As cities lost the middle classes to the suburbs in the middle of the twentieth century, a janitors union in Chicago bankrolled a housing complex downtown to bring business back. The architect Bertrand Goldberg broke with the right angles of his mentor Mies van der Rohe to embrace curves in concrete in a "self-contained city" that offered all the amenities of a city: theater, offices, shops, a restaurant. It lacked a connection to the street, but it did bring people back into downtown and show once again that urban living could be glamorous. #architecture #architecturelovers #chicago #urbanism