Word: atrium
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...there. The outside of the futuristic new State of Illinois Center has three tiers of curving glass setbacks fanning out in a vertically striped polygon. A canopy of pink and white glass panels dresses the base; a sliced-cylinder skylight emerges at the top. Inside, in a light-filled atrium, salmon pink terraces climb for 17 stories around a circular plaza. Glass elevators rise and fall along the outside of two towers. As little Dorothy once said, "Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas any more...
...novelty, the Illinois Center is not new in all respects. It draws on ideas that have had currency among architects for more than a decade: the adventurous geometry of "late modernists" such as I.M. Pei and Edward Larrabee Barnes; the office atrium pioneered by Kevin Roche; the glass- , enclosed elevators popularized by John Portman's Hyatt hotel designs; and the spirited use of color epitomized by the Miami firm Arquitectonica. The German-born Jahn, 45, an architect celebrated--some would say notorious--for his arch flourishes with high-tech elements, had applied some of the same ideas...
...daring and largely successful attempt to draw stark materials into a tumultuous play of form and light. The skeins of trusswork, the rippling stairways and the wafflepatterned underside of the terraces combine in an optical tangle compounded by a riot of reflecting surfaces. Without resorting to molded ornament, the atrium reaches toward a rococo extravagance. Says Jahn: "Elements that break the norm --romance, fantasy, surprise--are what put architecture beyond engineering...
...atrium of the Hyatt Regency in Louisville is a bright interior shaft that rises up 16 stories from the lobby-an impressive effect. It makes the inside of the hotel look Like a shopping mall that has ambitions to become a cathedral. Or, on the night of the presidential debate, like a sort of gala high-rise tenement. Tiers of balconies, one on every floor, overlook the lobby. They were festooned that night with American flags and sheets emblazoned with Republican slogans, and the faithful leaned out over each ledge to cheer Ronald Reagan when he returned from the debate...
...game ("Come November, we're gonna tell Coach Tax Hike [Walter Mondale] to head for the showers"). The Republicans hollered and whooped. It had been a long night. Ronald and Nancy Reagan made their way to one of the glass elevators that run up one wall of the atrium. The Reagans walked inside and turned and waved through the transparent doors...