sorry for the bad pic but it was all i could find. a google search yielded some earlier schemes but this one seems quite different from the others.

anyone have better pics? neither developer's website nor calatrava's have any pics... poo.

and which one is it?

I'm guessing the one with diamond-shaped cut-off top

I think that's already there.



Smurfit-Stone Building, Chicago

its the spiral tower thang just to the right of the right edge of the photo.

why not calatrava? he isn't koolhaas but that goes both ways.

least this one isn't another of his beached whale things...he is maybe only beat by meier in the land of self-referentopia, but again, why not?

Anything he does will be 100 times better than anything by SOM and their ilke. so i guess what i am saying is...could be worse.

jump - "...SOM and their ilke"

I hope you are not stereotyping large corporate commercial practices like the one I work for. We are not all the same, but it could be worse.

i still can't see which one it is....

oh, there it is. its... tall, i guess... and glittery. like a shiny nail. but calatrava has never really excited me much. at least this has a better chance of getting built than libeskind's spire.

yawn......

and what bland kamin sezs about it
double yawn....

there is a parrallel with fosters simple geometry that won the Stirling Prize last year. The interest in the Gherkin lies in the quality and the layers of the building skin.

You can't see much depth in the image above.

what about the issue of reduced (negative) urban impact??

although the tower is incredibly tall, it is also much more slender than the current 2 towers on the site. It would free up space at the ground level and cast smaller shadows. (for half of the day it will only shadow lake michigan).

i think it's an important consideration since many will judge the buildings main flaw to be its disruptive urban presence.

I saw an article in the paper here in Chicago this morning.

I assume the floors would be curved like that because of the outer walls? I know that photo above doesn't have much depth to it, but I imagine some of those floors would be very small.

Article:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-0505180159may18,1,325083.story?coll=chi-business-utl

i'm with TED. [yawn]

i'd expect more questioning of the form a skyscraper might take from senor calatrava. his floating boxed in ny is a start. this is just flw's mile high with a twist.

wake me up when this one's over.

im tired of being pesemistic... there are SO FEW interesting high rises being built in this city... i would rather it be this than those pieces of shit going up all over the southloop/roosevelt.
bottom line is that a building must make money, and you cant take too many chances with such a huge lot and a huge building.
well... you can take chances... but the developers almost never will...

it always makes me laugh when you hear a developer praise the innovations being made in thier buildings... like raised tech floors, and curvalinear shapes have never been tried

and i dont think the proposed building is in that photo up top... as the lot is right next to navy pier

yeah, the image was too wide for the 'nect format and the tower fell off the right side of the page. oops.

those that are yawning: did you want Calatrava to decorate it with some random crumpled up metal or large red dots?

would you mind posting or linking to a skyscraper that wouldn't make you yawn? are you simply against any form that's understandable?

i agree i personally like Calatrava's NYC tower better, though i don't mind this Chicago design...depending on how the skin and materials are treated, it could look great.

Tip of the Day: add "width=418" to make your images fit into the posting like the example below shows (but remember to remove all the spaces EXCEPT for the one between .jpg and width)
[ img ] http://www.image.com/image.jpg width=418 [ /img ]

That works Javier, but look what it does to a face!

yes, I should add that fudging the width of the image will make your spire look taller.

nico-

my comment specifically noted the 'questioning of the form' that calatrava has done well in the past. it's missing in this one and it looks like he's coasting a little. maybe too much work/too popular. with a piano (nytimes) or a meier (recent apt bldgs), i don't have the same expectation as i do from calatrava the structural sculptor.

so...what might questioning the form of a skyscraper mean?







like 'em or not, they have asked questions...

just kidding... i think the image resizes proportionately.

I always liked Eisenman's nonphallic design. And as much as I have never liked Koolhaas, his/their recent buildings are looking nicer and nicer - that one there would be pretty nice, not to mention a great structural accomplishment.

The rest look horrible.


Personally, I still like flw's mile high better than just about any skyscraper I've seen.

