Crown Fountain

This guide to Crown Fountain in Chicago traces the two fifty-foot glass towers back to an ordinary afternoon in a studio, where a volunteer was filmed pursing their lips for artist Jaume Plensa's project. It explains how Plensa and the School of the Art Institute chose faces from one thousand Chicago residents meant to represent the whole city, and how those faces cycle across the LED screens facing each other over the pool. You'll hear how the piece reworks the old idea of a gargoyle spouting water into something built from real neighbors. Watch the shallow black granite pool from a dry spot if you want to stay out of the splash zone.