Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
could take their place at the arts table. New York remains the red-hot center of the art
world, and its make-or-break influence shapes tastes across the nation and around the
globe.
Architecture
In 1885, a group of designers in Chicago shot up the pioneering skyscraper. It didn't ex-
actly poke the clouds, but its use of steel framing launched modern architecture.
Around the same time, another Chicago architect was doing radical things closer to the
ground. Frank Lloyd Wright created a building style that abandoned historical elements
and references, which had long been the tradition, and instead he went organic. He de-
signed buildings in relation to the landscape, which in the Midwest were the low-slung,
horizontal lines of the surrounding prairie. An entire movement grew up around Wright's
Prairie Style.
European architects absorbed Wright's ideas, and that influence bounced back when
the Bauhaus school left Nazi Germany and set up in the USA. Here it became known as
the International Style, an early form of modernism. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was the
main man with the plan, and his boxy, metal-and-glass behemoths rose high on urban ho-
rizons, especially in Chicago and New York City. Postmodernism followed, reintrodu-
cing color and the decorative elements of art deco, beaux arts and other earlier styles to
the region's sky-high designs.
Today's architects continue to break boundaries. Recent examples of visionary designs
include Jeanne Gang's rippling Aqua Tower in Chicago - the world's tallest building de-
signed by a woman. NYC's 1776ft-high One World Trade Center rose to become the
USA's loftiest building in 2013.
