they had never lost it and the various animals, including the lion which Alcina let out of his cage in order to kill Alberto, a few scenes earlier, did not materialise.

With some degree of exhaustion, although fulfilled musically, we trooped out of the Opera House at 10-45, to be directed down the rather unpleasant external steel escape stairs - hi-tech gone wrong. It had been a stimulating and challenging evening.

Sunday 21 May

For the last day, we were on our own, if we wanted to. I usually find myself rushing off to things that other people would rather not visit, so I made my way south to the Avenue Debourg to see the Grand Hall designed by Tony Garnier, originally as the municipal slaughterhouse. It was certainly worth finding, and the surrounding district was now in course of regeneration, as we had seen on the boat trip two days earlier. Clearly there was no way of getting into the building, but I walked around its changed perimeter and noted the high quality of landscaping in the new district, and that work had begun on a grand square in front of the building, out of which led the new boulevard Scientifique de Tony Garnier. La Cite Industrielle had become transformed into hi-tech.

Then it was back to the underground to rediscover Villeurbanne. I had visited this in 1990 with my son Sam on one of our jaunts around France with railcards. It had proved to be an enduring model of social, not to say Socialist, housing from the mid-1930s. The layout combines Beaux Arts with Modernism. A boulevard led through the heart of the development, flanked by low-rise blocks with ground floor shops, with tall point blocks at intervals. In the centre was the Town Hall, rather more Art Deco in character, where I had made an internal visit and had, incidentally, picked up a free copy of the Maastricht Treaty - which remained unread until shredded. Refurbishment work had evidently taken place and the development looked splendid, aided by the fact that there was a lively garden market around the front of the Town Hall. Between the Town Hall and the People's Theatre, a new square which incorporated underground parking, was being laid out, so it will look even better if I visit again in a few years time. The development is little published. However, the quarter consisted of 1500 flats, shops, offices, a town hall, library, municipal theatre, swimming pool, and associated clinics and clubrooms. The development was designed by Leroux and Giroud. Neither well-known in England, presumably working under the overall direction of Garnier. Twin 18 storey blocks act as an entrance to the development, with a distant view of the tower on the Town Hall blocking the axis. I personally find this housing quarter far more humane than the much better publicised Unites d'Habitation of Le Corbusier.

I had noted the new Cite Internationale when we passed by on the bus on Saturday. This contains development designed by Renzo Piano, a new and spectacular Palais des Congres on a site between the Rhone and the present Parc de la Tete d'Or, which was laid out in the 1900s, and like many French parks has been beautifully maintained. I intended to visit the Museum of Contemporary Art, a building left over from a 1930s exhibition, but found that it was closed until 19 June. Still, its café was open and I had a pleasant light lunch accompanied by rose wine in the sunshine before taking the new trolleybus service back to the city centre. I had some time on my hands and rode the metro to the end of the line for a brief glimpse at the spectacular Gare de Vaise, high above the Saone. On my return I spotted fellow travellers having a last drink on the Saone embankment near the Pont Wilson, prior to our reclaiming baggage for the trip back to the airport.

One delight remained. This was to explore the TGV station attached to Lyon St. Expeury Airport. The station had been opened in 1992, shortly after my last visit, and had been designed by the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava. Architect, engineer and urbanist, his work has been feted worldwide. The station was an arched structure, burying its nose in the ground beyond, looking like the bones of a prehistoric concorde, and indeed with its platform 'wings' looks like an aeroplane on plan. The total detailing with each and every piece related to the whole was rigorously impressive. The arched structure contains the entry hall to the station with upper platforms leading through a concrete structure and escalators down to the platform. A double TVG with two storey carriages was in and I made my way down to look at it and watch its departure. The conductor motioned to me, thinking I was about to board the train. Rather hastily I made a 'no, no', gesture and the train departed. I was witnessed by at least six of my travelling companions who thought that I was trying to escape from the flight homewards. Would that I had, for it was pretty miserable. British Airways strikes me as being a thoroughly unsatisfactory airline. We had checked in and had been first in the queue, waiting for half an hour before the desk opened. Nevertheless, we were all shunted to the back of the plane on a crowded and bumpy flight. The so-called food consisted of a very basic and rather nasty sandwich, and a sickly Belgian chocolate mousse. The latter was a slander on the proud chocolatiers of Flanders. I reported the matter to a complacent crew member as I left the plane. Incidentally, due to the thunderstorm, we were delayed in landing, and incredibly parked on the open apron, rather than being connected to Terminal 4. Moreover, we had to wait while someone fetched the steps to descend from the aircraft. It was a case of wet, wet, wet recurring but the miserable journey around the M25 couldn't dim the excellent and varied weekend that I had enjoyed with convivial company. All congratulations to Ann and Richard Saxon for having so thoroughly researched the itinerary, and undertaking a dummy run to make sure it all fitted together. David Cole-Adams also proved his usual excellent trouble-shooter self. Now it's a case of looking forward to the summer trip to Chicago for several of us.

CHICAGO, PITTSBURGH & FALLING WATER
24 - 31 August 2006
(This is the travel Diary of Mervyn Miller)

MY KIND OF TOWN, CHICAGO

I don't really like Frank Sinatra's singing that much. However, he memorably hymned the praises of Chicago, possibly due to Mob influence! He expressed surprise at seeing a man dance with his wife on State Street, 'that great street where they do things they don't do in Broadway', and summed up the experience in another memorable ballad, 'That's my Kind of Town, Chicago is'. I am with him all the way there. It's by far my favourite American city, not least because I have visited it so many times since 1968, when I arrived at the University of Illinois, in Urbana/Champaign, as a greenhorn graduate student, rather naively thinking that the Campus must be in the suburbs of Chicago. It wasn't. But I soon found my way up to State Highway 45, visiting good friends who were living near the university campus. I also spent Christmas 1968 in Chicago, in an apartment on Astor Street, Gold Coast, and saw HMS Pinafore, presented by the D'Oyly Carte Opera, on tour, at the Auditorium Theater, then newly restored after a period of great uncertainty. So, Chicago came to represent something very special in my life. It was in the summer of 1969, that they held the first Frank Lloyd Wright open day in Oak Park. The old rascal had the last laugh. Giving it about that he been born in 1869, this was officially the centenary year, with US Post Office issuing a commemorative stamp. In fact, it was quickly established that he had been born two years earlier. Red faces all round! However, luck was with me, as I wouldn't have been in Chicago in 1967. So much for the nostalgia, but I seriously celebrate the city in this diary, based on the visit of the Worshipful Company of Chartered Architects from 24-31 August 2006.