OK, I like the tower. I think it balances the skyline nicely (at least it does in the view shown above) and Chicago as the "city of big shoulders" could use another very tall building that is not a plain box, or a decorated box. Sears and Hancock use their structure aesthetically, Hancock more elegantly than Sears, but they are of a kind in that the structure is expressed and gives the building form. I see the Calatrava design continuing that lineage in an even more refined, advanced, and intellectual way.

And, I'm now totally pulling for it to succeed given this quote from the developer:

Carley added: "If I had my druthers, I'd like to have Sears retain the title. If Santiago thinks it's(the height of the new building) essential, fine."

How often does one hear a developer say "I don't need to have the biggest. I want the one that is designed the best."?????

Go Carley, go Calatrava. Trump is a weenie.

"It's going to put Chicago on the map," he said. "I'm not concerned about height. And I'm not concerned about density, because it's a sliver."


Thank goodness.. chicago really needs to be on the map.. no one knows of that city.

It looks better than the Freedom Tower.

it could be worse ;)

I think all those "yawn"ing should reserve judgment until the tower is built. With good detailing and execution it could be pretty spectacular, and the renderings are fairly nebulous at this point. Give it a chance. Though on the same note, lackluster detailing could turn those yawns into sheiks of terror.

Personally, I thing this one will go the way of 7 South Dearborn (SOM's now defunct next-world's-tallest-in-Chicago design). Chicago is getting overbuilt with condo towers, and this thing is going to need to sell out in a hurry for it to be adequately financed.

Anyone have any information about who the local architect is going to be?

I'm of two minds regarding this...
First, I agree that yes, Calatrava could definitely have come up with something more creative. We've seen countless works by him that may or may not have been to your personal taste, but were always something unique, that nobody else would have done. I could see SOM or similar putting out a design like this, and from that perspective, I'm disappointed.

However, the alternate view is that it's better than the average building out there, so we should be grateful that it's going up. While the high minded side of me feels it could be pushed further, when I look at all the other crap that gets built, I think that we should just be thankful for every bit of halfway decent architecture that gets built, because it's going to raise the average level of architecture in our day to day lives.

rationalist is completely right...

has any chicagoan gone down to the south loop lately?
have you seen how horrible disgusting 75% of those pomo condos are?
have you grown tired of throwing up at the site of decorated pre fab concrete panels cladding every condo in the city?
are you not sick of architects emoting? cutting and pasting irrelevant symbols to thier buildings?

i am happy whenever a DECENT building gets done, as there is an over abundance of crap... ESPECIALLY in the condo sector.

also, from what i have read, as it is a calatrava building, financing has been easy so far... the developer has said its the easiest money hes ever raised... i see no reason it cant get built... it will be just as the pritzker pavilion... people here a name of a designer they recognize, and they want to be a part of it

Mies would aprove I think. I hope Calatrava gives as much atension to the ground as he does the sky.

also the devloper has already has these gems in its portfolio, they can't lose.

not per corell,

thanks for elaborating...

i'm guessing that site constraints limited the footprint and thus the architect can't 'question the form of the skyscraper' in the way your 1st and 2nd images do. i love the creativity of the 3rd and 5th images but they're not feasible for skyscraper proportions.

your 4th image maybe helps make my unspoken point...that it's almost assured that too much 'experimentation' leads to an ugly buildings. skyscrapers are better suited to streamlined, straightforward, structurally inspired/related designs.

in other words, i tend to think a Foster-type design is more in the nature of a skyscraper than a Gehry-type design. i don't mind successful exceptions though.

BOTS- well, then this should raise the level of their work a little, eh?

i thought it was interesting that all the world trade centre finalists (with the exception of libeskind) proposed muiltiiple or joined towers.

my fave.

my sources tell me jd is the local at present but might go to ll......yawn...x2

the skyscraper as a typology is a perpetual trap for many otherwise 'avant garde' architects.. the technical issues often preclude the level of experimentation that other buildings provide, while simultaneously focusing a spotlight on the architect so intense that they often are effectively blinded. it isn't as easy to let your ego run wild and free across the landscape of contemporary form when that form will very conspicuously tower over the landscape. in another sense, the class clown is often much wittier at the back of the class than in front of it.
anyway, with all that said, my problem with this design is that not only is it boring and blase for a supposed starchitect, but that it doesn't even respond honestly to the pragmatic issues of structure that have often been calatrava's inspiration, and often the bane of other skyscraper designs by 'starchitects'. as far as i know, the drill bit isn't inherently structurally efficient. to perpetually cantilevre the spiral form will take a great deal more material and calculation.
so i would say the design is neither practical nor inspirational. based on his earlier works and the images i've seen so far, i don't hold a great deal of hope for it being saved by details or being in its real presence either.

