CHICAGO (AP) – The team behind George Lucas’ art and movie museum released revised renderings showing more green space at the Chicago site but no radical changes to the undulating, futuristic building stoking passions in a city that guards its Lake Michigan shoreline with religious-like devotion.
Images that will be presented to City Council next week show designers have significantly shrunk the lakefront building while preserving a smooth, tapering, dune-like form topped with an observation deck resembling a floating disc – a shape that critics have compared to Jabba the Hutt. Defenders of what will be known as the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, including Mayor Rahm Emanuel, have said the design is loyal to Chicago’s history of making bold architectural statements and its devotion to keeping the lakefront open, accessible and green.
“Currently, it’s a vast asphalt parking lot that is not welcoming; it’s not very green,” museum President Don Bacigalupi said of the site to the south of Soldier Field, home of the Chicago Bears. “And so replacing that with both a museum that’s an amenity, that’s an attraction and an educational inspiration, plus this very new green space park … that’s really our goal.”
The 17-acre site will erase the parking lot and add 4.5 acres of new parkland.
A group committed to preserving open space, especially along the Lake Michigan shoreline, has fought the museum’s location out of concern it opens the way for more construction on the valuable ribbon of public, open land. In a lawsuit currently in federal court, it says the city has no authority to hand over the land, citing a legal principle known as the public trust doctrine, which requires the state to ensure open spaces are preserved and accessible to the public.