CHICAGO | St. Regis Chicago (Vista) | 1,191 FT | 101 FLOORS

[rgarri4]

Because of changes made by the developer the massing got wider causing the last minute need for the blow-through floor. The original design would of been fine but changes were made and the blow through floor was added as a result of that. It wasn't an afterthought or a mistake. Given the requirements its what needed to be done and with the time given this is what we got.

[HomrQT]

Originally Posted by rgarri4

Because of changes made by the developer the massing got wider causing the last minute need for the blow-through floor. The original design would of been fine but changes were made and the blow through floor was added as a result of that. It wasn't an afterthought or a mistake. Given the requirements its what needed to be done and with the time given this is what we got.

1. They created a design without a blowthrough floor.
2. They altered the design, still without a blowthrough floor.
3. The city came and told them there are safety issues with the design and for it to go through they'd need to add a blowthrough floor.
4. They added a blowthrough floor.

It was absolutely an afterthought and a mistake from the designers of this building.

[Kumdogmillionaire]

Originally Posted by Bombardier

If Vista is currently #11, there is only 1 taller building in the US that has a blow through floor...

10 Bank of America Tower - no blow through

Calling BoA Tower in NYC taller is just silly. Thing is like 50% needle

[rivernorthlurker]

Originally Posted by Kumdogmillionaire

Calling BoA Tower in NYC taller is just silly. Thing is like 50% needle

[Sohcatoah]

[Barrelfish]

Originally Posted by HomrQT

1. They created a design without a blowthrough floor.
2. They altered the design, still without a blowthrough floor.
3. The city came and told them there are safety issues with the design and for it to go through they'd need to add a blowthrough floor.
4. They added a blowthrough floor.

It was absolutely an afterthought and a mistake from the designers of this building.

Not quite right:
1. They created a design where the narrow parts of the frustrums got even narrower than the current design. A blow through floor was not needed.
2. After construction had already started, the developers wanted to add more square footage
3. They changed the design to widen the narrow parts of the frustrums to add more square footage
4. This increased the wind resistance, so the new design required a blow through floor to not sway too much.

So if there was any screw up, it was either:

• Not anticipating that the developer might want to add more square footage, and designing a building that could be scaled up easily without major changes like adding a blowthrough
• Not coming up with a better design revision *after construction had already started* that didn't require a blow through floor

[SIGSEGV]

There is a (virtual) lecture on Thursday at 5:30 pm (part of UChicago's Physics & Contemporary Architecture Guest Lecture Series) that might be relevant:

Steven Wiesenthal (Studio Gang)
Visualizing Forces with Studio Gang
Through a series of paired projects varying in scale from towers to exhibits, we’ll discuss how we make visible and legible architecture that responds to physical properties of the world while layering in experiential qualities addressing environmental, cultural, and economic forces in society.

I wonder if Vista will be discussed... (login info is available at https://arts.uchicago.edu/event/phys...cture-series-3 if anybody is interested in attending. )

[LouisVanDerWright]

Originally Posted by Barrelfish

Not quite right:
1. They created a design where the narrow parts of the frustrums got even narrower than the current design. A blow through floor was not needed.
2. After construction had already started, the developers wanted to add more square footage
3. They changed the design to widen the narrow parts of the frustrums to add more square footage
4. This increased the wind resistance, so the new design required a blow through floor to not sway too much.

So if there was any screw up, it was either:

• Not anticipating that the developer might want to add more square footage, and designing a building that could be scaled up easily without major changes like adding a blowthrough
• Not coming up with a better design revision *after construction had already started* that didn't require a blow through floor

They could have solved this by making the frustrums more extreme. Can you imagine it dropping back to the core in the middle lol

[pilsenarch]

Originally Posted by Barrelfish

Not quite right:
1. They created a design where the narrow parts of the frustrums got even narrower than the current design. A blow through floor was not needed.
2. After construction had already started, the developers wanted to add more square footage
3. They changed the design to widen the narrow parts of the frustrums to add more square footage
4. This increased the wind resistance, so the new design required a blow through floor to not sway too much.

So if there was any screw up, it was either:

• Not anticipating that the developer might want to add more square footage, and designing a building that could be scaled up easily without major changes like adding a blowthrough
• Not coming up with a better design revision *after construction had already started* that didn't require a blow through floor

We've discussed their excuses in the trade article many times. As I have said from the very beginning, even before the design was revealed (although i revealed it to LVDR who then did a sketch) this was a function-follows-form idea from the beginning, and a really, really, bad one.

Why would the developer suddenly need more SF at the cost of some of the most premium SF in the building? That's definitely not what happened.

I would invite anyone that thinks the frustum design was inspired to take a close look at the condo floor plans, particular the stacked units in the lower half of the building. Taking 3-4 feet in and out of the same floor plans on all the exterior walls pretty much results in a horror show. And this doesn't even address the 4' thick shear walls in so many of the bedrooms.... jail cells have more light. There was clearly never any functional reason for the frustums... and well, that led to all kinds of unintended consequences.

What I really suspect is that like the mechanical room louvers, Gang just chose to ignore or remain ignorant about the technical requirements of a supertall. This isn't a mistake that Smith or Gill would have ever made. Granted, I have to give Gang some benefit of the doubt due to the fact that this is probably the tallest building built by the cheapest developer in the history of the planet.

