CHICAGO | NEMA Chicago | 896 FT | 81 FLOORS

[Ryanrule]

Originally Posted by DCReid

The design is certianly interesting. However, I have mixed feeling with Chicago adding all of those tall buildings along the lakefront. I especially think the view to the north coming from the south has been messed up with the addition of the BlueCross Blue Shield and the apartment buildings built in the early 2000's.

you are thinking regressively.

towers by lake too tall? BUILD BIGGER ONES BEHIND THEM!

also, keep those feelings out of any neighborhood meetings.

[wierdaaron]

There's only one place in this town where views are guaranteed, and I hear they're going to build an 862' apartment tower on top of it.

Proportionality concerns can be valid, but I think Grant Park really wants to be enveloped. Holes in the park wall make me sad.

[Domer2019]

Originally Posted by wierdaaron

There's only one place in this town where views are guaranteed, and I hear they're going to build an 862' apartment tower on top of it.

Proportionality concerns can be valid, but I think Grant Park really wants to be enveloped. Holes in the park wall make me sad.

Maybe people don't want to hear about NY, but I hear their park is completely enveloped, and will soon get a few supertalls at or near its wall...

Just sayin' - advantage Chicago, when it comes to having a lake on one side, and that building the Grant Wall of CHIna isn't such a bad thing.

[LaSalle.St.Station]

I love the subtle design nod to the old IC Station that once stood there.

[BVictor1]

Originally Posted by LaSalle.St.Station

I love the subtle design nod to the old IC Station that once stood there.

Which was probably accidental.

[brian_b]

Originally Posted by LaSalle.St.Station

I love the subtle design nod to the old IC Station that once stood there.

Any chance you could clue me in on that?

[BVictor1]

Originally Posted by brian_b

Any chance you could clue me in on that?

[Busy Bee]

Not getting the connection. The old Central Station was a grand old building and one I see little to no connection with this new tower.

[TallBob]

Looks to be taller than 900' if you ask me!

[BVictor1]

Originally Posted by TallBob

Looks to be taller than 900' if you ask me!

Perception and perspective can play hella tricks on the eye.

One Museum Park is about 730' and The Grant (One Museum Park West) is about 590'.

The northeastern most setback of this new proposal seems to align with the crown of OMP. The central setback is about 6 floors higher and the west setback is 4 floors higher than that. The back tube rises about 5 more floors with some type of element.

OMP is 62-65 floors and this proposal is 76.

We'll get the exact height eventually.

[denizen467]

Originally Posted by LouisVanDerWright

Lol, have you ever seen a smokestack? They aren't square, they aren't made of multiple vertical segments, and they don't have setbacks... In short, other than these being tall, slim, structures, they have absolutely nothing in common with smokestacks.

You've missed the plot. It's not the tower; it's the protruding section (the tallest "tubes") that evokes the smokestack. It doesn't help that this portion is tucked in the back side of the building, just where a smokestack would be. Then there are the trellis things; they look exactly like chimney caps (just do a quick image search of that term and it's frighteningly uncanny).

Sadly, a particular shape or form need not be exactly replicated in order for imagery to be successfully evoked. (At the Art Institute it's plain that the Impressionists figured that out over a century ago.) So, even if the fallacious assertion that smokestacks cannot be square were true, it would be a non starter.

Not to belabor the point however. I don't consider this the dominant impression made by the tower. Just that it can't be overlooked; some people will be reading it that way, and dollars to donuts that some NY or east coast writer one day will refer to it that way as they take pleasure in reducing our city to blue collar cliches.

Originally Posted by Tom Servo

Anyone with concerns about this tower's design looking "70s" or whatever needs to go take a look at 432 Park Avenue in New York City. It's really beautiful.

But this doesn't have the extreme seventies simplicity of 432 (as to massing). And as someone else pointed out, it doesn't have its budget either. But I know nobody needs to remind Tom about VEing and budgets. We'll have to wait for a facade detail render.

[Mr Downtown]

This bears more resemblance to the Inter-State Exposition Building than to Central Station. Which is to say, none at all. Nor is it on Central Station's site; this was the site of the peripatetic Dowie Building.

Originally Posted by wierdaaron

I don't think shadows over the park will be an issue. The sun would be north of it for most of the year.

Only if it were in the Southern Hemisphere. Where we live, the sun is in the southern sky, except at the beginning and end of the day during summer.

[Pioneer]

Originally Posted by BVictor1

For some reason, I feel like playing Tetris.

[Ch.G, Ch.G]

Originally Posted by denizen467

Not to belabor the point however. I don't consider this the dominant impression made by the tower. Just that it can't be overlooked; some people will be reading it that way, and dollars to donuts that some NY or east coast writer one day will refer to it that way as they take pleasure in reducing our city to blue collar cliches.

...this sounds overly sensitive to the point of paranoia. And since when are evocations of vernacular architecture or other old, "honest" structures ever ridiculed? Those forms are celebrated in Toward an Architecture. Nouvel's first US project, the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, references neighboring grain elevators, something for which it received universal praise.

[SamInTheLoop]

Love this. So glad Vinoly came in and we were spared the comical P/H designs. This would be better if the trellisy thing on top were nixed - hopefully it will be - that's highly unnecessary.........and absolutely LOVE the number of units......we need to embrace true densification round these parts....

The one thing I very much don't like about the proposed PD amendment here is what is proposed for the parcel on Indiana due south of The Grant. Townhomes? No thank you. Hopefully they go back for another amendment before that actually gets developed. There's no reason for anything less than a 30-40 story tower there, if not two. Townhomes and a park there is a joke. A park? You want a park, walk north a block, there's a big park. You don't like that one, walk east a block or two and you have the Museum Campus. Also, the fact that you would have an area of low-rise directly behind The Grant gives the South Wall a certain 'flimsiness' in my opinion - the wall should have a 'solidity' in that it be 'backed-up' by reasonably dense and tall buildings behind all of it............as I said, hopefully that piece of this gets amended and densified once again....

[rlw777]

Quick photoshop job

[wierdaaron]

^Plus a 40-something floor Essex Annex.

[aaron38]

^^^

Originally Posted by Ryanrule

towers by lake too tall? BUILD BIGGER ONES BEHIND THEM!

Done.

[The Lurker]

Kudos on the photoshop job, RLW.

Originally Posted by wierdaaron

^Plus a 40-something floor Essex Annex.

And 1326 S. michigan!

[VKChaz]

Originally Posted by SamInTheLoop

Also, the fact that you would have an area of low-rise directly behind The Grant gives the South Wall a certain 'flimsiness' in my opinion - the wall should have a 'solidity' in that it be 'backed-up' by reasonably dense and tall buildings behind all of it

Yes, there really should be some 'thickness' to the south of the buildings along the Park. The existing townhomes to the south established a bad precedent.