Thursday 24 August

Despite the problems caused by the panic-stricken airport authority in Britain, we got through without any real difficulty. Waiting in line used to be a British triumph of teeth tightly gritted patience. Patience is worn thin, but we shuffled through the line to the check-in desk, then shuffled through the security, and after a break, during which I discovered that Terminal 3 at Heathrow has an excellent sea food bar which sells smoked salmon, scrambled egg, with a glass of Bucks Fizz (just the pick-me-up I needed after an early start), it was back to American Airlines check at the departure gate. Then it was up, up and away, Chicago here we come. We landed virtually on time at O'Hare, and I got pole position for Immigration, which was friendly and swift. Others were not so fortunate as the queues backed up. Then, after a mild panic about my suitcase, which contained virtually everything as I had not realised that some of the hand luggage restrictions had been lifted, didn't appear for quite a long while, we took limo-taxis along the interstate towards the Loop. The magnificent skyline, framed by the Hancock building and the Sears Tower soon appeared on the horizon getting ever closer, quickening the pulse.

Club Quarters were located on East Wacker Drive, facing the Chicago River, in an architectural panorama embracing Marina Towers (the famous 'corn cobs' of the 1960s) and ending in the Wrigley Building and the Chicago Tribune Tower, masterpieces of Italian Renaissance and Gothic-style resourcefully adopted to skyscraper design. Below my room was the Chicago River, with its myriad bridges, beautified under Daniel Burnham's epoch-making Chicago Plan of 1909. How fortunate they were with this architect/planner who cut his teeth on the Capital City of the Columbian Exposition of 1893, then gained confidence of the civic elite to issue his magnum opus, sixteen years later. While our Architectural Foundation guide called it 'Paris on the Prairie', it was really much more than that, and aspects of the plan have guided Chicago ever since. 'Was this in the Burnham Plan' seems to be a question posed whenever any major civic beautification arises.

Having checked in an unpacked, it was down to the Architectural Foundation office on Michigan Avenue, facing the Art Institute. We met our 150% enthusiastic all-American 'docent' guide Denise. She was a cheer-leader for Chicago. Not that it really needs them, but after a while the enthusiasm was infective as, travel-weary though we were, we took on a 2 ½ hour walk around the skyscraper district of The Loop. What a kaleidoscope of styles, periods, heights, and architectural ambiance.

The highlights came thick and fast. Commencing in the atrium of the Santa Fe Building, designed by Daniel Burnham in 1906, which had an impressive classical stair, and a glazed roof with a fine tracery of iron supports, we made foray into The Loop, pausing, sometimes only too briefly to look at the highlights along the way. These included the Federal Center, a late exercise in Mies van der Rohe manic grid planning; the restored Marquette Building, with its wonderful lobby having rich American Arts and Crafts mosaics featuring the American Indians, the Illini; and the remarkable La Salle Building, an Art Deco masterpiece of 1934, with a lobby that got everything right. Hollywood musicals of the early 1930s had similar décor, with remarkable attention to detail, and La Salle has frozen this in a time capsule so that we can still enjoy it. The most individual detail is the combined letter post and elevator indicator, the latter is a miniature elevation to the building in brass, with the elevator lights going up and down to the various floors. La Salle marked the end of a building boom, which had begun in the roaring twenties; by the time it was completed the Depression was in full grip of the country. Nevertheless, Chicago would not be beaten, and in 1933, organised its 'Century of Progress' Exhibition on the Lake Shore, to highlight the centenary of the city. Opinions were divided about the work of Philip Johnson and John Burgee in one of the most ambitious post-modern skyscrapers of the late 1980s. It had to be admitted that the lobby was magnificent in its scale, and the detailing was competent Italian Baroque. The central part, backing onto the elevators, featured an enormous tapestry from an image of the City Hall, as visualised by Jacques Guerlin, for Daniel Burnham's 1909 Chicago Plan. 'Make no small plans, they have no power to move men's souls', wrote Burnham all those years ago. This seemed to be the torch handed on to future generations which Johnson had attempted to pick up in this building. He didn't quite make it. We had quite a discussion about it, and there were several opinions that it was a tacky reproduction. I wouldn't quite go that far, but certainly it was compromised by the rather grotesque Renaissance-style light fittings, made worse by using patterned obscured glass.

We didn't make it to The Rookery Building, virtually opposite, before it closed. This was designed by Burnham and, notably, his partner, John Wellborn Root, in the late 1880s, a remarkable robust building in knobbly eclectic revival style - we had some time to identify the sources, which include Venetian Gothic, Lombardic, and more exotic detailing with Islamic ornament. Owen Jones's Grammar of Ornament', published in Britain in 1860, certainly had much to answer for, but it provided the springboard for the remarkable ornamentation which Sullivan specialised in, and we were to see that later. I reserved The Rookery for a revisit to appreciate the remarkable atrium, tactfully (surprisingly) remodelled by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1906. We gazed towards The Exchange Building, with its armchair-like form, promoted by Samuel Insull, including the Cereal Exchange, which accounted for the figure of Ceres atop the pyramidal roof. The Exchange block was, ominously, completed in 1929, just before the Stock Market crashed. We passed by the Monadnock Building, 1891, by Burnham and Root, a sixteen storey skyscraper built of loadbearing masonry, six feet thick at the base, and elegantly tapered - a persuasive demonstration that framed construction was a necessity for multi-storey buildings. We glimpsed the (to me) impossibly overblown neo-classical postmodern Public Library, Hammond, Beeby and Babka, 1992.

Then we retraced our steps, pausing to look at Skidmore Owings and Merrill's Inland Steel Building, completed in 1957. This was an elegant building at its time, with stainless steel cladding and blue tinted glazing, which has weathered remarkably well. There were some loose ends, including partitions which didn't always meet on the window mullions. The buildings had been refurbished and the architects' office had moved out some years back to the refurbished Santa Fe Building, which we were to visit the next day, to see how the practice now organised.

Finally, across to State Street, to view Carson Pirie Scott, the Department Store designed by Louis Sullivan in the 1890s, completed in its first phase just before the turn of the 19th century. It is still a remarkable building, with its confident look of the famous 'Chicago Window', which has a horizontal emphasis, having narrow sash windows, either side of the square plate-glazed picture window. This window fits perfectly into an iron or steel framed grid. Sullivan lightly ornamented the window reveals - in the later phases they tended to be plain but never mind, the whole elevations have a distinct rhythm, which indeed anticipate Modernism. However, despite coining the immortal phrase 'form follows function', Sullivan was not adverse to ornamentation. And boy it shows! The naturalistic forms tend to suggest European Art Nouveau, but are more organic in terms they are related to the structure of the building. Thus the clean, terra-cotta clad upper part rests on a podium with the shop windows framed in ornamental metalwork, painted with red lead and then grey/green to give a distinctive patina, and the ironwork erupted into magnificence on the curved corner pavilion, which symbolises the centre of Chicago, the point where the north and south streets divide - Carson's was on the south side. Some of the ironwork has been slightly simplified, notably when Carson's took over what originally was the Schlesinger Mayer firm which had commissioned it, and you can still see where some of the interlaced 'S/M' motif had been taken out, notably in the lunettes above the store entrance. It made a fine ending to a tour which, coming on top of our jet-lagged arrived in Chicago, left us feeling spiritually elated, but physically ready to drop.