Hmm, intersting point, heterarchy.

I suppose to me the tower "looks" like its form is informed by its structure, but you're saying that the form is just decorative? I was assuming that the twisting form somehow made the thing stronger, given that it is confined to a small footprint. Is this true of other Calatrava works, am I being hoodwinked into believeing their srtucture if more "true" than it actually is?

Gotta sign off, big raging thinderstorm in Indy and I'm fearful of power surges - yikes! Would like to tlak more on this though....

i'm not a structural engineer, indeed mr calatrava certainly has greater knowledge on that front than i do. but that's my understanding of the structural situation. the enormous amount of torque that the design creates will make a less efficient structural system. it works for a drill because the drill is being rotated and driven in to something. the torqued form counteracts the immense pressure applied on it by rotation. however, this tower is not being acted upon in any way similar to that of a drill. structurally, without a lot of extra engineering and extra structural material, it would want to collapse on itself in a spectacular spiraling demolition. the tapered form helps, but not enough to make it a justifiably structurally pragmatic design.
now, in general, i much prefer designs and buildings that are more concerned with human beings than with post and beams, so to speak, so this isn't a pure critique of design as engineering. i'm critical of this design because it seems to neither succeed at inspiring or illuminating, nor at being "realistically" practical.
it feels like a meaningless and hollow, pre-packaged consumer image that capitalizes on calatrava's momentary trendiness, without embodying any of calatrave IN it. and i don't even like calatrava's ealier, 'good' work. though as others have mentioned, i am interested in seeing what his nyc project develops in to. it could be the first of his projects that i may like.. :)

i wonder if, following on from the sequence of plans in delerious New York, the first world trade centre towers were the maximum expression of the potentialy infinite (not withstanding structural constraints) stacking of universal floor plates. i guess im proposing that the calatrava tower, libeskind's condo's and the developing menagerie in china and dubai are simply attempts to achieve some semblence of originality in an allready exahusted typology by experimenting with form, rather than criticaly thinking about the function or even the social and economic relationships of the skyscraper to the rest of the city. this then emphasises heterachy's trap as the sucessive projects try to outcompete eachother in formal gymnastics.

this is why i find the examples posted by not per correl, as well as steven holl's conected towers, interesting as they challenge not only the form, but also the function of skyscrapers.

(exhausted typology might be a bit strong and i know these towers will probably be built for the rest of human history but that doesent mean that we shouldnt move on)


this may not make much sense but i had a little to drink (beers were on our clients)

she knows what to do with it

Apparently Donald Trump is making a career out of being an architecture critic...

Developer Donald Trump, who is constructing a 92-floor, 1,360-foot skyscraper in Chicago for luxury condominium buyers, said Carley's proposed building would not be economically viable in the post-September 11 climate.

"Nobody is going to want to live in a building that's a target," he told the Chicago Sun-Times.
Referring to Calatrava's design.


I'll now support this building to the death, if only to spite donald trump.
If you can't like a building out of spite, when can you like a building?

good call upsidedown. the old lady was probably calatrava's inspiration... :)
and yeah, the donald trump thing is ridiculous, as usual. that guy should just shut up. i think it was from the same articale archgeek is ref'ing, the calatrava developer responded to trump with something like, 'oh, i see, your 1360 ft tower isn't a target, but my just slightly taller one is... give me a break.' :) paraphrased to be sure, but still pretty entertaining.
still, as liberty bell was saying earlier, it's still better than a lot of other scrapers. just looks more like something som would design, as opposed to an aia gold medal winner hot shot. i suppose calatrava's allowed to make some bank too though. :)

I think you're referring to rationalist's comment, heterarchy, but I agree with her - at least it is better than most developer dreck.

