We Live in Public
In a gallery installation I saw once, there were thin cables tautly stretched from floor to ceiling, giving you the illusion that there was a wall there. It’s an interesting phantom effect.
The new Apple store in Chicago is like that: a phantom building--more art installation or site-specific sculpture than architecture. A smaller version of it could fit into a gallery at the Museum of Contemporary Art, a few blocks away.
The influences are apparent: Mies (The Chicago Post Office and IIT Commissary) and Philip Johnson (The Glass House--be sure to watch the videos), as well as Frank Lloyd Wright, both in the prairie-style/roof cantilevering and obviously, Falling Water.
But it might be too transparent and too distracting, and possibly dystopian to some: At the entrance is Apple’s transparency about their privacy policy. It is in some way the modern version of Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon. Oh the irony.
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