Photographer's Note
Parking Garage, Marina City, Chicago
These are the twin towers of Marina City, focusing on the 18 stories of parking space. Chicagoans call these two towers as the corn cobs because the whole buildings look like corn.
Marina City is a complex of two 60-story buildings built by Bertrand Goldberg in 1964 who was a student of Mies van der Rohe. The complex has apartments, recreation facilities, offices, banks, offices, a theater ... and the House of Blues nearby. The experimental complex was financed by unions who feared in the early sixties that people leaving the cities for the suburbs would lead to a decrease in jobs. Marina City, which is right on the Chicago River in downtown Chicago, offers everything that a small village or town could offer in a small space, even its own marina and access to the river and thus, Lake Michigan.
The complex was at that time the biggest built in concrete and its shape was in contrast to the contemporary architectural concepts of straight lines and cubical apartments. The cylindrical shape was used to have less wind pressure and reinforced concrete was used as this is the only material in which petal shaped apartments could be created.
If you are old enough to have seen The Blues Brothers with Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi, this building figured prominently in that movie.
Taken from a moving car.
Tech: contrast masking, saturation and unsharp mask.
Critiques | Translate
dasvidypebcheju (0) 2004-04-17 19:29
The image is very sharp if you took it from a moving car! well done!
AdrianW
(2274) 2004-04-17 19:36
I really don't think I'd like parking in one of those outside bays - I'd be terrified of going over the edge. Sure we have tall multistorey carparks here in the UK, but at least we have nice big reassuringly non-transparent concrete walls on them. Probably not as structurally sound as those metal barriers, but from a psychological standpoint much better! I'm having difficulties working out whether this is actually straight or not, I'm tempted to rotate it a little CCW and then use Skew to correct the slight convergence in the verticals, but then is seems to mess up the horizontal lines... Anyway, well captured - particularly since you were shooting from a moving car :-D
patrick_belaire
(363) 2004-04-18 4:47
Ces immeubles sont vraiment impressionnants !
Celui de droite est bien mis en valeur au premier plan. Bon travail !
nwoehnl
(122) 2004-04-18 5:03
Yes, Ken, I remember seeing those towers in chicago - from afar they bear a resemblance to corn cobs. A great detail view with nice colors, I think I agree with Adrian though about not preferrably wanting an outside parking spot ... Well done, and yes I'm old enough to have seen this in Blues Brothers ;-)
jef
(310) 2004-04-18 7:11
photo tres surprenante ! Il ne faut pas se tromper de vitesse en repartant... les plots de securite paraissent bien freles... bien vu ken
jhm
(211734) 2004-04-18 13:48
Excellent note Ken, the image is very sharp if you took it from a moving car! well done!
Photo Information
-
Copyright: Ken Ilio (flip89)
(3418)
- Genre: Luoghi
- Medium: Colore
- Date Taken: 2004-04-17
- Categories: Architettura
- Camera: Nikon D70, 18-70mm
- Esposizione: f/8, 1/250 secondi
- Versione Foto: Versione Originale
- Tema(i): Parking, Chicago Photos [view contributor(s)]
- Date Submitted: 2004-04-17 19:19