Friday 25 August

An early start as we headed for Millennium Park. This was another Chicago Architecture Foundation tour. The Millennium Park is the culmination of development over the railroad tracks north of the Art Institute. Apparently, the idea of creating a new urban park, to add to the already magnificent Grant Park, laid out in the 1920s, came from the Mayor, Richard M. Daley, who happened to be sitting in a dentist's chair overlooking the site and suddenly came up with the idea of a spectacular state of the art urban space. Whatever the truth of that, it was certainly a brilliant idea. The centrepiece, the J. Pritzker Pavilion was designed by the well-nigh ubiquitous Frank Gehry, who had won the National Medal of Art and the Pritzker Price for Architecture. The pavilion, is a glorified spanned shell, but surrounded by his signature bent, some would say tortured, clouds of titanium-faced steel. Elegant though these may look front on, it requires a great deal of bent steel framework to hold them in place, and the backside is not exactly elegant. I find the same defect in the acclaimed Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. Nevertheless, in its context it is quite a brilliant piece of giant urban sculpture. Seen side on from Michigan Avenue it appears to hover in the sky. Front on, seen through the criss-cross grid of steel arches - apparently it was considered at one time that there should be a cover, the effect is brilliant. It is used for outdoor concerts, and as we approached we heard the full force of the multiple-speaker system pumping out the anodyne strains of a boy rock band. I'd certainly like to gauge the effect when a full symphony orchestra plays. There are several thousand permanent seats immediately in front, and these are sheltered from the weather by the curved sheets overhead, which also must act as sound reflectors. I guess they probably don't leave the sound system off, however, particularly as we were told it was state of the art and cost several million dollars. Beyond the seating area is an enormous lawn, which can drain in a few minutes should the heavens open. I must admit I wouldn't want to be sitting there with crowds in a rainstorm, however. What is most notable about this is that it is built above an underground car park. The structural implications were enormous, but overcome with the sacrifice of only a few lucrative parking spaces. I remember that car park well. I brought my parents to Chicago, when they visited me in the summer of 1969, and we parked there. When we returned, the car had been broken into, and several items of clothing were stolen - happily the serious luggage was in the boot, and that had not been forced. Nevertheless, we reported it to the police, who were polite but rather distant, and I remember my father particularly admired their firearms - nothing to what they carry today!

Around the Pritzker Pavilion is 21st century landscaping brilliantly designed and laid out by Christine Gustafson. There are varied sections within, including the Lurie Garden, which supposedly reflects aspects of Chicago's history. The planting was brilliant. To connect across to the north section of Grant Park is the BP Bridge, another exercise by Frank Gehry, with serpentine approaches, inevitably clad in more sheets of titanium-based steel. The decking is Brazilian hardwood (hopefully of a sustainable kind) and the way in which the planks follow the curves of the bridge is remarkable. Even the screw heads form lines which counterpoint with the boards. Both the Pritzker Pavilion and the BP Bridge were engineered by the Chicago office of Skidmore Owings and Merrill - we would visit their office during the afternoon.

In addition to the gardens and new pavilion, there is also a remarkable sculpture by Anish Kapoor, poised on the edge of the podium overlooking North Michigan Avenue. This again exploits steel, with a complex framework onto which are welded sheets of chromium-faced steel. Initially all the joins showed, but, again as a multi-million dollar task, the sculpture was covered over and polished to remove any trace of the joins. The result is ravishing. With its amorphous shape it could be an alien space craft, with a totally reflective surface, reacts with all the surrounding buildings and the people crowding to walk up to it and underneath it. It's a genuine piece of popular urban art, but also has terrific aesthetic value. I am not an admirer of Kapoor, especially since I saw a dreadful production of Idomeneo, designed by him, at Glyndebourne two years ago. Mozart's sublime music, superbly performed with a period instrument orchestra, directed by Simon Rattle, and with magnificent singing, had to site the idiosyncrasies both of the set and the production. Anyway, Kapoor has atoned for that with the Chicago Bean as it's popularly known, rather Cloud Gate, which the sculptor named it at the opening ceremony.

The final offering was the Crown Fountain by the Spanish architect Jaume Goensan. This consists of two tall towers, from which rained down Niagara waterfalls, facing each other across a flat surface, which contains only a few millimetre of surface water. The towers have projected images of Chicagoans, who were apparently filmed while sitting in dentist chairs, and at the end of a few minutes, during which they conversed about this and that, they were instructed to purse their lips and blow out an imaginary candle. The significance of this is that at the end, the pursed lips spew out jets of water. I'm sure the Victorians would have been disgusted by it but it's all rather fun and crowded by families and children who love splashing about and waiting to be drenched by the water. That ended the morning tour, another excellent offering by the Chicago Architecture Foundation. I don't believe that there is any other city on earth that takes such a pride in its architectural legacy, both ancient (that is comparatively) and modern.

Then we were on our own for a few hours. I retraced my steps into The Loop as I was determined to visit The Rookery atrium. It was worth the effort. It is sublime space, all the more remarkable for the combination of the work of John Wellborn Root and Frank Lloyd Wright. In handling big spaces, something that Wright did not often do during his early career, he showed mastery of the relationship of decorative design to the structural elements, in a way that he didn't in some of the more claustrophobic spaces of his Prairie houses, which we were to see on Saturday. Then it was a trek back to the hotel to collect fresh supplies of film, and across the river to take in the Magnificent Mile along North Michigan Avenue. The prospect, looking across the bridge, of the Wrigley Building and Chicago Tribune Tower was always an iconic group, and it frames the avenue which has taken over all the best shopping from The Loop area. It's rather a pity that the gain of the Magnificent Mile has resulted in loss to The Loop, which has bravely struggled to maintain its status. Alas, we heard that Carson Pirie Scott, which we had viewed on Friday, was about to close. However, the Magnificent Mile certainly lives up to its title. I remember it as being a quiet, or relatively so, appendage to the riverfront. After looking at the knobbly Gothic Water Tower, one of the few buildings to survive the 1871 conflagration, I took time to revisit the Hancock Building, just about to be completed when I arrived in 1968. Then it was the world's second tallest building, just a little lower than the Empire State Building in New York. Its elegant tapered form, like a giant obelisk, punctuated the Chicago skyline with a dramatic new silhouette. The brilliance of Hancock was the use of cross braces to stiffen the tower against the wind from the lake - even so it can sway by about 10" either way. It was also a pioneer in the combination of office accommodation and apartments. I remember at the time they thought that potential tenants would not wish to rent the space where the cross braces ran across the windows. Actually, it turned out that these were the most popular. The view from the top is certainly superb, given a clear day. However, although it seemed to be relatively clear, albeit humid at ground level, 1000 feet plus up in the sky, the mist was closing in across the lake front. So the rapture of the view was modified, but after all I had seen it in the past. I looked out along the Gold Coast with its remodelled lake front, a brilliant piece of enlightened open space planning, which had been accomplished throughout most of the 20th century. Looking out across the lake there was the somewhat tacky frontier aspect of Navy Pier, once a grim enclave of the Cold War, with patrol boats and even a submarine alongside as I recall.

