Trump Tower Chicago, Remarkable Architecture

The Trump Tower Chicago makes great use of its available space while creating another icon in the city’s skyline. Also important, its setbacks pay homage to the Art Deco-era skyscrapers that made Chicago a living architectural museum. And it manages to reach for the stars without stepping on the feet of other buildings in the area. To its neighbors, it appears as an equal. That’s because the first setback is at the same height as the cornice on the Wrigley Building, the second is the same height as Marina City, and the third is at the top of the former IBM Building across the street. Copy provided by Chicago Architecture. 

Quick Facts

Chicago Water Cribs (zero degree day)

Water cribs “collect water from close to the bottom of a lake to supply a pumping station onshore.” They’re called “cribs” not because they’re swank MTV-style homes, but rather because, like a baby’s crib, they surround and protect the intake shaft from any outside pollution or contamination. The water is collected and then transported via pipes 200 feet below the lake’s surface to pumping stations (like the Chicago Avenue pumping station) at purification plants at the shores of the lake, and from there the water continues on its fabulous journey which ends when you fill up your Brita pitcher at your kitchen sink. Copy provided by the Chicagoist. 

The Sears Tower currently known as Willis Tower

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Following written copy from the Chicago Architecture Foundation.
Architects have always been tasked with designing tall buildings to resist wind loads. But as buildings continued to grow taller and taller, new solutions were required. When this 110-story tower was designed, architect Bruce Graham and structural engineer Fazlur Khan of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) utilized the bundled tube system to address structural problems never before seen at this scale. Their use of the innovative system ushered in a whole new era of skyscrapers.

The tower is comprised of a cluster of nine tubes connected together to act as a single unit. The tubes support one another, strengthening the structure as a whole. Meanwhile, the variations in tube height disrupt the force of the wind.

John Hancock Center, the finest building in all of Chicago

Why would I say something so brazen as to proclaim the Hancock the finest building in the city? For many reasons. Here’s two. It took me a while to realize it because I needed some perspective. It hit me while I was on a boat on Lake Michigan. While not by definition, the Hancock is shaped like a pyramid. A wide base and narrowing as the building rises to the top. As the ancient Egyptians showed us, pyramids are an eternal shape, even magical. Second. The Hancock is an architectural wonder. Topping out in 1969, the Hancock Building has influenced every skyscraper since. Fazlur Khan, the architectural engineer is considered something of a genius for this bold building. Bruce Graham was the architect and world beater, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill served as the architectural firm.

 

Chicago’s Marina City and the accidental bird picture

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Copy from Chicago Architectural Foundation. “In our ‘cities within cities’ we shall turn our streets up into the air, and stack the daytime and nighttime use of our land.” —Bertrand Goldberg

Downtown Chicago (sometimes referred to as the Loop) is now one of the fastest growing residential neighborhoods in the Chicagoland area. But downtown living hasn’t always been so trendy. When architect Bertrand Goldberg envisioned Marina City, it was an urban experiment designed to draw middle-class Chicagoans back to the city after more than a decade of suburban migration.

By creating a city within a city, Goldberg hoped the convenience of living and playing close to work would help make Marina City a success. After all, the mixed-use development was so much more than just those two “corncob towers.” When completed in 1967, it included two residential towers, plus an office building, a theater, parking for your car or boat and plenty of retail space. But were Chicagoans ready to move back to the city from the outlying suburbs? If Goldberg’s intention for Marina City was to get residents living close to work, it should be considered a wild success. When the development opened, eight percent of residents worked within the development and 80 percent could walk to work.

Marina City was certainly a vision for a new way of living in the 1960s. And the vision was one Chicagoans embraced then and still do today. There are now many residential mixed-use developments in the Loop. Marina City was a concept and development very much ahead of its time.

Marina City

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Architect Bertrand Goldberg. Copy from Chicago Architecture Foundation: Forward-thinking architect Bertrand Goldberg was a student of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and the influence of Mies’ Modernist principles can be seen in his work. But his own ideas of modular, prefabricated, curved forms are also highlighted in the design of Marina City. Goldberg believed that since no right angles exist in nature, none should exist in architecture. That belief is clearly at work in the 65-story residential towers’ design.

Goldberg compared the bays on Marina Towers to the petals of a sunflower. They radiate from the building’s strong central core and provide stunning balcony views for each wedge-shaped residential unit. The curvilinear reinforced concrete forms became a trademark of Goldberg’s style.

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