The Controversy Over Building Signage

this building in Chicago is known as Trump Tower for obvious reasons it was built in 2014 and designed by the architect Adrian Smith there's one aspect of how the building turned out that Adrian Smith wasn't so completely happy with it's the 20-foot tall serif letters placed on its south-facing facade the building sits on a prominent site on the Chicago River which puts it right on axis with the mouth of the river as you approach the city from Lake Michigan and the sign is right there that's obviously not by accident and not done with the blessing of the public or the building's architect who otherwise designed a building that is pretty well regarded architecturally the public became aware of the plans for the sign during the planning approval phase of 2013. that's when things really blew up Donald Trump wanted the letters to be 24 feet tall but in October of 2013 the city council members approved the shrunken version with each letter standing at 20 feet or 6 meters tall at that size the length of the five letters spaced out and current just right for the Trump logo comes to a whopping 141 feet or 43 meters or half the length of a football field the building stood for months prior to the side's installation then beginning on May 14 2014 each letter was added slowly over the course of a few weeks one at a time Chicagoans were not shy in expressing their disapproval the architecture critic for the Chicago Tribune Blair came and denounced it if this sign was in Atlantic City or Las Vegas nobody would care but it's in Chicago and in a part of Chicago full of great buildings from the 1920s to the 1960s and onward and this spurred a response from Trump calling came in a third-rate architecture critic it's also at this point that Adrian Smith the building's architect expressed his displeasure just for the record I had nothing to do with this sign the mayor Rahm Emanuel who had taken office after the sign's approval called it tasteless and he followed up with an ordinance to protect the riverfront from this kind of visual clutter Trump took this as a win because it meant his side would remain the most prominent when Trump put the sign up on his building he said to me oh it'll be like a Hollywood Sign everyone's going to love it and you know over time of course it became exactly the opposite other important corridors in the city are already protected with these kinds of ordinances if it was in effect in this case the Trump sign would be about five times smaller and it would have been located much higher on the building toward the top outside the eye line of pedestrians or boats near the building like the new Salesforce signed just a few blocks down signs shouldn't be considered in a vacuum they should be considered as part of a context and ultimately not just a physical context but a sense of place and so a sign that works in one context can be an absolute disaster in another today the city is still wrestling with ordinances that might still make this Trump sign illegal even after the fact these are ordinances which Target any person convicted of treason sedition related offenses or hate crime from doing business with the city but that's a long shot I think it can be argued that the sign has a negative impact on real estate sales in that building because of you know we're in a blue City and Trump is very unpopular a lot of people don't want to say they live in a Trump building during various moments in Trump's presidency and candidacy protests would gather on the other side of the river in Prime view of the sign one cheeky architecture practice proposed to cover the sign with four Golden Pig balloons but couldn't get approval when someone comes in boorishly and slaps this narcissistic sign that's half as long as a football field with letters 20 feet high it's like the dinner party just you know someone just showed up at the dinner party like who was a slob who was a narcissist who had no business being there and it's really disruptive to the sense of place it's interesting to me how buildings science become a concentrated symbol for activities inside of a building or they could even take a whole life on on their own as symbols of individuals or as collections of people there's nothing explicitly about this building's design that would associate it with a single person or a set of political ideas it's not like it looks like Donald Trump himself but that's what building signs are they're a stand-in they outwardly displayed information that would otherwise not be visible signs ask that you read a building like you would a book but signs also contribute pretty significantly to our overall experience of a building or of an urban space to be able to explore the subject even further I took a walk with Blair Cayman the architecture critic that expressed his reservations about the Trump sign on the Chicago Tribune all right so we're starting our walk here in the West Loop and now it's a historical district and there's an interesting tension for the the neighborhood to kind of grow up and be a little bit different than it was I think but also maintain the historical field and there's almost no it has the smallest side I think that there is a lot less pressure on signage to communicate place right and locations than there would have been yeah even 10 years ago right because you pinpoint in space you know where you are and it's just not that easy no that's true in the digital age it's a very different ball game yeah uh signs don't have to do as much work right as they did in the past role of science I think changes you know from here this way which this place has a history but it's new identity is different from that history but I think there's a kind of conflict there that's that's interesting relative to signage versus in Greek Town there's still a ton of Greek restaurants like it you know it hasn't quite changed in the same way the science itself I think is helping to preserve the identity of the neighborhood but the signage and the layering of um decoration you know creates like a sense I mean gives it a sense of Place Building signage is almost as old as buildings themselves we find them in ancient Rome and Greece for instance their communities and businesses use signs with individual symbols meant to denote various types of businesses and entertainment some of these symbols are still in use but some might also be lost on us for instance ancient Romans would have known a building with a Tavern if it had a depiction of a bush somewhere or might even have an actual Bush hanging from a hook that practice yielded the proverb that good wine needs no Bush meaning that if it's good you don't need to advertise or boast about it it seems that taverns were especially important to denote with signage throughout history in 1389 King Richard II of England ordered Tavern owners to erect signs outside their premises the legislation said that whoever shall Brew Ale in the town with intention of selling it must hang out a sign otherwise he shall forfeit his ale legislation was intended to make public houses easily visible to passing inspectors of the quality of the ale that they provided back then drinking water was not always safe and Ale was a common replacement the barber pole is also a common sign that developed long ago that is still in use today this Association can be traced to the European Middle Ages when Barbers were also surgeons I mean they both had sharp instruments so I guess it seems logical once a barber surgeon had completed the procedure that they were working on they would hang the bloody bandages outside the building these bandages would twist and turn the wind forming the familiar