When I descended, I walked the remainder of North Michigan Avenue to Lake Shore Drive, then took the promenade southwards. This is a good vantage point in which to view the twin apartment towers designed Mies van de Rohe in the early 1950s, and which established the rectilinear gridded aesthetic for many downtown office buildings. It actually took longer than I thought, when I crossed the river, which is rather an uncomfortable experience as the narrow sidewalk is shared with maniac bicyclists. Then it was across the BP Bridge, through the Millennium Park, and down towards Santa Fe Building, where we were due to visit the offices of Skidmore Owings and Merrill. I'd hoped to grab lunch on the way, but somehow it disappeared. I got nowhere asking about how long food would take in the café near the Crown Fountain. I did manage to grab some reasonable food in yet another Corner Bakery, just before the deadline for our visit, which itself was another great experience.

We reconvened at 4 pm for a visit to the office of Skidmore Owings and Merrill in the Santa Fe Building. A young associate, Lucas Tryggestad, showed us around. He was a graduate of the University of Illinois School of Architecture at Urbana/Champaign, coincidentally, but much, much later than the class of 1970, to which I had belonged. This was a fascinating visit. Skidmore's are one of the best established and largest architectural practices in Chicago and they have offices abroad, notably in London, where they have been involved with Broadgate and Canary Wharf for upwards of 20 years. The practice is celebrating its 75th anniversary, and it became one of the dominant contributors to Chicago architecture in the 1950s. Presently, it is preparing to infill the Chicago skyline on the north river front with the Trump Tower, the site of which is opposite where we have been staying at Club Quarters. This building will be above the height of the Hancock Tower, Skidmore's iconic building of the late 1960s. The geometry of the restricted site gives it strange floor plan, in contrast to the rectilinear IBM Building next door, the last work of Mies van der Rohe. At practically twice the height of the IBM Building, the Trump Tower will utterly dominate, I feel to the detriment of the river front ensemble. Still, it's an incredibly sophisticated piece of design, concrete framed, with three floors completed every month. At the moment all we saw was the skeleton and the first two storeys, with trial cladding of the curtain walling at the base of the office floors.

In addition to the Trump Tower, SOM's work ranges far and wide, including the master planning of Bahrain (a whole country with the area of metropolitan Chicago with a population of only 800,000), the world's tallest building under construction in Dubai (isn't everything now) and a new phase of Broadgate in London. Skidmore's had built along Bishopsgate in a rather heavy-handed Chicago-derived style in the 1980s. They had also constructed Exchange House, a brilliant piece of engineering which literally forms a bridge above the tracks from Liverpool Street Station. The next site along was cleared, and a slab was put in which would support a 12 or 13 storey building. Then came the downturn of the early 1990s and all further work ceased. Now all is going ahead with the construction of a new scheme, which ingeniously incorporates a tower, as well as the redesigned lower building, from which it is separated by a linear atrium. Support for the tower required steel A frames at the base so as to pick up the undercroft structure, already in place, and avoiding the railway tracks. We had a presentation about this building, which is well into construction stage from a Chinese architect of the practice. Although the contract administration is largely done in the London office, the design originated in Chicago.

The office employs several hundred architects, in addition to in-house structural engineering, urban design and such support facilities as model making. They occupy three floors in the Santa Fe Building, which the practice renovated, and moved from the 1950s Inland Steel Building, which we had seen the previous day on our walkabout. I dimly remember having visited the office in that incarnation, and had practically been dazzled by the glare from the white shirts - a strict dress code was in force then. Now it appears more casual, but that is the velvet glove for the steel hand of commercial nouse. Lucas had joined, first as an intern, during his vacations from the School of Architecture, and then became a full-time staff member on graduation seven years ago. As an associate, he obviously has some stake in the running of the practice: the inner circle of partners gain the benefit of the enormous fees, but also take all the risk. Projects such as we saw must be incredibly costly to set up. While their reputation is virtually self-sustaining, getting enough work to keep the practice going must take drive, energy and above all negotiating skill. They do bring in short-term contract posts when things are busy, and of course when large projects end, or there is a downturn, there is an exodus. Employment legislation in the United States doesn't give the sort of protection as in Britain and Europe. Likewise they have two week (10 working days) leave per year, and an allowance of up to ten days sick leave, without certification. It isn't exactly generous, but it means that things get done. Likewise, although the office nominally closes at 1 pm on Fridays (there were very few people there during our visit), most times they will be working long hours - Lucas mentioned a 60 hour week before our visit. It's all light years beyond most practices in Britain, particularly sole practitioners such as myself.

Saturday 26 August

This was Frank Lloyd Wright's day, to which I had looked forward with eager anticipation. Much of it would be a rerun for things seen on previous visits. No doubt you always see something new each time you visit the work of a master architect. Oak Park is a separate municipality, bordering on Chicago, a dozen or so miles west of The Loop. Development started in the 1870s - before then it had been farmland. Suburbanisation gathered strength after the 1871 fire. So the infant suburb already had Carpenter Gothic and Queen Anne shingle style houses when the young Frank Lloyd Wright persuaded Louis Sullivan to advance him $5000 to purchase a corner lot on Chicago Avenue. He had just married Catherine Tobin, and his mother had also moved to the Chicago area. He built a simple gabled shingle style house, that nevertheless had the seeds of the more typical Prairie House in its design, notably the symbolic centre fireplace, around which open plan rooms radiated pin-wheel fashion. Between 1889 and 1898, the whole thing grew like Topsy into a veritable warren of interconnected spaces, embracing the original house, reworked several times, a playroom wing, and a large office and studio facing directly onto the Chicago Avenue frontage, giving it a purposeful visual prominence.

The tour was comprehensive and I enjoyed revisiting the building which I had last seen in 1993. Actually, back in 1969, there was no public access at all, as the building was still subdivided into apartments. By 1978, most of the apartments had been vacated, and work was starting on restoration of the original layout. Considerable architectural archaeology was necessary to reveal hidden treasures such the chains supporting the gallery in the drawings office. It was an act of faith to try to visualise what the building might one day be like. Now it's all complete and well worth a visit. Wright was almost making it up as he went along. Rooms were added, or subdivided, a bay was thrust out here, a wing there, containing the first floor playroom, and finally the drawing office and library suite, with their entrance between, were added in 1898. He was learning on the job as he went along. It was fascinating to see that the shingle style initial house had classical mouldings internally for such features as cornices. Later, Wright abjured Classicism even though he made a competent job of designing the Blossom House on the south side of Chicago in 1896. The building remained Wright's headquarters until he eloped with Mamah Borthwick Cheney in 1910, the wife of a client for whom Wright had built a neat little Prairie House in 1904. Wright was certainly having affairs with several women during this period, probably including his secretary, Isabel Roberts, who commissioned another small Prairie House, and Wright lived to refurbish it in 1955.

After Wright's departure, the house was subdivided, initially for Catherine and the four younger children, and then a further subdivision took place resulting in the warren of small rooms I mentioned above. Wright's alterations obviously had some sort of historical significance. I can image that English Heritage may well have decided that the 'layering' of the different occupancies had a historic significance in its own right, and may have vetoed the comprehensive restoration which has taken place which involved reconstruction of many missing features.

