CHICAGO | St. Regis Chicago (Vista) | 1,191 FT | 101 FLOORS

[PittsburghPA]

It's amazing to think that not so long ago this was nothing but a massive concrete skeleton.

[Drcastro]

When do we suppose they will get rid of all those ropes hanging from the top?

[jbermingham123]

Originally Posted by bcp

Good question - my dad and i were touring it a couple weeks ago..we chatted up the window washers for a bit. They work 7 days a week, weather permitting. The ropes will always be present unless retrieved fully for extended periods of bad weather. It was a shockingly manual system - two guys acting as sway anchors on the ground, and two cleaning windows. Their platform is left sitting on the edge of the street at the end of the day........hard to believe this is the permanent solution?

a while ago in one of the new york forums on here i had a conversation about this.. basically window washers are unionized and in many cases the union(s) are powerful enough to prevent buildings from installing automated window-washing equipment or any equipment at all that reduces the need for window washing jobs, even if the new equipment would be safer (such as systems that would eliminate the need for building owners to pay several humans 50k a year + benefits to act as sway anchors for 8 hours a day for two other guys hanging from cables) Its absolutely fucking ridiculous if you ask me

[Chi-Sky21]

I said it a long time ago here about how it would be difficult to wash these windows. I guess now we know the solution....and it kinda sucks if they are gonna leave those up there all the time.

[rivernorthlurker]

Originally Posted by Chi-Sky21

I said it a long time ago here about how it would be difficult to wash these windows. I guess now we know the solution....and it kinda sucks if they are gonna leave those up there all the time.

Don't they usually rotate/spin back to the roofside when not in use? Maybe we'll see that after construction has been done for a little while

[Bombardier]

^^^If that is the permanent solution, it would not be consistent with OSHA standards (which I believe are also reflected in building codes). Buildings over 500' are required to have a Building Maintenance Unit, so I'm not sure how they avoided having one on this property besides simply not following the rules.

[Drcastro]

That’s seriously embarrassing if that’s the final window washing solution. Anyone seen an aerial shot that reveals if there is a maintenance unit on the roof? Maybe it’s on back order or being tweaked (I hope).

[Drcastro]

If you don’t understand blow-through floors and the issue of vortex shedding, please go read up on it.

Obviously, skinny towers have higher susceptibility to the wind, and need engineering answers to prevent seasickness-inducing sway. The big failure with Vista is that they didn’t detect that they had under-designed it until it was already under construction. So rather than integrating the blow through floors into the design nicely like 432 Park, they had to (or decided to) make the compromise we are now seeing. At least they didn’t have to secretly go back and strengthen it at night when it was already occupied, like 601 Lexington.

Personally, I think this tower is impressive and will be more well liked over time, despite its quirks.

[Klippenstein]

Here's an interesting article relevant to this discussion.

Von Klemperer says he has never seen the kinds of floods and elevator outages the Times documented at 432 Park Avenue, but “it’s the kind of thing you’re warned might happen if you don’t get the design right.”

You may think that once you’ve figured out how to keep the building upright and made it stiff enough to live in without a daily Dramamine, getting the elevators and plumbing right would be easy. Unfortunately, that’s also where the wiggle room is. Builders and value engineers are constantly pressing architects to cut down on steel and shave off extras within the limits of the law. The building code covers safety issues, but ensuring that a building will be comfortable, quiet, and durable means meeting optional higher standards.

In construction, speed is both necessary and risky. “A supertall is built on a fast-track schedule, and that process can be tricky to navigate,” says Andrew Cleary, a director at KPF. The foundations get excavated before the design is finished, and the concrete-and-steel superstructure rises even as, on lower floors, workers are busily installing the curtain wall, ductwork, and sprinkler systems. “The choreography is sophisticated, and that’s where things can go wrong.”

https://www.curbed.com/2021/02/skysc...lems-html.html

This is not to say that making these changes during construction is ideal. It definitely can compromise the aesthetic, but I'd rather that than compromising the quality.

[rivernorthlurker]

Originally Posted by Klippenstein

Here's an interesting article relevant to this discussion.





https://www.curbed.com/2021/02/skysc...lems-html.html

This is not to say that making these changes during construction is ideal. It definitely can compromise the aesthetic, but I'd rather that than compromising the quality.

Bascially what the forum said...

All skyscrapers face a common foe: wind. Even a bulky office tower planted on a full city block — like, say, the John Hancock Tower in Chicago — can creak and shift on a blustery night. The sort of slender, reedlike condo building designed for the few, the foreign, and the filthy rich has to work that much harder to stand firm, like a ballerina remaining en pointe in a gale. “The standards for tolerance are tighter in a residential building than in an office building,” says von Klemperer. “That’s mainly because of the water in a toilet bowl. If residents see it sloshing around, they freak out.”

[Xing Lin]

If they'd get rid of that dumb looking frame around the blow-through floor so that it's just the structural columns and the core, it would actually look like an impressive architectural feature, levitating the last section above a clear void. With that ugly exterior grid, it just looks like two levels of blasted-out windows.

Surely the empty window grid would make a hell of a racket when high winds blow through? I remember the simple mesh fence around Taipei 101's outdoor observation deck made a continuous whistle sound in the wind.

[southoftheloop]

Time to close this thread before it gets buried in uninspired critiques

[r18tdi]

Originally Posted by southoftheloop

Time to close this thread before it gets buried in uninspired critiques

Which reminds me, I should probably go in the One World Trade Center thread and complain about the spire cladding again.

[pilsenarch]

well, this building has become the No 1 example in architectural design and structural classes around the globe as how NOT to design a supertall... so we can brag about that...

[Dasylirion]

Please god, just close this thread already. The horse is long dead and now beaten to a pulp.

[OrdoSeclorum]

A rave review in the WSJ for the Regis in today's paper, calling it the best highrise in Chicago in a generation. The most elegant fashion imaginable.

I understand that there are some mixed feelings about this building and why they exist. But when I'm in Grant Park, driving on LSD or biking on the lake front, I can't take my eyes off it. I'd be shocked if history didn't consider it to be a dramatic success.

[SteelMonkey]

Originally Posted by OrdoSeclorum

A rave review in the WSJ for the Regis in today's paper, calling it the best highrise in Chicago in a generation. The most elegant fashion imaginable.

I understand that there are some mixed feelings about this building and why they exist. But when I'm in Grant Park, driving on LSD or biking on the lake front, I can't take my eyes off it. I'd be shocked if history didn't consider it to be a dramatic success.

Wow that is solid praise and a good read. Thanks for the link

[vexxed82]

[BruceP]

Sorry, but the treatment of the blow-through floor is a major design fail. Ditto for the haphazard treatment of the mechanical floors. Overall, a swing and a miss.

[sentinel]

Nick, how do you consistently outdo yourself???