Here's the site plan. Sub Area D has been built. Sub Area E is under construction. The rest are future development.

I'm starting to appreciate how incomprehensible this building's design is. I no longer see this as something ugly, rather something ominous and perplexing. People hundreds of years from now will be walking along the river, staring at this building, and thinking to themselves, "Why the hell does this building exist?" People will question if an architect even designed this building, because there's no way an architect could possibly design a building with such an absurd appearance.

It'll be Chicago's version of the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Like others have said, it's really striking how drastically the developers changed directions on this. The original renderings of the complex had a cohesive, if kind of uninspired, theme of white buildings with horizontal ribbons of glass. This is... certainly not that. Interested to see what the rest of the towers will end up looking like. I just hope the final complex won't end up looking like an incoherent mishmash.

It's certainly better-looking in person than in photos. I just have a long-standing irrational gripe against the style of offsetting the windows in this fashion. As far as that trend goes, I think this building does it better than most. Better than NYC's Alta Long Island City or 300 Ashland... or Detroit's The Exchange... or even Chicago's 1611 W. Division (Hope I'm not blaspheming!)... or... I could keep going but I think I've been enough of a sourpuss. Long story short, this building is fine.

Hopefully whatever they build at the north end is much better and blocks the view of this turd.

The Reed at Southbank - 234 W Polk
 

March 20, 2023

Damn, CBOT could use some love (a nice powerwashing)

I was looking for something on ChiStreetWork and found this:

WEI PROJECT 58225299 CONSISTS OF CONDUCTING THIRTEEN SOIL BORINGS ADVANCED TO TERMINATION DEPTHS OF APPROXIMATELY 100 FEET BELOW GROUND SURFACE WITHIN THE EMPTY LOT AREA TO CLASSIFY SOIL CHARACTERISTICS FOR FUTURE DESIGN OF SITE ENHANCEMENTS. AN INFORMATION RETRIEVAL, IR-120194, WAS PROCESSED AND A SUBSEQUENT INVESTIGATION TO DETERMINE/CONFIRM THE LOCATIONS OF UNDERGROUND FREIGHT TUNNELS LOCATED ON THE SITE. EACH BORING WILL BE A NOMINAL 8-INCH DIAMETER AND BACKFILLED UPON COMPLETION. APPROXIMATE LOCATION OF THE JOBSITE IS BOUNDED BY THE CHICAGO RIVER TO THE WEST, WEST HARRISON STREET TO THE NORTH, SOUTH WELLS STREET TO THE EAST AND POLK STREET TO THE SOUTH.

Interesting... Preliminary steps for the next building. Confirm the tunnel locations and then grout it. I hope they do a better job concealing the garage for the next tower.

kind of menacing looking down franklin (yesterday)
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw...-no?authuser=0

The top of the building makes my eyes suffer :yuck:

04.24.23
 

Apparently so does the bottom...

The Reed at Southbank - 234 W Polk
 

May 9, 2023

Definitely not a fan of how this one turned out......

I like it enough. Positive is that it's a big brawny building that uses all of it's available footprint. The facade is like a new age version of a black Mies. Negative - the base is not good but at least the podium lies under and not adjacent to the tower.

I don't know. I appreciate that it's different, but the randomized facade looks like a low-resolution computer screen whose pixels are trying their hardest, especially at a distance. Hope future developments offer something better.

The architect forgot to turn on anti-aliasing?

According to the website apartment reservations, first available date for move-ins is May 26. Seems they have less than two weeks to complete a majority of the public space work.

what I am having trouble understanding is why those big black lines are placed where they are anyway. the are indeed random and therefore just blocking out space that would have otherwise been vision glass?

It's just the location of the vision glass floor to floor, in that the plan layouts may not differ much at all, just that some floors have vision glass probably 2' (+/-) over from floors below or above.