We took a walk along Forest Avenue past some old favourites including the wildly eclectic Nathan Moore House, originally built in 1895, and remodelled in 1923 after a fire, by which time, Wright played down the Old English style, and the almost Latin American exuberance of details from the Imperial Hotel at Tokyo took over on the garden front. The Hurtley House, very much cleaned up externally, with its projecting brick band, was on the market for $4.2 million dollars. Apparently it had stuck so the premium for a Frank Lloyd Wright house is not necessarily the property goldmine that might be supposed. Some owners are now very concerned about the number of walking tours and prying eyes and long lens cameras. The Frank Thomas House, which was covered in dark brown shingles when I first saw it in 1969, and was later restored to its original plaster finish, was a case in point. Our guide warned us not to venture too far towards the house, even though we were on the public highway. Elizabeth Court revealed the Gale House of 1909, with its cantilevered balconies giving a foretaste of Fallingwater, a quarter of a century later. Much restoration has taken place on this house but the sagging lines of the eaves and balconies told their own story. The house had also been repainted in the cream colour beloved of Wright, rather than the crisp, albeit unauthentic, white which I remembered. We found time to view three 'bootleg' houses, designed at the beginning of Wright's career. These were much more vertical than the later Prairie Houses, almost Victorian, but with a satisfying geometry, particularly in the projecting bay windows. They looked much better than I had remembered.

After a hurried lunch, it was time to visit the Unity Temple, designed in 1904, but not completed until three years later. This was Wright's opportunity to design a non-domestic building. It was certainly ingenious with a clerestory and rooflit square meeting room, boldly presenting a massive, and almost unbroken concrete façade to the main road. Internally, the spatial handling was ingenious, with galleries around three sides facing the dais, behind which was the slatted screen of the organ. All worshippers were within 40 feet of the preacher. I hope few of them suffered from vertigo. Wright seems to have got away with an incredibly shallow balcony front, and had the authorities insisted on a deeper frontal, as would now be required, quite a lot of the interpenetration of spaces would have been lost. The fittings showed Wright at his most ingenious, using the primary spherical and square shapes from the Froebel games of his childhood to give advantage. Of course, Charles Rennie Mackintosh was doing much the same at the same time and also turned high-back chairs into an art form. The linking foyer of the Unity Temple also provides access to the hall and classrooms. These have certainly been spruced up since my last visit and were well worth a detailed inspection.

Sated by Oak Park, we trundled back into Chicago and down Lake Shore Drive to the Chicago University Campus. On the edge, the Robie House, in Woodlawn Avenue. This has always been acclaimed as one of the most sophisticated Prairie houses. Designed in 1908/9, it was completed in 1910. The long slender forms, the dramatic cantilevering of the roof, and the emphasis on horizontal line all had been celebrated at the time of their creation. The thrusting triangular prow gave rise to the nickname 'ship of the prairie'. Nevertheless, it was a tragic house, lived in for less than a year by the original client, who faced bankruptcy of his father's firm, and the collapse of his marriage in quick succession. I had always admired the house on previous visits. This time I was severely disappointed. Notwithstanding the painstaking restoration of the exterior, which is not yet complete - several of the famed art glass windows were boarded up, as their inserts were under repair. I found the partial restoration of the original earth-toned colour scheme depressing and gloomy. The low ceiling height, a feature of Wright's work, often attributed to his short stature, bore down on the visitor. Frankly I would not have lingered long in the entrance hall. Upstairs, the famous linked dining and sitting rooms, with the fire in the centre, backed by the main stair from the ground floor, seemed contrived. Even the cornice with its square patterns of battening, and the wood frames embracing globe lights seemed contrived. It certainly made me wonder whether the great man had feet of clay.

Sunday 27 August

This was Mies van der Rohe day, so once again I donned my 'less is more' tee-shirt, and joined the party on the coach to the south side to study the Campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology. This was originally the Armour College, endowed by the baron of meat packing. The School of Architecture at IIT was headed by Robert Altschule in the 1930s, and it had stagnated in a Beaux Arts mould. Altschule was certainly competent, although conventional, as represented in the building immediately south of the Michigan Avenue Bridge. He had prepared a Campus plan based on the collegiate quadrangle layout. It was in 1938 that Mies van der Rohe came over to live in the United States. He apparently was in the running for the Harvard School, but Gropius was selected. In order to attract Mies to the Mid-West, he was informed that he would have charge of replanning the Campus. Due to the Second World War, very little was done until the mid-1940s. However, Mies loosened the layout although the buildings still enclose space between them in an abstract fashion, with remnants of the planning advocated by Camillo Sitte still recognisable - at least to me.

The whole layout was based on a 24 foot square grid, with 12 foot storey height. These were the basic planning modules, which could be broken down into smaller components. They underlay every building, and every open space between. We began at the Perlstein Hall, dating from 1946. This expressed the modules and the structural grid in the steel 'I' beams which were featured on the external elevations. This was the first recognisable building as the earlier metallurgy buildings, finished in 1942, appeared to go in a different direction, and related back to his buildings of his 1930s, and also to the Bauhaus Campus at Dessau, which had been designed by Gropius, but where Mies headed the faculty in the early 1930s, until the institution was closed down by Hitler. Internally, Perlstein Hall was also highly disciplined, with meticulous proportions and refined Minimalist design, particularly in the staircases. The plan was simple, with two blocks of classrooms sandwiching the linear corridor, the lecture halls, and a central planted quadrangle. Out Chicago Architecture Foundation 'docent' informed us that Mies had begun as a bricklayer, and that he always used English Bond. This was not always as meticulously laid as might have been expected and the alignment of the perpends sometimes looked surprisingly careless. The palette of materials was restricted - the bricks were manufactured rather like the English silicate-lime bricks popular in the 1960s, and these were combined with plain plaster walls, terrazzo floors in the main circulation spaces - thermoplastic tiles elsewhere, with acoustic tile ceilings.

Externally, the planting of locust trees also conformed with the grid giving a surprisingly Arcadian effect 60 years on. In places, ivy had colonised the buildings, softening the relentless grid. Mies stepped down in 1959, when he retired, and Skidmore Owings and Merrill were appointed. Their architects including Myron Goldsmith and Walter Netsch began by sticking closely to the pattern set by the master. Near the centre of the Campus was the Robert Carr Memorial Chapel, using for once, solid load-bearing brick walls, with the expected steelwork used for the entrance screen. This God box was completed in 1952, and now appears to be little used. On Sunday mornings these days students lie in after the heavy socialising of the night before. Talking of which, we stepped over to the new Student Union designed by Rem Koolhaas, a building which embraced literally the elevated railway line and joined on to an earlier refectory block east of this. The grid was thrown out of the window. Koolhaas planned an irregular exterior which suggested a violin squashed by a steel tube. This latter contained the railway and was a solid concrete construction, surrounded by crinkly tin - expensive crinkly stainless steel. There were bilious orange grey panels externally, and the doors incorporated an ingenious and affected graphic portrait Mies van der Rohe. The new building cost $48 million dollars, underwritten by the McCormick Faculty Tribune Fund.

