I'm the biggest fan of arquitectonica, but this could go down with there design for one miami as there worst.

yeah. maybe.

we'll have to wait and see how the building progresses architecturally (or retain a better rendering) but the form isn't exactly superb nor are the lines crisp. Strangely enough, the lack of aesthetic pleasantries are what interest me somewhat in this structure.

anyone else finding out that what "should" be the building's defining characteristic (the hole) is fighting with the part of the tower that juts out underneath it?

it's a tough building to understand but it's somewhat neat in a "brutalist" sort of way.

I'm a bit disappointed. I don't particularly care for the design. I know it's early and I haven't seen a color rendering yet, but that's my still my initial reaction. Maybe it will grow on me. I had higher expectations based on some of the earlier hints that were dropped.

The units right over the hole ought to have glass floors.

Facing North?
 

If this is facing north, then the bottom of this render would be at the height of upper wacker drive. That means from the other side this building may be even taller. That way it could achieve the mid 900 range if it goes all the way down to grade. This is still early days tho..

Mandarin, Shangri la, Trump, fill in any other new ones _________, and this one. That is a lot of 5 star hotels to absorb at one time. I plan to say in the first two a couple of times, Trump never.

Obviously the market says they are needed otherwise they would not be being built.

Any guess on which hotelier is moving in? This is not a tease, for I do not know myself, but does anyone have a good guess out there?

I am not sure if I like it. The building reminds me of the structures from the movie "Metropolis".

I think the hole should be reversed...from the ground up twenty stories....like we saw way back on the vision plans.

Well, I'm not as enthralled as I thought I was. I FEAR that they're going to be using obnoxious colors. It's not the innovation I was looking for. The sides look nice, but WTF with the N-S faces.

I need a real render.

One thing that is a positive, they succeded in reducing the massing of the wide profile. I'll update that render now.

I wish it had some curves instead of all just uniform squares/boxes/whatever. And like everyone else, I wish the cutout was at the bottom of the tower.

Or a dramatic increase in the money supply is causing overcapitalization. But how much of that is playing into this will be known years out.

Ho hum.

Also, it would seem that this is a good time for Europeans to invest in American assets like real estate (but not securities, obviously) because of the favorable exchange rate.

My wife and I have been waiting for quite a while to see the plans for this building becuase we were seriously considering buying here.

I showed her the rendering, and she said it looks like a kid built it out of legos, and was very disappointed. :yuck: Guess we'll have to keep looking. :shrug:

^ Don't worry, I'm sure Chicago will deliver something to your liking.

I have to say, at this early point, I like this tower better than Aqua. The reason is that I think the radical parts of its design are more substantive. Living in this tower, with the smaller floorplates and getting the experience of seeing the other 1/2 at arm's length, will be a very different experience than one might get in the typical large condo building. Not so for Aqua, which is nice, but where the departure from the normal high-rise paradigm seems to be skin-deep.

This is also a nice way to produce many corner units, which not surprisingly is Smithfield's continual goal with the MoMo and SoNo projects (hence the twin-tower and inset balcony configurations).

NO! No big thick towers.

I'm glad I never made a comment about looking forward to this one (Times Square Westin is one of the poorest "grade A" tower designs around), because this is ugly. No vertical design... just a collection of blocks.

A lot depends on materials, colors, etc.

But for right now, I absolutely, positively LOVE this son of a bitch!

With one caveat:

I was kind of hoping that the 20 story gap was lower, say closer to Wacker Dr, like in the original proposal. That way pedestrians/cars/buses passing by can look down into the grand LSE neighborhood.

If somebody else already made this critique then I apologize--I was too lazy to read the last 3 pages :cool:

I think I've pinpointed why the overall form is unpleasant to me: This building in all its symmetry gives off a real neo-fascist vibe.

did someone say "brutalist"? all of UIC is brutalist, and while I hated it at first, I have really gotten used to it, even to the point of liking it. Henceforth, I really kind of like this current design. and why move the gap downward? it'll just make it look more like momo. I prefer unique