spiral pattern and as times evolved the bandages were replaced with a pole which was painted red and white stripes like the bush this is a process of an actual object having an association with an activity and then that object getting flattened into a graphic of course signage continued to evolve electrification came in the early 1900s and then those familiar enameled letters lined with bulbs according to Scientific advertising the cumulative effect is not gained by the size nor any number of lamps the manufacturer writes but by character distinctive appearance original application of ideas and its harmonious relation to the business it represents neon comes in the 1920s which adds a whole new dimension with linear lines of light made of glowing glass inside of a tube the term digital signage was born in early 1992 in a UK shopping center where a security guard is credited with calling the wall of television's digital signage today the most advanced signage are LCD panels basically giant computer monitors that can display anything at any time signs are one step away from video games or movies and creating immersive visual experiences people walk through the city with all this electrification and lack of technological or structural limits signs and their designs they're tightly regulated by zoning laws to be able to curtail and rail it all in these laws dictate all sorts of parameters including how to build or install them here in Chicago for instance you must have a permit to be able to install them and the installer actually has to have a special license just to be able to do so according to the city there are actually two kinds of signs each with their own regulations you have on-premise signs that direct attention to a business commodity service or entertainment conducted sold or offered on the premise where the sign is located you also have off-premise signs also known as Advertising Signs or billboards when I think of urban spaces that are dominated by off-premise building signage I think of Times Square with all of its high-tech screens wallpapering the surrounding buildings that you can no longer see those buildings anymore I bet most people don't even know what one Times Square looks like without all the signs attached it's also completely empty no longer functioning as a viable building you need Windows for egress in case of a fire so covering them up renders the space behind them unoccupiable but the value of signage real estate is more lucrative than the floor area so much of the space behind the signage is empty it's interesting to me since Times Square often seems like a negative example like when people argue against building signage they say you know the Chicago River it's not Times Square and when it's used in this way it seems like people think of signage like a cancer it even eats away at buildings and kills them is in the example of One Time Square looking at old photos of Chicago for instance seems like there are way more signs in say like the 1930s than there are today well Times Square has always been dominated by building signage this happens continuously even as the neighborhood itself changed drastically signage was embraced as part of its unique identity all along signs of Times Square are over the top uh and loud and not holding back in any way right but they're perfect because that is the context in the sense of place of Times Square as most people know during the 1970s the area was pretty rough dominated by peep shows and pornography stores then the content of the signage was targeting customers for these establishments these were immortalized when photographer Maggie hopp documented them prior to the area being cleaned up there are static backlit signs painted boards and Marquees with interchangeable lettering each of these sign types have different time spans for their messaging while a marquee might change weekly the physical labor of changing the sign would take a few hours today Times Square is more like being surrounded by high resolution computer screens which can display almost anything at a moment's notice while it seems like a circus free-for-all the signs and their content are actually tightly regulated from their size placement and brightness levels and signs are actually required on buildings with Street Frontage in this area I also visited Las Vegas's neon Museum to check out some of the relics of the signs past here too signage contributes more to how the city looks and feels than the buildings do areas like Fremont Street even have a digital display above your head this all made me realize just how building signage has a different lifespan than other Urban elements like streets which last for centuries or buildings which hopefully lasts at least a few decades signs might only last for a few years or if they're beloved maybe they last a lot longer but they would require multiple refurbishments along their lifetime and our feelings for signs can change depending on many things at the neon Museum the signs are stacked up and layered on top of one another as an uncanny effect when these objects which were meant to be all alone in service of creating a distinct identity are instead sort of haphazardly collected together the sign loses its power to communicate and create distinction instead they recall other places and times that you're no longer in rather than vivifying your environment they virtually transport you to somewhere else and do so with remarkable efficiency and effectiveness so next time you're in a city or even in Chicago pay attention to the building signage around you how does it contribute to your understanding of the place that you're in does it even help you to make sense of your surroundings or does it just clutter up what would have been a pleasant place if it weren't for all those signs shining about I thoroughly enjoyed my talk with Blair Cayman but was only able to include a few moments in this video and that was cut from almost I think two hours that we spent together the Legacy signs are often interesting because they open the door into the idea of the sign as narrative that's why I decided to edit together an entirely new video that was made from our walk in our discussion and in that one we'll talk about the differences between New York and Chicago as well as some of both of our favorite buildings and a lot more that video is available for viewing exclusively on the streaming service nebula I've been working hard to make nebula great with all of your favorite YouTube creators like City beautiful and not just bikes it's a perfect platform for us to be able to put out our content in a way that isn't dictated by the YouTube algorithm we have thousands of videos on there many of those are not found on YouTube at all and my videos are actually uploaded there about a day earlier than on YouTube and they're viewed completely without ads right now the best way to sign up is to use the bundle with our partner service curiosity stream curiosity stream is where you'll find thousands of high budget non-fiction documentaries from around the world if you're laser focused on Urban issues like the content in this video you might like REM kohlhaus's a kind of 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Channel: Stewart Hicks

Views: 120,411

Keywords: architecture, design, architecture student, architecture design, architecture lecture for beginners, architecture 101, architecture documentary, architecture concept, architecture theory, stewart hicks, architecture talk, urban design, chicago, building signage, trump sign, trump tower, times square

Id: VDzsDg1bSSk

Length: 15min 10sec (910 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 26 2023