That being said, I am less enamored of it after reading your and upside down's posts regarding the actualy structure of the buidling and its influence on the form. As upside said, the potentially endless stacking of identical floor plates is one way to approach a skyscraper. It is interesting to me that the WTC floors truly were universal - no lessening of floor area relative to height. I spent some time years ago in one of the major penthouse apartments in the Lake Point Tower building in Chicago - also identical floor plates. So the penthouse apartments were bigger than the ones below only by virtue of knocking down more interior demising walls to take over more of the floor plate in one unit.

The interesting proposal in the Calatrava tower is that the very upper floors get quite small, allowing a single penthouse to be a single floor that is unlike any other floor in the building. This probably has a lot of desirablility for the super-rich who want to flaunt it.

The Calatrava proposal in NYC is fascinating to me for a similar reason - being able to point to one of those crystalline boxes hanging tenuously in the sky and say "That's my townhome" is such a ballsy notion.

Still and all, though, I am seduced by this tapering tower's appearance on the Chicago skyline - fluff though it may be.

?

i thinka subtler twist would be more elegant. it almost begins to be too swirly and "fancy" for my tastes. less frozen yogurt, more twisting bodies please. but i do like the tapering as well.

underground unicorn. can you just see the sleeping horse all tangled up in the sewer lines and electrical conduits down there?

LOL, Jeremy, that image is hilarious! And so apt - now I feel like a girlygirl for liking the tower...maybe i don't like it so much anymore!

awww, dont feel that way. how can you resist it?

Here is a slideshow from NBC5

http://www.nbc5.com/slideshow/news/4777258/detail.html

Center for Ants? - That was my thought too!

I've already got an idea for the landscaping

that shot with calatrava and the building from the ground looking up is cool.

BOTS, no offense intended. mostly just reacting to the bomb-shelter-for-freedom tower that childs has gifted the city of NY.

funny, as i was writing this a short piece showing the very work in question came on the tele, including a cameo by liebeskind and hadid in milan and others...made national news in part cuz of trump's disparagement, so gotta thank trump for acting stupid (it's gotta be an act, right?).

s'all good.

It looks like the Ivory Tower from the Neverending Story:

jump - was that the abcnews report?
Did you notive they spelled Calatrava ...Kalatrava.
It's like they didn't even bother.
That and they called one of Libeskind's works, modest, because the building is a bent shape appearing to bow. hilarious

yeah, it was. i get like 15 minutes of english tv news here every day round breakfast and that was part of today's bit.

the spelling mistake was sad, and the commentary was as you say weak. but i was happy to see it anyway. something i could show my wife and ask her what she thinks, sort of thing. since she is not particulalry interested in architecture its good to have a bit of architecture-lite out there.

http://a9.com/Karel%20Vollers?src=amz_0781_t2

this whole twisting thing realy seems to be in vogue at the moment and is calatravas preocupation of the moment. also about the gerkin by foster aren't all the windows faling off and the area underneath cordoned off something to do with the live loads on the facade weren't factored in to its design?

I can taste it!!!! (It's the new Kalatravah Flavor)

haha... i like that Ants... at least now we know the true inspiration for Calatrava.

looks like calatrava designed a big 'SCREW YOU'.

could make for some good novelty t-shirts

"i screwed chicago"

i'd buy that shirt.

The sales center opened yesterday so I walked down there - option contracts while not officially available seem to be getting bid up - theres only 220 units avail for purchase. While I was in there I watched a couple Japanese business types filling out the forms to get on the list. There may be interest after all, not just from the Chicago area, maybe second homes or international corporate apartments.

Bots - the 2 pics of the developers other towers the Fordahm and the Pinnicle - while not terribly interesting to us architects, are very successful residential towers. I looked at them with disdain until walking through the model units - I could get very comfy in one if I had the cash....try it out - 15 east Hourn st., ground floor sales center.

Drilldo

Do you really not know what building it is? Come on.

An interesting discussion here, which include a nice new york times article: http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6813

It's interesting that this building is going to be a residential tower... Apparently Calatrava wasn't concerned that the height would make it a target for terrorism because he sees a residential tower as a completely different animal from a world trade center in nyc...

