CHICAGO | Mid-Continental Plaza | 538 FT / 178 M | 49 FLOORS | 1972

[JMO_0121]

Mid-Continental plaza was completed in 1972 as an office tower. It is currently undergoing a major renovation in which the top 15 floors will be transformed into residential units and recladed in glass. Please feel free to add pictures of the progress as I do not live in Chicago and therefore, its impossible for me.






Pictures from Chicagoarchitecture.info and Falconliving.com

[jcchii]

booooooooooo

[wrab]

From Lynn Becker's blog. Didn't realize that Goettsch was doing this:
_____

ARCHITECTURECHICAGO PLUS
LYNN BECKER

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2008
Deconstructing 55 East Monroe

.....(S)eeking to cash in on the renewed popularity of the east Loop with the advent of Millennium Park, the top 15 stories of the building are now being transformed into the "Park Monroe", ultimately projected to include almost 350 condo units.

As documented in these photographs by our intrepid photo correspondent Bob Johnson, Goettsch Partners is in the process of opening up the Mid-Continental's monolithic facade.....


(Photo courtesy Bob Johnson/ArchitectureChicago PLUS)
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Read the whole article at http://arcchicago.blogspot.com/

[jcchii]

double boooooo

[JMO_0121]

Originally Posted by jcchii

double boooooo

Please stop being so inmature about this. I created this thread so that people like you dont get heart attacks everytime updates are shown on the boom rundown. Get a life, and if you hate this so much, why are coming to this thread? double get a life!!!!

[Thundertubs]

A building of this shape and size just won't look good with a sleek modern facade. It's like puting a tiara and tutu on a hippopotomus.

[SolarWind]

October 14, 2008

[CGII]

Originally Posted by JMO_0121

Please stop being so inmature about this. I created this thread so that people like you dont get heart attacks everytime updates are shown on the boom rundown. Get a life, and if you hate this so much, why are coming to this thread? double get a life!!!!

triple boo.

this is a bad renovation of a perfectly fine and attractive building into horrible and disproportioned modern kondokrap. if you created this thread just to have a party with people that like this project (virtually none, i believe and should hope) then i recommend you go start a thread at daquan's forum than waste our time.

[Nowhereman1280]

^^^ Quadruple Boo

Actually though, the glass that they are putting on it right now is rather intriguing. It doesn't look quite as crappy as I'd feared. However, I still hate it because only half the building is going to have that renovation which will probably look extremely awkward.

[Buckman821]

got this from yochicago.com



I think it's interesting that the only rendering of this project seems to be this water coloring. It certainly leaves a lot up to the imagination. I have to wonder if that's because the developers know how awful this is going to look.

How cost prohibitive is an entire re-cladding? Is there anyway they could eventually be pressured into doing it?

P.S. I'm not techno savvy otherwise I would have tried to make that smaller.

[wrab]

10/19:

[JMO_0121]

Wrabbit, I must congratulate and appreciate your pictures, they are awesome. I would love to give you homework, and that would be to keep this thread alive with your awesome pictures. Nice angle on that one!! never seen anything like it. Nowhereman is right about how "different" a half and half building might look, but we need to appreciate that the glass they are installing is not very "imposing" or a "look at me" glass. It sort of gives it a smooth transition, from the glass to the other material.

[Patrick]

I never had a problem with the building, I'm not sure about the renovation.

[ardecila]

One can make a structural justification for what they're doing. I don't know if those mullions/dividers are load-bearing or not. However, if they are, then they don't need to be quite so dense at the upper levels, since they have less weight to support (less floors above).

I've seen several buildings do this, where the column spacing gets wider as you go up the building.

However, I think I'd be in favor of a much-less abrupt ending to those columns. A protruding ledge where the columns end, extending across the building, would look quite attractive, and would be in keeping with the rectilinear aesthetic of the original Shaw & Associates design. It would also provide a place to mount spotlights and cast a dramatic pattern onto the building.

[Dr. Taco]

Someday they might do the top 15 floors. For now, they didn't sell enough units, so they are doing this in "phases", with the top 8 floors being phase one

[Dr. Taco]

Originally Posted by ardecila

One can make a structural justification for what they're doing. I don't know if those mullions/dividers are load-bearing or not. However, if they are, then they don't need to be quite so dense at the upper levels, since they have less weight to support (less floors above).

I've seen several buildings do this, where the column spacing gets wider as you go up the building.

However, I think I'd be in favor of a much-less abrupt ending to those columns. A protruding ledge where the columns end, extending across the building, would look quite attractive, and would be in keeping with the rectilinear aesthetic of the original Shaw & Associates design. It would also provide a place to mount spotlights and cast a dramatic pattern onto the building.

half of the exterior columns we see are load-bearing. The one's they cut out are not load-bearing

But yeah, had it been designed for what they are doing, then during construction, sure, they wouldn't need columns to be as closely spaced. But the way they designed it (small, puny windows), they didn't need columns to be spaced better, so why even design that way? I think it would be harder to design

[plinko]

My GF and I wandered into this building in February and went up to the sales office. I will say this...the condos in this building will have sick lake views (and likely to never be impeded)...

[Dr. Taco]

^ us global NIMC's don't care! we don't want to have to see the outside of the building!! haha

recent Solarwind pic:



The significance of this photo being, I am no longer worried about how this thing will look when completed! I think it is gonna look fine. PHEW! To see what I'm seeing, just pretend like the new part is how the building was originally designed, and that the building was designed to have a rather large crown that people can live in.

yeah, john, whatever you need to say to make yourself feel better. especially if it works

[VivaLFuego]

I liked the building before.

I'd be totally fine with the recladding if:
1) it entailed the entire building
2) it didn't have the very visible inset balconies.

I'd even be willing to give a little on #2. Hey, they gotta sell units... but of course somehow Smith and Calatrava managed to design high-end units without balconies, so it's possible.

The lack of #1 emphatically ruins it. This is being turned into a total eyesore, and a highly visible one on one of Chicago's postcard skyline views.

Hey, at least Goettsch apparently of rid of the ridiculous pompadour that capped the mechanical penthouse in their earlier renderings.

[X-fib2]

Well, I have to say that I never cared for this building when it was built and my feelings havn't changed a bit since. It is one of the poorer designs to come out of the late 1960s/early 70s and the fact that it is in such a visible location makes this architectual mediocity standout even more. Had it been burried in the density of the west loop it would have gone unoticed and we wouldn't give a crap what they did to it. Its only salvation might be with the coming of Legacy, and maybe someday some other nearby taller buildings, making this megalyth less of an abomination as your eye will be drawn to the more impressive buildings.