Design by Committee

An interesting quote I read while riding the train into work today:

What kind of building is this which is so strategically located, so very tall, so elegantly built, and which not only overwhelms its own micro-environment but which alters the profile of the city itself?...It is unmistakably a Chicago building, more easily attributable to the place than to its particular author...It is not so much the building's great height which is troubling. Rather, it is the image of teams of process-oriented silent technicians, calculating the most profitable use of land, materials, strategies of investment, producing an architecture - received Miesian aesthetic aside - which lacks vision and refuses to comment on the general problems of our time

Although written in 1970 Alvin Boyarsky for AD, it sounds equally valid today, especially in the much-loathed high rises of River North. Certainly today the scope of his statement could even extend beyond Chicago.