Also, the twisting form is structural, a means of diverting the heavy wind loads, it was tested in a wind tunnel...

Also, the form has an advantage of creating opportunities for balconies for some of the residential units that a box tower wouldn't....
Say what you will about calatrava as a form driven designer, but his forms are not dumb... He is pretty clever in using structural smarts to drive his self expression... He is pretty good at finding elegant forms that can be accommodated within modern day technology... This is more than can be said of many starchitects who create purely sculptural forms which are in bold conflict with economic and political constraints, or who bend over to accommodate economic forces, sacrifice design aspirations, and give in and produce something 'dumb' but that is good enough, that is sufficient to meet some minimal needs for the developer.

Lets assume that architecture can still be in the business of innovation, pushing boundaries... What good is a starcharchitect who doesn't have the balls or intelligence to come up with something innovative and technically innovative, and to be able to fend for their design with smart arguments in the face of challenges?

By comparison to this tower, I think SOM's freedom tower is well, dumber, less innovative, and supported by more BS...

does it come in flesh-colored?

Yo, so, reports out in the news in chicago today that the City OKd the zoning changes, and fordham tower has the green light.
Anyone else hear anything new about this? on the news they were saying they are saying completion is set for 2011

http://www.suntimes.com/output/business/cst-fin-tall17.html

just found this, this report isnt as optimistic as the news casters sounded, but still, i really hope this gets built, the new model looks beautiful

although all of calatrava's work seems to be a personal trek of making his sculptures into buildings, this is not that bad, and what are skyscrapers if not sculpture.

what sickens me, however, is the fact that given this guy's obvious "media darling" status, he chose sculpture over technological innovation, something piano or foster would have done. not saying those two are amazing designers, i'll let others subjectively place opinions on who they like or dislike.

what i am saying is that he had a choice and chose form over function as he always does. if he is such an innovator, i wish he would leave his comfort zone and really push innovation somewhere besides allusion.

if you haven't already, check this out: it is relevent.

http://www.evolo-arch.com/

although all of calatrava's work seems to be a personal trek of making his sculptures into buildings, this is not that bad, and what are skyscrapers if not sculpture.

what sickens me, however, is the fact that given this guy's obvious "media darling" status, he chose sculpture over technological innovation, something piano or foster would have done. not saying those two are amazing designers, i'll let others subjectively place opinions on who they like or dislike.

he chose form over function as he always does. i wish he would leave his comfort zone and really push innovation somewhere besides allusion.

if you haven't already, check this out: it is relevent.

http://www.evolo-arch.com/

i agree with you that calatrava has definetly chosen form over function, and yes, it would be nice if he would be willing to push his comfort zone and innovate. This is all true, i do however think this is project is a great opportunity for chicago to make a statement that it is willing to take risks and begin to establish itself as architecturally significant in this age. Even if this project is motivated by formal ambitions, i fail to see why this is a problem, and why formal investigation is less beatiful than pragmatic technologic investigation. $550,000,000 high rise condos are never going to be able to innovate beyond acceptable developer risk. its unfortunate, but true im afraid

"formal investigation is less beatiful than pragmatic technologic investigation"

I am curious, why? Form, to me, translates directly into experience - something that people can really understand. Technological innovation does not necessarily do that (although it certainly can) and it can be as gratuituos as sculpture making.


moda - man, there are some hideous winners in that competition!! I am certainly glad none of those will be built - anywhere!! Good example of "Ok, so yeah, that's interesting, but God, it's UGLY!!!". World has enough ugly things, lets not build ugly things that actually have logic involved.

trace

good points all around. however, the post was aimed at the "state of the art" here. where calatrava continually emphasizes allusions to birds and drill bits, the winners of that competition (again ugly is subjective. i agree on a few disagree on others) took time to study and reflect on the urban condition, which, in the end, is what skyscrapers should(?) do. and yes, market forces are not present in competitions, but the ideas are worth thinking about.

as far as the ugly crap being built in chicago right now, it's definitely a change for the better. at least until we see more development in the design.

i think the yawn says it all

I hear ya, moda. It's those blobby things that perplex me. Looks like Lynn (the others escape my mind...thankfully) 5 years ago. Now, i am not going to pretend to understand the methodology that went into the structure analysis (at least that's what one looked like) as we can't see or read, but I have a hard time appreciating any kind of architecture that I don't like the way it looks. Shallow, maybe, but I can't help but think "yeah, great idea, but..."

