George Lucas picks architects for lakefront museum

The George Lucas museum is currently in the works, looking to house his large collection of art and memorabilia.

"Star Wars" creator George Lucas on Monday will announce an architectural team for his controversial planned museum on Chicago's lakefront: an avant-garde Chinese designer whose credits include Toronto-area skyscrapers dubbed the "Marilyn Monroe Towers" and Chicago's Jeanne Gang, shaper of the undulating Aqua Tower here.

Ma Yansong, founder of the Beijing firm MAD Architects, will design the building for Lucas' Museum of Narrative Art. Gang, who heads Studio Gang Architects, will conceive the landscape around the building and design a pedestrian bridge linking the museum to Northerly Island, a peninsula east of the museum site.

The announcement of the star-studded team, a surprise given Lucas' penchant for traditional designs, has political implications for a project championed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel. It would rise on 17 acres now occupied by parking lots between Soldier Field and McCormick Place.

If the architects produce a design gem that upgrades the landscape of the Museum Campus, the cluster of shoreline museums to which the Lucas Museum would belong, it could soften, or at least blunt, opposition. Critics include open-space advocates threatening a lawsuit to block construction and Chicago Bears fans fuming that the museum will boot them from tailgating spots. Citing the opposition, a newspaper in San Francisco, where Lucas first intended to build the museum, last week labeled Chicago "the City of Cold Shoulders."

Conceptual designs are expected to be released later this year.

Lucas is promising to pay for the pedestrian bridge, which would have to be high enough to allow sailboats using Burnham Harbor to pass beneath. It won't come cheap. The price for a soon-to-be-built lakefront pedestrian bridge at 35th Street is pegged at more than $18 million.

Further sweetening the pot for Chicago, Lucas has selected another Chicago firm, VOA Architects, to be the museum's executive architect. While Ma and Gang focus on the broad creative strokes, VOA will be responsible for details like construction drawings. VOA has designed offices for Ariel Investments, whose president, Mellody Hobson, is Lucas' wife.

Lucas declined an interview request. In a prepared statement, he said: "We are bringing together some of the top architects in the world to ensure that our museum experience begins long before a visitor ever enters the building."

After an aggressive lobbying campaign by Emanuel, Lucas last month selected Chicago over Los Angeles and San Francisco as the site of his museum, which will showcase highlights from his collection of more than 500,000 objects. They include "Star Wars" memorabilia and paintings by Norman Rockwell.

Read the original:
George Lucas picks architects for lakefront museum