[sentinel]

The roof of the ORD21 main terminal design is changing. For better or worse, it won't be the serrated glass segments that were shown on the competition design. The cost was way too high to have that throughout the main terminal...mind you, NOT material cost/construction cost, rather cost of engineering such a massive space that would require moving a lot of conditioned air in the summer due to solar heat gain and heating the space in the winter time with so much glass everywhere. I don't know the exact amount, but what I've heard from others in my office is that it was almost double what was budgeted. The new roof is more monolithic, which would look similar to the terminal five expansion. However on the plus side, there are numerous openings throughout, randomized to look like a starfield at night (from above). The openings provide light into the terminal, and the large, six-pointed 'Chicago' star in the middle is still included/integral to the design. The interior terminal design has been refined and I think looks very sleek, contemporary and bold, especially the structural column and trusses.

In a way, I think this type of design refinement somewhat proves that the Calatrava and Foster designs were untenable from the beginning, because they would both been even more cost prohibitive and would have been altered significantly during project design development, possibly leading to a bigger fiasco over cost overruns and extreme design dilution. The StudioORG/Gang terminal layout is maintained, it's really just the roof that has been altered. I don't know if this is the final design, it may change again, who knows?