Many are sure to go down as pipe dreams. The images on the walls certainly don't tell us. True, this section incorporates key developments in structural engineering, like the conical shape of British architect Norman Foster's proposed 2,755-foot Millennium Tower in Tokyo. Its curves would let potentially destabilizing winds slip harmlessly around the building. In New York, the show makes plain, that approach is being left behind by such deftly composed late modern towers as Christian de Porzamparc's LVMH Tower, the American headquarters of Louis Vuitton, the French luggage manufacturer.
Good architecture is nearly impossible to achieve without good clients.
In New York, for whatever reason, clients are setting the bar for risk-taking higher than in Chicago. Here, the building is bigger at the top than at the bottom, but the top is an ethereal cloud of glass. The Chicago skyscrapers, by contrast, look uninspired. Nice move, but, as the show reveals, architects are doing it everywhere. And that means that that every place starts to feel like no place.