C's skyscrapers are at least a little different and they are (hopefully) going to be built in the US. I think Foster's investigations are more interesting, by far, but he's yet to build them here (probably because the only thing driving C's buildings is "ok, how many square feet? Ooooo, big $$$$!").
At least big devs here are appreciating some better designs and not resorting to Trump's (although there are some better ones going up) ugly crap.

http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2004/tallbuildings/main.html

What is "choosing technology over form"? As if the "high tech architects" are not form driven, or produce forms that are somehow more objective...

Okay, to play the devils advocate: there may be forms that are partly driven by external forces like wind loads-- foster's swiss reinsurance hq, and this building as well-- but ultimately buildings are formal... and they do "say" something as well, don't they? a building that is functional, that "works" ultimately is subject to many factors, one of the moss critical being the market... Apart from pushing the technological envelope, a successful and functional building should speak to people, it must be economically sustainable as well... People have to like it, so aesthetic form, whether it comes from, I don't care if its a birds ass or a corkscrew whatever, if the external idea generator planted a seed, led to a better building, that resulted in something new that people like (even if they don't have a clue where it came from), that works better, then that is a successful architecture...

Speaking of calitrava, his work is as much scientific as it is artistic... his work is obviously formal, but it is often an expression of structural forces, loads, the bending moment, etc. In that way, the form is very much driven by function, he's very different from say gehry in that the structural members are very rational, the guy is both an architect and a structural engineer, he wrote a phd thesis on the "foldability of spaceframes"... while his structures seem to be anthropomorphic, they are structurally innovative, organic in caltrava's work is always structurally sound, not just blobby...

I generally like this tower. The thing that bothers me about all the images is that none show the context as it will be when trump's monstrosity is finished in a couple years. Speaking of marring the Chicago skyline... yeesh. Not to mention fucking up the river views up in north loop...

Right now I think Calatrava's tower anchors the skyline nicely. But when Trump's goes up I am not sure. I would like to see something overlaid with the two--maybe I'll do that if I get a moment.

trace,
i said...

"Even if this project is motivated by formal ambitions, i fail to see why this is a problem, and why formal investigation is less beatiful than pragmatic technologic investigation."

so i wasnt saying that formal investigation is less beautiful, i was in fact asking why moda felt formal invesitgation was not as legitimate as technologic investigation.

i agree with you that technologic innovation can often time be lost in translation, and if you look at many 'high tech' project that claim to be pushing some sort of structural or technological boundry, they are often times designing in the same way a formal investigation might be carried out. I have seen plenty of high tech projects that have forced structural solutions for the sake of using it...

well now, its been updated

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-0612070161dec07,1,5249446.story?coll=chi-news-hed

whats everyone think about it.

on first glance i feel like the new tower meets the ground more convincingly but im definetly not sold on the top of the tower. it dies on me there.

the developer says construction is still scheduled to begin in spring-summer of '07

i really hope this gets built, along with the aqua tower, these could be two of the most exciting highrises done in the states lately

tribune poll: which do you prefer? drillbit with antennae or drillbit without antennae?

i think that drill bit is h.o.t. and i hope it goes up big time...with antenna.

every time i pass the trump thing i shudder involuntarily. it is so horrible. its like no one made any decisions about it at all. i wonder if the CDs just said 'insert default skyscraper as needed.' yick.

Trump really chump'd us. Remember back in 2002/03 when the show was hot and everyone was praising this slimeball? He was "changing the face" of real estate in Chicago. They act like hes the one who made our city desireable to live in as if the Illini tribe were camped here untill he came along.

he's got a pretty strong portfolio of ugly buildings, that's for sure.

unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) he sells them wherever he builds them.

Can't say I particularly care for either of Calatrava's buildings, but the drill bit with antennae looks more elegant, I think.

The only thing I can say about the chump chicago is that I wish it was more reflective and less not - the only thing its got going for it is its angles relative to the grid could provide some interesting reflections.