If I had reservations about the exterior, the interior was absolutely brilliant. Even the all pervasive orange appeared effective in context. And the handling of space was brilliant. The new Student Union is the first of two major recent projects which have grappled with the problem of unifying the Campus across the elevated railway line. The second is the Student Hostel designed by Helmut Jahn, completed in 2003. This goes by the name of the State Street Village, and contains five pods, across a total length of over 500 feet. 257 students are accommodated in the newest Campus housing. We were told that it is so expensive that many cannot afford to live here. We saw a student room, fitted out to try drum up custom. It was very well designed, but many thought the use of exposed concrete was overdone. One of the best features of this complex is undoubtedly the rooftop terraces which give a commanding view over the western half of the Campus and includes Crown Hall. This has always considered as Mies's most perfect building; he wrote that this was the 'best to express our philosophy'. Mies the closet Classicist came out in this building, as it were. The proportions are based on Schinkel's Altesmuseum in Berlin. However, it also represented most sophisticated application of his steel beam construction, with 'floating' staircase platforms leading up to the imposing main glazed entrance. A more utilitarian version of this staircase is on the back of the building, thus distinguishing the principal façade from the subsidiary. Internally, the building is now used as studio space by the School of Architecture at IIT. They have an annual intake of about 90, whittled down to 45 who graduate. I'm not sure whether the party line in design is still dominant. I remember visiting Crown Hall back in 1969, when it hosted, most appropriately, an international travelling exhibition on the Bauhaus and its influence. Perhaps the last word should be given to Mies himself - 'the future comes not by looking back, but only if we do our work in the right way'. The right way for him I feel was ultimately a cul-de-sac, much as I admired and indeed enjoyed better than on any other visit, the IIT Campus.

Then it was back by bus to Soldier Field, an immense stadium which was built as a multi-purpose sports venue in 1924-5, in a refined Classical style, and Holabird and Roche were the original architects. It was one of the civic landmarks on the Lake Shore, together with the Marshall Field Museum of Natural History, the Shedd Aquarium and, a little later, at the end of a promontory pushing out into the lake itself, the Adler Planetarium. Soldier Field is now home to the Chicago Bears Football Team, and they lease it from the City. They desperately needed to provide increased capacity, and particularly the lucrative hospitality suites found in all new prestige stadia. They also needed to raise the capacity towards the 62,000 expected for big league teams in the NFL. So, radical action was necessary, but there was immediate controversy over the impact on Soldier Field itself, some of it undoubtedly raised by the fact that it had originated as a war memorial. We were met by the architect, Jo Bolimar, of Goettsche Partners, who had designed the project. It seems to be somewhat of a design and build exercise for the architects were appointed in 1997 after the contractors had been selected. From then on it was a matter of planning and logistics. In fact the actual contract period was 21 months and the start was delayed by the fact that the Chicago Bears got further in the league competition than had been anticipated. The overall contract including the considerable enhancement of the setting came to $630 million dollars. Within four hours of the last game being played on the old Soldier Field, demolition began. There had been considerable pressure to retain the Greek Doric arcades, which had been cast in concrete, remarkably precisely. This meant that the containment of the new stadium was even more difficult to accomplish. On the Lake Shore side, the inward canted hospitality boxes meant that the new work did not oversail the older - on the inland side it did, with 10" to spare. The irregular crescents of seating certainly makes impressive impact even if the result is somewhat schizophrenic. The new stadium opened in 2003.

What was perhaps even more impressive was the way in which the setting had been enhanced. A memorial wall in the form of a waterfall leads the spectator towards the stadium, or in the opposite direction is focussed on the portico of the Marshall Field Museum. Parkland stretches towards the Lake Shore front, interrupted only by the service drive to the stadium and its underground car park. The rubble and spoil from the excavations was used in landscaping. This apparently continued a tradition as the original fill for the site had been provided from debris of the Great Fire of 1871. In addition, part of Lake Shore Drive, which in my day had been a one-way system around the lakeside of Soldier Field had been relocated inland, thus reducing the severance of the site from the lake front. It was it a pity that we were not able to go inside as the debris from the game played a day before had not been cleared.

Then, miraculously, we had a few hours free time before the river cruise. I took the opportunity to walk down State Street, into Marshall Fields, now looking distinctly down market, almost like an Eastern European store before the collapse of Communism. It was rather sad and depressing, but the main emphasis on retail is now firmly on the Miracle Mile north of the river. In fact, it has been taken over by the May Company, whose major store is in Cleveland, Ohio. I went up to look at the Tiffany vault, which is still an impressive feature. Next it was to the other great 'cathedral of commerce', Carson Pirie Scott. We heard next day that it would close. What a pity, for this exemplified the modern the modern department store in all its glory when it was built in the 1890s. I got a few more views of the miraculous Sullivan ironwork, and then went inside to photograph the elaborate capitals of the structural columns. Alas, I had no sooner taken one photograph than the security guard came and warned me that I would need a special permit. Nobody had bothered me in Marshall Fields as I told him before I made my exit.

Then it was across to Michigan Avenue and onto Grant Park. For some reason, my visits to Chicago in the past had never seemed to coincide with the Buckingham Fountain being in operation. It looks pretty impressive and is another feature which gives a distinctly French impression to the organisation of the lake front - Versailles on the Prairie, perhaps. Sadly, grey clouds were scudding in across the lake front and my return through Millennium Park was not nearly as pleasurable as it had been two days previously. I reached the waterfront near the Michigan Avenue Bridge to join the others for the Chicago River cruise. This has always been one of the highlights of the Chicago Architecture Foundation programme. This was not exception, but the weather closed in just after we started, and the experience was punctuated by intermittent rain, sometimes heavy. A pity, for it took some of the shine of the proceedings. The guide was remarkably well-informed but it was difficult to keep up with her. We had the whole history of waterfront development and the new generation of post-Modernism recounted at breakneck speed. We began with the Tribune Tower, which we were informed was based on the Tour de Beurre of Rouen Cathedral. This set the fashion for eclecticism, reflected in many of the slightly later buildings along the way. We made out way upstream past the already familiar stump of Trump, the true blue Mies equitable buildings. Marina City, the brick warehouse designed by Richard Schmidt in 1908 (a particular favourite of mine), and the vast, rather politburo classical-style Merchandise Mart of 1930. On the opposite bank was a panorama of post-Modernism, much of it not to my taste, with contributions from Bofill and a threesome by Kohn Pedersen Fox. Then it was up the north fork of the river, to see buildings ranging from the small town houses by Harry Weese, and the upgrading of the Montgomery Ward warehouses into loft apartments. Our guide informed us that the name of Chicago had originated in the Indian word, chicagou, meaning stinking onion, apparently the only crop that grew profusely on the marshy site. Happily, the river has been cleaned up so there was no stink of onion, or anything else.

