Someone accurately observed on Curbed that this building is channeling Brancusi's Column of the Infinite:

http://ih2.redbubble.net/image.59399...x550,075,f.jpg
redbubble.net

Just further reinforces the idea that Gang is moving towards monumentalism in her designs. It's not about form follows function, it is about form, monumental form...

Didn't get it at first, but contextually with that stretch of the Wacker wall, it fits and expands that wall.

Agreed. I think you have to take in context where this tower is situated in Lake Shore East and the city to truly appreciate that the architecture works really well for that site. Looking at it without knowing that fact just doesn't do the design justice.

Great line. Maybe that's why I'm having an easier time imaging it in the skyline than say, the Spire.

IDK, the last bubble reached pretty far down into the middle even lower middle classes...the current (boomlet?) is pretty much confined to the super-high end. Which I guess fits in nicely with the increasingly stratified makeup of the city and post-bailout recovery :shrug:


As for this building, I'm coming around on the design but starting to question just how real the proposal is. It would be nice to hear some more official confirmation as opposed to regurgitations of a single foreign piece.

That's good height. It has a Gehry vibe to it.

http://www.myfoxchicago.com/story/25...ago-skyscraper
from fox chicago

City hall didn't know about the announcement, and they said it could start construction this year.

Magellan said they would respond at an appropriate time.

I may get pilloried by some for saying, so - but Wanda's own website is definitely wrong about the price tag of their investment in this single project (and of course by implication the price tag of the overall project). I do believe instead the WSJ article that stated they authorized an investment of up to US$226 mil. in the project. That very same Wanda Plazas press release also states that Chicago is the US' second largest city. I stopped reading after that, rather than ingest another handful of factual errors before breakfast. Who knows how they screwed up on that figure (exchange rate calculation flub, lost in translation, general sloppiness, the US$900 figure is an investment representing much more than just the LSE tower, etc - you find these errors about their own information much more often than you'd think - or maybe not - in emerging world company websites) but they assuredly did err here. Total project cost here I'm guessing is less than $600 million (not Wanda's equity investment, but total project cost) - who knows, at the end of the day, perhaps no more than $450-500 million. I also am guessing that height may come in at less than 1,000' from Upper Wacker (consistent with New Yorker article), and that actual construction will not begin this year. Chinese websites in general should not be thought of as reputable sources of information - the WSJ, New Yorker on the other hand are.......

Here's another guess - Magellan was caught completely off guard by Wanda's announcement. They probably have some misinformation they'd like to correct a little right about now!

great post

^ thanks, although I've potentially just exposed myself to a lifetime of targeted cyberattacks..... ;)

Rough, Rough Massing
 

http://i1272.photobucket.com/albums/...ps775f5077.jpg

http://i1272.photobucket.com/albums/...ps0dd4df11.jpg

http://i1272.photobucket.com/albums/...ps56048b5f.jpg

http://i1272.photobucket.com/albums/...psd3b8a1d3.jpg

http://i1272.photobucket.com/albums/...ps88bcaf82.jpg

http://i1272.photobucket.com/albums/...ps7dacc468.jpg

^^^Excellent! Thanks for those Ryan, there's the view north along LSD I wanted.


It's hard to tell from the building render, but is pedestrian access north out of LSE park along N Field Blvd preserved in this design? I wonder if there'll be improvements to the access to the riverwalk and the various levels of Wacker? I love walking through there, but pedestrian access there is rough.

Yes, nice job, Ryan81. Very helpful in visualizing the project's impact

-----

Which is of course incorrect. But the greater Chicago loop area is the USA's second-largest downtown, smaller only than Midtown Manhattan, so that might explain the error. Maybe, as you note, a translation glitch.

BTW, I can't find the New Yorker article - do you have a link?
(Edit: found it. NewYorker, May 2014
)

Certainly an appropriation of Brancusi's Endless Column. Love the scale... the massing seems a little too basic/ predictable. The design needs a twist to give it a voice of it's own. The sketch by LVDW is more successful.

Also claimed as inspiration for the new Roosevelt University tower.

To me, this seems more like the Column of the Corpulent. Those look like Aon-sized floorplates, and I don't understand how that can work with hotel rooms or luxury condos.

When I first saw this tower I got a very Gehry 8 Spruce Street vibe from it.

I think the problem Im having is that the render is just crap right now, looks like a screenshot from Simcity 4. I think it will be a hell of a lot better once better renderings appear.

They are probably larger than Aon in the lower floors, but they are narrower, that's how it works. The width of the building is irrelevant, it is the depth of the floor that matters. Since this building is extremely rectangular on the E-W axis, the depth from core to the exterior is actually not much more than that of the Coast or any of the other recent buildings in LSE:

http://i1272.photobucket.com/albums/...ps7dacc468.jpg


I also have decided that probably the best "justification" Jeanne has here for the arbitrary design is the good old "views" excuse she used with Aqua. Having an undulating facade pattern like this is essentially the residential version of the "multiple corner offices" approach used by many 1980's pomo skyscrapers or the first Chicago Schools bay windows. Just add more corners to the building and you open up more views, more air circulation, etc.. Some units here will have their views pinched a bit (whereever the frustums narrow in the middle tier), but many many more units will have artificial corner views created where the frustums expand.

The best thing about Aqua isn't how it looks from the ground, it is the exhilarating feeling of actually experiencing the units. I had the pleasure of spending an evening in a condo on a high floor of that building with one of the deepest corner balconies (where they soar 12' or so away from the corner) and standing on that balcony was literally breathtaking. You were projected out beyond the rest of the balconies and felt almost as if you were flying. The effect of the wavy balconies is about 10X stronger on floor 64 than it is on the ground. This building will likely have the same effect particularly in the units on the projecting edge of the frustums. Part of the reasoning for the Hancock's tapered design was to reduce vertigo in the residential units, part of the effect here will be to greatly increase vertigo in half of the units. Can you imagine having a downward facing corner unit in the top of the middle stack? It would be like living inside the Hancock's new "Tilt" attraction, but on a 90 degree corner. Absolutely thrilling, just like standing on a 60th floor balcony projecting on a 6" slab of concrete 12' out into the air. It's exciting and that is almost justification enough in itself...

Think there'd be an elevator shaft for each column? I wonder how the wind would react to that shape. It's hard to imagine a damper being used in an asymmetrical design.

http://ep.yimg.com/ca/I/akaristore_2254_12097923
Link

I think each column would be united be a single core. All the undulations will help break up the wind and minimize the formation of sway inducing vortices. An asymmetrical design is still going to have a center of mass where a damper could be located if necessary.

BTW: MysteryGuitarMan approves of the design:
http://i.imgur.com/hLi2mOM.gif
Or maybe not. I'm not sure. It does match his lights though.