"Jagged Icebergs and Open Pit" -- Just what would the intrusion in Grant Park look like?

The ever-intrepid Lynn Becker, architecture writer and urban watchdog (grrrr!) finds two planning pictures -- thanks, too, to FOX News Chicago -- (at left and below left -- click on them for larger images) and offers a critique of the proposed design for the Chicago Children's Museum in Grant Park.

Full disclosure: I am both a great admirer of the work of Krueck + Sexton Architects, including their new Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies on South Michigan Avenue in Chicago, and a friend of the firm's principals, Ron Krueck and Mark Sexton, and their families. They are aware of my opposition to this project, and the views expressed here are mine and not necessarily theirs. I think that they would do a superb job with this project -- if they could design it as an above-ground building for another site. In Grant Park, they are trying to solve a problem, and a problem that need not be addressed at all. At another site, they could create a building.