Then it was down the main southward run of the river. This backed onto The Loop, and so had been developed by a range of prestige buildings, including the Classical-style Civic Opera House, with setback office towers above suggesting a giant armchair, of Samuel Insull, who had promoted the building, it was completed just before the Stock Market crash of 1929. We got a view of Sears Tower, the tallest in Chicago, now being closed in by crowded new development along the riverfront itself. In 1900, the river flow was reversed and more earth was dug out than for the Panama Canal apparently. A 28 mile channel was dug so as to feed into the Mississippi, rather than the Great Lakes and out through the St. Lawrence River into the North Atlantic. It was in this area, that the Great Fire began in 1871, fanned by winds across the city centre. During the rebuilding, in 1884, William Le Barron Jenney designed the Home Insurance Building, long since demolished, which was the first true Chicago skyscraper. We turned around south of Hurricane Street and made out way back through the Michigan Avenue Bridge, and beyond, to see the post-Modern waterfront. Apart from the NBC Tower, SOM 1909, which has some Frank Lloyd touches, most of it was pretty indifferent. The furthest building we saw was the Mies-derived Lake Shore Point, loosely based on his glass skyscraper concept, which I'd seen on my walk along the Lake Shore two days previously. The locks into Lake Michigan had been put there in the 1930s, after a long-standing legal battle by the Michigan, Indiana and Wisconsin State Government which accused Chicago of draining their water from the lake. Now the locks control the flow and they are opened only to let boats in and out. Looking across to the north side we saw the centre of Navy Pier, with its not very attractive Ferris Wheel, not a patch on the London Eye. The navy had been here for real in 1968, and I remember taking some pictures showing the small fleet alongside, as the icy wind blew across from the north-east.

Monday 28 August

The rain had set in hard overnight, and our coach for the trip to Wisconsin had been caught up in the early morning commuter gridlock. So it was an hour late that we departed for Racine to see the Johnson Wax Administration Buildings, which Frank Lloyd Wright had designed in 1936-8. Eventually, we arrived, and the rain had lifted somewhat, but it was still a grey day. The Visitor Centre was apparently designed by the Taliesin Foundation, based on a pavilion which they had built for Johnsons at the 1964 World Fair in New York. When we arrived, we were told that we could not photograph even the exterior of the building once we were inside the security fence. This was extremely frustrating as all we could see was the laboratory research tower in the distance, over the car park. It was doubly frustrating for me, as on my earlier visit, I had lost the film with my exterior views, although my interiors came out brilliantly. This was doubly fortunate, as we could not photograph inside either. So, it was with distinctly modified rapture that we walked down to the building. In 1969, I had simply parked outside on the street, and had walked into the building - there was no security fence, nor a paranoid security policy in operation.

In 1886, Johnson began laying parquet floors, and subsequently developed wax to maintain them. Wax floor polishes took over from the flooring in 1910. The company is still family owned and they appeared to guard their ownership jealously. Frank Lloyd Wright was commissioned in 1936 by Herbert Johnson to design their administration building, which opened in August 1939. This was, together with Fallingwater, one of his great flagship schemes from the 1930s, by which he reinvented himself as a Modernist architect. The Johnson Wax Building rose as a red brick box, with rounded corners, and the usual degree of FLW idiosyncrasy. This was provided by his decision largely to admit daylight through Pyrex glass tubes, welded together. These provided both the clerestory lighting and a large rooflight for what he called the great workroom. The roof was supported by his 'dendriform columns', 31 feet high as a maximum, downward tapered, sitting in steel shoes, and supporting disc tops. These are cast concrete, 3" thick, with hollows as they taper outwards. The Wisconsin authorities demanded checks to show that the system would work. A trial column was loaded with 60 tons before it failed, 5 times more than the 12 ton load which had been calculated, and so the system was permitted. The glazing between the columns always leaked and the effect of the rooflight has now been achieved by lighting - the wrong colour added to glaring inside. Nevertheless, the problem of maintaining and renewing 46 miles of glass tubing can be imagined. Plastic tubes had replaced many of the glass originals - a process that had already begun at the time of my previous visit in 1970. The height and space of the room, with the rows of columns created a serene impression, timeless, although with something of the Egyptian hypostyle hall about it. Wright had designed all the furniture, and had made a brilliant job of it. The originals were in walnut with three different levels of surface. The replicas, with a laminate top adapt brilliantly for the use of computer keyboards. Likewise, the tubular posture chair was very comfortable, particularly for clerical assistants and stenographers. A major feature was the 'bird cage' elevators, which rose to the upper levels. Miraculously, these originals are still in use. Modern codes would forbid such. We were not able to see the laboratory tower, which has been out of operation for many years, due to the fact that it cannot be made to comply with fire exits regulations. It has been retained as the vertical counterpoint to the prevailing horizontality of the administration building, it is 133 feet high, with a footing which extends 64 feet into the ground, a real tap root, compounding the arboricultural analogy.

It was raining again as we made out way to Milwaukee Art Museum, where the spectacular new entrance foyer had been designed by Santiago Calatrava. This was a spectacular building extending the lake shore, and masking the blocky Brutalist form of the main art museum itself. The building consists of a long corridor facing the lake, with gallery space for temporary exhibitions and shops behind, above a car park. At right angles there is a protruberance thrusting towards the lake, with a wing-like roof over. Access is from a raised terrace, across a bridge, another Calatrava signature structure, and into the museum which has a spectacular curved roof, and a great window looking out towards the lake. You turn at right angles to walk along the great corridor, parallel to the lake front, to access the main part of the museum. We were pretty tired and hungry, so we made lunch a priority and the café is below the main level, looking out towards the lake. There was only time for a quick run around the exhibits, and, as usual, little remained in the mind afterwards. As would be expected from a community which originated in innovation from Germany, there was an impressive collection of German artists, particularly the Expressionists of the early 20th century. As we left the building, they showed us how the wings of the roof could close - this is done whenever the building shuts for the night, and there is one public demonstration during the opening hours. This is architecture of giant stature and in this sense it equates with the Millennium Bridge over the Tyne at Newcastle-Gateshead. The whole thing is designed to give a boost to urban regeneration, which is slowly happening. Iconic signature buildings now seem to be the theme for regeneration the world over.

As we made our way southwards, the bad news set in. The Johnson House, 'Wingspread' had given up on us and was closing for the night. This was a major blow and this fine Frank Lloyd Wright house is a domestic counterpoint, for the same client, to the Johnson Wax Building. As we reached the gates, things did not look too good, for they closed as our coach turned into the drive. However, after some skilful negotiating by Karen, we were admitted and told that we could have ten minutes to look around the house. Actually, we spent much longer, and we were able to photograph merrily away, which we had not done at the Johnson Wax Building itself. 'Wingspread' was the successor to the Prairie houses. Hearth and Home were the focus, with a two storey living atrium set around a central chimney with four separate fireplaces, and which also incorporated a spiral stair up to a rooftop lookout. Tiers of tiled roofs and clerestory windows light the space as the eaves level descent to a more human scale where there are patio windows. This central area had been a subject of dispute between Wright and Johnson, for, as often happened, the rooflights leaked. On one occasion, they were preparing for Thanksgiving Dinner, when a squall of rain set in and a stream of water dripped onto the table below. Johnson called Wright at Taliesin, and managed to get through to the great man. 'Frank, we're about to sit down for Thanksgiving Dinner, and your rooflights are leaking again. What do we do?' 'Move the Goddam table' was the reply followed by a click as Wright put the phone down.