The new screw looks a little more broad-shouldered than the previous encarnation, but I am really happy to not see a hilton parking lot caught at its base like toilet paper on the bottom of its shoes.

Having just caught up on the news that the Spire went from slender and pointy to "licorice stick", I think the new scheme is just a bad idea. So, OK, the hotel isn't going to work because you're too far from the strip. Why not just insert some other program in there, keep the original 300 units, and call it a day? I can't imagine how they can sell 1300 big money condo units, especially since many of them are going to be so far up. It seems like the developer is on an ego trip here - building that high is simply unnecessary, and philosophically, a waste of material. Maybe one day when we all have cars that fly but until then, no.

And the pointy one just looks better.

I like the antenna-less version only because the antenna seemen unnecessary in the first place. Are that many condos really needed or in demand? They should have kept the hotel, more of a destination point maybe. I'm glad they decided to bury the parking. "toilet paper on the bottom of its shoes" is an unfortunate malady of skyscrapers.

Crow-

The glass on the trump tower is very 80's corporate. Ive stood on the bridges watching them install them, and for the talk about how advanced the glass is, its deformations are very annoying. At least for the East facade couldnt they have used a more stable glass? The bowing looks bad, and cheap, even though its not a cheap glass.

Also - stand on the bridge and look up. Now take the IBM building and add another one - thats the shear height this wall of 80's era curtain will rise.

...now if we could only get the entire building to spin like a windside

That's funny, evilp, I had the same thought about the glass--that it looked really cheap and flimsy and totally 80s--and went on a long tirade about how outdated the façade *already* looked and how it reminded me of Trump's hairpiece ("everyone knows it's a weave or something but no one will say anything about it because it's Trump") and how I couldn't believe that they really were putting up such a cheaply executed, hodge-podge of a design that couldn't decide if it wanted to be a cylinder, a rectangle, or a Sears-tower-knockoff, etc etc.

...but I didn't know it was supposed to be special, advanced glass!! Oh man, that's so awful.

I like the antennae version with the thinner profile. I find the taper to be more elegant in that version, and it reaches more to the sky, which is supposed to be the point, I guess. Without that grasp toward heaven it becomes more obvious that there's no real reason for this thing to be so high--it just looks more like a stretched regular skyscraper, instead of a form created for height. (For example, see the Eiffel Tower.)

As for Trump, that's a good point about the reflectivity, crowbert. That would actually make it better, I agree. It would reflect the river beautifully, and the IBM building, etc, and be more deferential to these better designs. Far be it from Trump to be humble, however...

As for condo space, I honestly can't imagine how all the developers are going to sell all the luxury units *already* going up around town, let alone a whole new building worth of them!!! There are SO MANY buildings going up around town, it's astounding. Cranes everywhere. And they are ALL "luxury condos". Is the market really that good? I hope all the rich people move there and leave the outer neighborhoods so they become cheap enough again for us regular folks to afford.

Guys (esp. evil) I know the curtain wall on the chump is cheap 80's tinsel - I'd easily take more ladies in legwarmers than that shlock. At least people will be able to see the difference between quality and quantity in one view. The difference beween the IBM Building - I mean 330 N Wabash building - and Chump Chicago is pretty stark.

A lot of those condos are being bought as second homes, so that wealthy socialites can weekend between the bean and watertower place. This is all good until things wind up replicating The Apartment - which is when I will buy up one of those snazzy condo at divorce-court prices.

That's the plan anyway...

Atilla and I did all that twisting stuff long before the Swiss RE, MAD residential tower, and Calatrava....that is how cool we are

2001 in college at KU

its cool.. seems like it will be a lot of fun to build...

Crow/Myriam - the Trib did an article about the building a few weeks back that explained the glass - from Conn. mfr. - I will try yo find it online.

I cant see whats so special about the glass. It looks distorted. Many other recent highrises downtown have better glass - maybe its the residentail req. that dictate the "float glass" deformed look

meta thats cool. Even today.

That chump glass is just looking worse and worse - but if we can project the escapades of trumps latest "second chance" perhaps I might have a whole new opinion of it...

i really got bored of his architecture