Quote:
Originally Posted by observer
If the base of the St. Regis tower is 'great' as noted by ardecila, what words do you use to describe the base of a building like the one being proposed in New York at 175 Park Avenue (Grand Hyatt)? Not built yet, but as a big idea for the base of a tall tower, I would call that 'great'. Or the lobby of the built Lotte Tower in Seoul? My point is if someone created a list of top 10 or 20 building bases on tall towers, this one would likely not be on the list compared to all the other amazing things that have been done at the bases of tall towers. It is great compared to other buildings at Lake Shore East, but is it good enough for the scale building it is and considering how rare it is that buildings of this scale get built in Chicago? There is ultimately no comparison to dollars spent in NY on buildings as compared to Chicago. Might as well be different planets. The critique I have likely has more to do with the developer and budgets than the architect. Studio Gang has demonstrated many times how to deal with the base of buildings in a memorable way.
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All of the above are good. Gotta consider context though.
175 Park is basically a train station that happens to have an office tower above it. Literally hundreds of thousands of people need to pass through it every day, getting off subways and commuter trains so SOM had to bend over backwards to make an open design. It's a civic showpiece so it is designed accordingly.
St Regis is basically in a vertical bedroom community. There's certainly some pedestrian traffic but it's not a hub of activity, it doesn't call for a civic showpiece design. For that context I think it's a great design at the base. All it needs to do is provide quiet, pleasant pedestrian connections between the outer ring of LSE (Upper Wacker, Riverwalk) and the inner ring (Harbor Drive, LSE Park). There's a really nice connector at the upper level that opens out to the vista of LSE Park and LSD stretching down to the Field Museum. There's a really nice connector at the lower level that links the riverwalk to the park, and manages to turn the dystopian hellscape of Sub Wacker Drive into something unthreatening and even inviting. All those public spaces are filled with stylish elements that continue the design flair of the tower down to the pedestrian scale. That's it, mission accomplished.
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