If you think that fountains are boring edifices with naked stone figures pouring water into stone bowls you haven't seen the Crown Fountain. No stone figures. No bowls.

Spanish sculptor Jaume Plensa's Crown Fountain represents a true fountain for the 21st century, amalgamating technology with public space presence. Located in the southwest corner of Chicago's Millennium Park the fountain consists of twin 50 foot towers faced in specially made glass block. Water streams down the towers' faces and forms a shallow pool onto a granite plaza. Suddenly each tower comes to life as enormous video projections of people's faces appear on the inner face of each tower. The faces are generally rather still and stoic, with occasional eye blinks being the clue that these are not still photos. After several minutes, each face (in synchronization) squints and the mouths pucker. From the center point of each mouth's pucker comes a stream of water shooting perhaps 10-12 feet into the plaza for several seconds. The faces then smile, fade to black and cascades of water pour down from the tops of the towers, after which this cycle restarts.

To create these playful faces Plensa videotaped approximately 1,000 regular Chicagoans (volunteers). Their faces were shot very precisely to ensure that their mouths would align to the hidden spouts in each tower. The images are projected onto the enormous towers' facades through an LED technology similar to that used on stadium displays. The towers' glass blocks were custom-fabricated for the sculpture to ensure the proper optical characteristics.

Adults seeing the fountain for the first time tend to stand in amazement at the spectacle (as with most of the other Park's attractions). Children, however, are not as dumbstruck. On a hot summer day they know exactly what Plensa had in mind for the fountain; water party! Within the first two weeks of the fountain's opening it became an extremely popular venue for children, somewhat like an open fire hydrant for the whole city.

A June, 2007 Chicago Tribune article by Emily Nunn takes you beneath and inside this remarkable fountain.