Designing a public space or building that is truly public is perhaps the greatest challenge of all for an architect or artist. According to the terms by which it is defined, a public space should anticipate virtually any demand that will be placed on it by a member of the public. At the same time, architecture is a tricky business. It is by nature a prescriptive discipline. It tells us where to sit, where not to sit, where to walk, or to keep on walking. The southern garden at the Art Institute strikes the balance fairly well: Its plan allows a variety of activity. Or inactivity. At the very least, a well-planned public space should grant a slight and temporary reprieve from the nearly all-encompassing proscriptions we face daily.
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The recent opening of Pritzker Park was in no way as exciting or as trumped-up as the opening of what it was meant to set off. To little fanfare, the park more or less simply appeared across the street from the Harold Washington Library Center. As we learn from reading the bronze plaques that greet the visitor, Pritzker Park is “intended to complement” the new library. Both signal a beginning: the South Loop is to be given back to the public. The public will go to the library, visit the park, eventually even go shopping in what is now the nearly vacant and forbidding stretch of State below Van Buren. Those who never bothered with the South Loop may discover it in part as a result of these two new projects. Yet therein lies a paradox. Built for the public, these structures have litttle patience for the diversity of the public that they are meant to serve.
Now just because there is no obvious place to sit does not mean that there is no place to sit at all. In addition to a sandbox, there is a circular structure at each end of the central path. According to the plaques these are “council rings,” “symbols of community spirit and focal points for quieter activities, such as storytelling.” This is where we are meant to sit.
