333 Wacker Drive, by Kohn Pedersen Fox

Since the 1970s, Chicago has been in a relatively fallow period for architecture, somewhat like in the 1920s. There have been some interesting additions to the Loop, such as the Kohn Pedersen Fox office building at 333 Wacker and the State of Illinois Center designed by Helmut Jahn,

The State of Illinois Center (click here)
as well as some catastrophes, such as the ghastly postmodern Harold Washington Library designed by Thomas Beeby,

Harold Washington Library (click here)
and the new Museum of Contemporary Art designed by the German architect Josef Paul Kleihues.

The Museum of Contemporary Art (click here)

But for the most part, Chicago's new buildings of the past two decades have been the indifferent work of big-name, international architects who might have raised them in any of several dozen cities. Chicago has a Pelli, a Phillip Johnson, a Kevin Roche, and a Ricardo Bofill. There's nothing yet by any of the most interesting architects working today--Frank Gehry, Renzo Piano, Rem Koolhas, or Stephen Holl, though buildings by Piano and Gehry are in the works. I'm not sure that anyone is designing really novel or interesting tall buildings--as opposed to wide ones--anywhere in the world right now. But if the skyscraper rises again, I'd bet on it happening in Chicago.

Photograph by Rolf Achilles