Anyone who has visited downtown Chicago will remember seeing the dazzling round towers of Bertrand Goldberg’s Marina City on the north bank of the river. Often photographed, always a curiosity, these iconic buildings have been featured in numerous magazines, postcards, album covers, and films, but until now have received surprisingly little scholarly attention. In their delightful book, Marina City: Bertrand Goldberg’s Urban Vision (Princeton Architectural Press, 2010) authors Igor Marjanovicand Katerina Ruedi Ray meticulously reconstruct the history of this building complex from all conceivable angles. Their chapters include discussions of Goldberg’s career, the project’s financing, the formal and structural successes of its modernist design, and Marina City’s life in images after the project was complete.

As you will learn from my interview with co-author Igor Marjanovic,what most people don’t know are that these towers are only the most visible part of a block-sized complex that also includes a public plaza (that once had a skating rink), an underground shopping center, a theater, and a marina on the river. The project was conceived inside and out by Chicago-based architect Bertrand Goldberg and financed by the Chicago Janitors’ Union, which was looking to invest pension dollars in a prominent real estate project. The financial end of the deal didn’t turn out quite as expected, but Goldberg, who trained at Harvard and the German Bauhaus, managed to construct one of the twentieth century’s greatest urban apartment buildings. This address still attracts design-minded residents looking for compact residential living in the heart of Chicago, and you don’t even have to give up your car (or your boat) to live there.

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