With Google to Take Over Thompson Center, Let's Appreciate Our Salmon Spaceship

On Wednesday, officials announced Google will be moving into the Thompson Center in The Loop. The state closed on its sale of the famed building to JRTC Holdings, LLC for $105 million, and Google will move in. The company will “entirely redevelop” the building into an office suite for Google employees. The Thompson Center, designed by the late architect Helmut Jahn and opened in 1985, has long been a source of controversy. Some praise the post-modern building while others deride its retro colors and its spaceship-like facade among neo-classical architecture. All agree that it needed major renovations to fix its inefficient heating and cooling system and years of disrepair. But Jahn’s designs were integral in ushering a new era of design known as post-modernism. Jacoby Cochran speaks to Lee Bey, photographer, Chicago Sun-Times architecture critic, and author of “Southern Exposure: The Overlooked Architecture of Chicago's South Side,” about the Thompson Center’s legacy. 

This interview was originally published May 10, 2021, after the sudden death of Helmut Jahn.

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