We explored 'Wingspread', including the bedroom wing, now used as seminar rooms as the building is a conference centre. We also made our way around the outside, and saw how Wright had, as usual, fitted the building beautifully into its natural context, with, of course, some manipulation as well. I consider that 'Wingspread' deserves to be rated among the best country houses of the 20th century. Not that it appealed to the second Mrs Johnson, who felt that it reflected the personality of her predecessor who had died. Not so. If it reflected anyone's personality, it was most decidedly that of Frank Lloyd Wright. Nevertheless, the second, or third? Mrs Johnson got a new house, sited rather too closely to 'Wingspread', and a disappointing box-like structure of the sort that Wright would, rightly, have castigated. So, after all, we saw 'Wingspread', the rain had held off, and we returned along the traffic-choked highways to Chicago with some sense of well-being. After all, this was out farewell trip in the Chicago region, as next day we would be up at dawn to fly to Pittsburgh.

Tuesday 29 August

We left at 6 a.m. for O'Hare Airport. Checking in was very efficient and security much easier, although just as thorough, as at Heathrow. Somehow we never seem to be able to organise these things as smoothly as do the Americans. Then it was a short flight to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We arrived near downtown at Station Square. Unfortunately, the station is no longer functional but has been turned into a restaurant and shopping complex - surprise, surprise! We were given a break for lunch, so I wandered down to the waterfront to look across the tracks at the skyline of downtown Pittsburgh dominated by the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company tower, designed by Philip Johnson. As I reached the square facing the river - the Mononghela, a musical fountain struck up and the jets started swaying in time to the music. This was quite funny for a few minutes, but it is decidedly kitsch and the music varied between military, popular classics, and even country and western - something for all possible tastes, but not in the best of any. I was reminded that many years ago I had seen such a feature, called the Dancing Waters, at an Ideal Home Exhibition held in Birmingham. I thought it had died a death, but clearly such attractions live in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Finding lunch in the food court was not easy, as most of the fast food outlets offered distinctly unattractive fare - as usual in the United States carbohydrate-rich plus. Nevertheless, I found something reasonably healthy including an iced lemon tea, which passed the time before we took the bus for the downtown tour.

Pittsburgh has always had a bad press ever since the 19th century, when it was described as 'hell with the lid off'. This was in reference to the blast furnaces of the infant steel industry, for which the city is famous. I suppose it's the Sheffield of the United States, which in many ways its history parallels. During the 19th century it was regarded with a mixture of awe and derision. I suppose the sight of the furnaces lighting the night sky must have been similar to those at Coalbrookdale in Shropshire, which a century earlier, had been a wondrous object of concern, as the Industrial Revolution dawned. The meeting of the rivers had a historical significance, until it was overwhelmed by steelworks. Beginning in the 1930s, with the Great Depression, there were many proposals for regeneration and reconstruction, in which Frank Lloyd Wright even participated, but to no avail. Nowadays, the area is dominated by two sports stadia of indifferent design, an opportunity missed, I would say. However, we didn't linger long in downtown - that was for later. The bus took us up through Oakland, past massive buildings endowed by Carnegie and Mellon, including the Pittsburgh Concert Hall and Arts Museum, the individual Art Deco/Gothic skyscraper of learning, and then on into the suburbs.

We got out of the bus and walker down an exclusive private suburban road. Our target was the Frank Giovannitti House, in Woodland Road, designed by Richard Meier in 1979-83. The architect had a following in the 1970s and 1980s as the inheritor of modernistic purism. The house was a crisp white box, with generous windows, and total interpenetration of space within. Only the bathrooms were given doors. It was certainly an intriguing concept, carried through with total conviction, for a wealthy client, but I found the result to be oppressive and as self-conscious as its owner, who had most generously thrown his house open to our party. His exquisite collection of furniture and artefacts included chairs by Hofmann, the Viennese Secessionist, and silverware from the French liner Normandie, as well as large abstract paintings. We entered at ground level, and made our way up a series of staircases to the top floor, where the bedroom is open to the atrium like sitting room. Generous glazing meant that the interior was visible, but gave impressive views into a woodland setting. Blinds are used only when occasion demands, apparently. Mr. Giovannitti now has his main house elsewhere, and would like to let the house to a suitable tenant. It would certainly not suit any family with children, for reasons of safety alone. However, a single owner with cats would probably be quite welcome, as there were at least two of them prowling round. I wasn't tempted to put my name down for the house, however. Mr. Giovannitti had purchased a large tract, and was originally intending to develop the backland. The neighbours were up in arms about his white box, and probably apprehensive about what would follow. The house behind, which we saw externally only, was a post-Modernist design by Robert Venturi. It had an irregular roofline, and the main façade was painted with a sunray device, partly glazed and partly taken across the boarded façade. It now looked like a tired, and not particularly funny joke to me. Others may disagree.

The final house in the area had been built in 1939-40, by Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer, for Robert and Cecilia Frank. This was international modern style, moderated by stonework, and punctuated by large areas of glazing, including a dramatic bay window. We viewed this from below. The son of the owner now lives there, it seems as a virtual recluse, and the house is in sad decline. However, apparently, it still contains all its original purpose-designed furniture and fittings. It included an indoor swimming pool at the lowest level, and a rooftop sundeck, which also doubled as an outdoor dance floor. I bet the conservative neighbours were not too happy when the parties were going full blast. There is now, apparently, an effort being made to create a trust to restore the house as a museum. This appears to happen with increasing frequency for iconic dwellings, not least those of Frank Lloyd Wright. In a way it's rather a pity that they stop being lived in by normal people, although most of the clients of the houses we saw were anything but normal. What was also evident was that there was often an element of tragedy in the personal background of the clients during their tenure of their dream home. The Frank house came at a time when all tongues were buzzing with news of the completion of Wright's 'Fallingwater', built for the Pittsburgh Department Store Magnate, Edgar Kaufmann, about 70 miles away in rural Bear Run, which we would visit the next day.

The walking tour of downtown buildings included the Dusquesne University Campus, with yet another variation on a Minimalist theme by Mies van der Rohe. He was certainly prolific in the last decade of his life. Although we were assured that this was the real thing, it did not seem quite so refined in every detail as had the IIT Campus. Then it was downhill all the way, but not aesthetically. By far the best building we saw was the Allegheny County Court House and Jail, designed by Henry Hobson Richardson, built 1883-88. This has always been recognised as one of the landmark American buildings. The massive rustic masonry gave a suitably grim image to the jail, now no longer in use, which sits on a triangular site, and is connected to the courthouse by Richardson's wry reproduction of the Bridge of Sighs from Venice. The courthouse is a remarkable building, with soaring towers, tall gables, and rugged detailing. What was more remarkable was the fact that the street level was lowered by up to 15 feet after its completion. It was pointed out that what is now the ground floor, was added, presumably it had earlier been a bas