[pianowizard]

The roof of the building has a sophisticated system of water tanks holding >400,000 gallons, designed to counteract sway. The engineers probably had calculations predicting that those water tanks would suffice, but they were off. So yes they made a mistake, but it's not like Gang had completely neglected the wind issue. Besides, not a single Chicago skyscraper before Vista had needed any blow-through, so it's not too crazy for Gang to expect that Vista wouldn't need one either.

[pilsenarch]

^the engineering behind the 'sway' factor has little or nothing to do with location and more to do with the proportions of the building and the structural system that is utilized... so, it's kinda irrelevant that a blow-through was not 'needed' in Chicago previously...

[Bill_Ding]

Originally Posted by bhawk66

Mistake? So how could it have otherwise been avoided considering the overall design? Do you know something they don't? There was a problem and they addressed it. The "originally intended design" was flawed. They fixed it. And well done, imo.

(name me five buildings in the US that looks like Vista)

Um . . . it wasn't a mistake. It was a progression. Gang drew a pretty picture. Then the picture needed to get reviewed, modeled, and engineered. Shocking, I know. The pretty picture didn't work out, so they had to make changes. That is just how the design progresses.

[HomrQT]

Originally Posted by Bill_Ding

Um . . . it wasn't a mistake. It was a progression. Gang drew a pretty picture. Then the picture needed to get reviewed, modeled, and engineered. Shocking, I know. The pretty picture didn't work out, so they had to make changes. That is just how the design progresses.

I'll make sure to tell my boss the next time we go over load balance on our servers that it wasn't a mistake it was part of a "progression".

There are processes in place to catch mistakes like this one. The project engineers didn't catch what the city engineers did.

[gandalf612]

Originally Posted by jc5680

I look at the gradient glass treatment and see a good solution to a change from the original intent. That also strikes me as the kind of thing the design team may typically have to do during any normal VE process. (I suspect angled glass would have been much better at reinforcing the shape, but the end result is still interesting)

You're wrong. The entire point of the gradient is not to be interesting, that's just an added bonus. As has been explained many times. The gradient is specifically designed to make the building more energy efficient by equalizing the solar gain of different sized floor plates.

[pilsenarch]

Originally Posted by gandalf612

You're wrong. The entire point of the gradient is not to be interesting, that's just an added bonus. As has been explained many times. The gradient is specifically designed to make the building more energy efficient by equalizing the solar gain of different sized floor plates.

You must be joking. Gang did mention this as a justification back in the day, but has rarely repeated it. The solar heat gain variance from the different hues of glass, no 1., is negligible, and no 2., the size of the floor plates are also irrelevant, the only relevancy is the size of the room immediately adjacent to the glass exterior...

they did the glass gradient, not for any ecological reason or LEED reason, but simply because they wanted another gimmick to attach to the project to make it look cool... quite a risky strategy IMO since, as far as I am aware it has never been attempted before (for a lot of reasons I can speculate) and certainly not at this scale...

[Hawkeye343]

The developers of this completely botched tower have now partnered with Dan Gilbert to work on Detroit's new 2nd tallest tower. Great.

[pilsenarch]

I'm sorry, but I got to say it... totally not acceptable architectural criticism, but... , (btw, I look at this tower every day from my terrace), it's as if someone parked a double-wide trailer in downtown Chicago and it also happened to be a supertall... and as they step outside of their trailer... "but don't you like my T-shirt? It changes colors from the top to bottom! Look!"

[west-town-brad]

Originally Posted by Hawkeye343

The developers of this completely botched tower have now partnered with Dan Gilbert to work on Detroit's new 2nd tallest tower. Great.

interesting criticism.

of the maybe 50 towers this developer has built over the past 30 years, I'd say vista is by far the most interesting and unique.

[Steely Dan]

^ Yes, people seem to have very short memories (or are simply too young to remember the bad old days).

Magellan has come a LONG way from their early days of the true vertical turds like grand plaza, park millennium, etc.

I mean, Vista & Aqua are like the freaking Parthenon & Taj Mahal compared to a shit-pile like one superior place.

Coast seems to have been a kind of turning point for them when they started to care about the exterior architecture of their work.

[jc5680]

Originally Posted by pilsenarch

You must be joking. Gang did mention this as a justification back in the day, but has rarely repeated it. The solar heat gain variance from the different hues of glass, no 1., is negligible, and no 2., the size of the floor plates are also irrelevant, the only relevancy is the size of the room immediately adjacent to the glass exterior...

they did the glass gradient, not for any ecological reason or LEED reason, but simply because they wanted another gimmick to attach to the project to make it look cool... quite a risky strategy IMO since, as far as I am aware it has never been attempted before (for a lot of reasons I can speculate) and certainly not at this scale...

My interpretation has long been that the gradient is a way to try and visually reinforce the geometry of the building by creating stylized highlights and shadows in the peaks and valleys. Given how wavy rather than angled the building looks now I imagine it would have looked pretty flat without them once they had to move away from angled glass on the curtain wall.

Gang did something similar with aqua IIRC (and may have used similar rationale?). There are different colors (or maybe levels of reflectivity) used in that building organized in conceptually similar ways. More subtle, but helps reinforces light and shadow.

But yeah, solar heat gain, that ain't it.