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Silence Isn’t Golden for the W***** Tower

There are bad branding strategies. There are Macy’s-mothballs-Marshall-Field awful branding strategies. And then there’s Willis Group’s hubris- and hare-brained idea to rename the Sears Tower. What do you get when you glue a new name on an old icon whose existing monicker has worldwide recognition? Judging by local blog discussion, a good laugh–and lots of people who say they just won’t bother to say the word W*****.

Urbanophile Blog Blasts Nichols Bridgeway

In May, I threw down the charge for local bloggers to set aside starchitect fandom in their reviews of Renzo Piano’s new Art Institute of Chicago Modern Wing. This week, Aaron Renn, author of the widely noted urban-analysis blog, The Urbanophile, took up the challenge. A fan of the Modern Wing’s exterior, in an epic post, Renn considers the elevated Nichols Bridgeway and Monroe streetscape, below, in the same copious detail for which his blog has become known in national planning circles. And much like the mood of one local critic after reading my original post, Renn does not come away happy.