May 2021 Issue: Architecture

State v. Jahn:  The Thompson Center is dead, long live the Thompson Center "Like Jahn, I came to the United States as a young immigrant. I viscerally understand his fascination with the kitsch of our adopted land: the bluster of its skyscrapers, the squalor of its suburbs, the gaudiness of its consumption, the rush of its highways. For Jahn this topography offers an inexhaustible source of vernacular references. In the James R. Thompson Center, the pivotal commission of his career, he deploys American tropes with a Nabokovian skill. The building’s regimented façade nods to the colonnade of the neoclassical City Hall directly across the street. Shaded lampposts hint at the intimacy of a small-town square. The volume of the central atrium is an homage to rotundas found in nineteenth-century government buildings. Crowning the atrium, a glass nipple sliced on a diagonal is meant to recall a statehouse cupola. Offices of government bureaucrats are left exposed to sunlight and scrutiny, so