George Lucas museum in Chicago will go to the "far out" side

San Francisco Chronicle/John King, 8/6/14.  "Lucas' architect choice for Chicago light years from San Francisco vision."

George Lucas museum "home sweet home" Chicago

Museum design may look
more like civic "Star Wars"

If George Lucas indeed builds his vanity museum in Chicago, San Francisco's contribution may be that we helped nudge the "Star Wars" creator out of his aesthetic comfort zone for the first time since he started making sequels to his sequels and re-releasing his re-releases.

That's the intriguing twist to last week's announcement of a design team for the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art on the shores of Lake Michigan. The lead designer will be MAD Architects, a Chinese firm whose lone North American project is a pair of curvaceous residential towers in metropolitan Toronto that could be squeezed metallic toothpaste tubes.

It's hard to imagine a style less like the theme-park classicism that Lucas offered up last fall when seeking to erect and endow a home for his collection of illustrative art at Crissy Field in the Presidio. When decision-makers turned him down after a combustive public competition, Lucas and his $700 million collection were lured to Chicago.

MAD Architects to design
the future Lucas museum

....  Beyond the political expediency it might also be that, deep down, Lucas wants to prove himself - again. Not for the money, Lord knows. Instead, the 70-year-old billionaire might want to show that he's still in the creative game. That he's still open to innovative design, and taking chances on such younger talents as Gang and MAD's Ma Yansong, whose buildings are inconceivable without the use of digital tools. Just like Lucas' special-effects breakthroughs with Industrial Light & Magic."  Read article,  includes 8 slides.

Reference - MAD Architects news, 7/28/14.  "Following a global search, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art (LMNA) announced that Beijing-based MAD Architects has been selected as the principal designer for the LMNA site while Chicago-based Studio Gang will design the landscape and create a bridge to connect the LMNA to Northerly Island. VOA Associates, based in Chicago, will serve as the executive architect and lead the implementation of MAD’s design. 

“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,” said George Lucas, founder of the LMNA. “I am thrilled with the architectural team’s vision for the building and the surrounding green space. I look forward to presenting our design to the Chicago community.”  Note MAD Architect design photographs:  Chicago from the above related MAD Architects news article;  upper right from Ecofriend, and lower right from Inhabitat.     

George Lucas -  Amazon IMDB, biography. "George Walton Lucas, Jr. was raised on a walnut ranch in Modesto, California. His father was a stationery store owner and he had three siblings..."  Lucas Film, Ltd, Film and TV. "From George Lucas' first movie, the experimental THX 1138, to the Emmy winning Star Wars: The Clone Wars computer animated series, Lucasfilm has strived to push the boundaries of visual storytelling in previously unexplored ways." 

Posted by Kathy Meeh