As a LSE resident who will have his view impacted, all I have to say is LETS GET THE CASE RIGS DRILLING!!!!:tup:

Well it's pretty clear that the lack of NIMBY's is due to the fact that this area has been planned from the onset to be this huge. No one can claim they didn't know a building was planned for this lot because it has been explicitly designated for a large, view terminating, building since the area was laid out. In the same vein, the area already has all the basic developer entitlements in place. These buildings are more or less pre-approved from a zoning perspective and, as such, there really isn't any venue in which any NIMBY contingency could make their obnoxious voices heard. Finally, being planned from the onset ended up resulting in an ideal layout from a views perspective where no ones toes are really getting stepped on when the next tower goes up. The buildings are all linked together like a jigsaw puzzle where there are no "loose ends" from a planning perspective.

The towers are placed in rows with ideal spacing between them and the low rise portions create a sense of human scale and provide a seamless streetwall to the development. Another example; even though others were fretting about this before, the views of Aqua from (and therefore to) the river will still be quite substantial. Enough space is given between all buildings that there are always a few ways to appreciate these buildings from a distance. As a result there are also always a few corridor views from each building which, to me, is far more exciting that pure height without much to look at. The views from the Trump Hotel, for example, are much more intriguing than the views from the condo units because you are looking at the lake down the river canyon and not from above the canyon.

LSE is really one of the bigger planning successes in the United States for a long time. There are very few places in this country where such a large project was so successful over such a long time. Obviously there are other megaprojects now getting under way, but this was really the first massive downtown section redevelopment since WWII. It really is on or beyond the scale of historical mega projects like Rockafeller Center. Once it is fully built out it will be an even more impressive spectacle to behold.

i made some rough renderings of how the tower will look in the skyline, and what Chicago will look like if a number of large developments are constructed. the shapes arent completely accurate but the heights are! the models are just to show the impact it would have in the skyline. check it here! vvv
https://www.flickr.com/photos/125258335@N02/

Quite an impact. Gives a peak to the area viewed from within the lake.

Love the height the design isn't my favorite but it will look good on the skyline. I look forward to watching this rise since I'm moving to Chicago this summer.

we need a diagram update

Judging from the photos of what the skyline will potentially look like, it seems that the John Hancock will be blocked by the new tower. The John Hancock will probably still be visible as long as you go to the far side of Adler Planetarium, but that fact alone really won't sit well with some people. NIMBYs will (not necessarily the ones in LSE, just in general) probably use it as cannon fuel to protest against the construction of the building.

New luxury apartments and condos continue to be built in Chicago. While job growth or whatever is not as big as other areas, it's obvious that there is a class of people moving into the city with more money or the same people making more money. The fact that a lot of the apartment buildings that are being built actually do lease at least 50% before they even open should say something.

I have a friend who works in sales and told me she notices something in the "air" in Chicago that was not there even 2 or 3 years ago. She said that many of her clients that were afraid to spend on anything just a few years ago are fine again. It's all very interesting, though larger swaths of lower and lower middle class moving out is not necessarily a very great thing either.

Just like how Hugh Hefner so passionately tried to stop JHC from blocking his southward views from the Palmolive Building back in '65. ;)

If the developer has its financial act together, this tower will be built.

at first the design looked so ugly to me, but now its growing to me. it would be cool to have such an advanced modern supertall to diversify Chicago's highrise architecture selection .

The 350-meter-high building, located near Chicago’s Millennium Park, will start being built this year and is expected to open to visitors in 2018 and will become the third-highest building in the city, according to the report.

Is this true? construction to start this year?

"The plan for the Lakeshore East tower, with completion foreseen in 2018, was announced by Beijing-based Wanda Group, controlled by mainland China’s richest man, Wang Jainlin. Wanda would take a 90 percent stake in the building."



…so I'm assuming that means 90% of the equity portion, not 90% of the total cost, right? An American developer would never front 90% of the cost, but I'm not sure how things work in China!

Not only that, but if 350 m is exact (which it probably isn't), this will miss by only 4 and a half meters becoming the world's tallest building designed by a woman (currently Emirates Office Tower in Dubai).

I expect the drool factor to increase exponentially once we have official renderings from Studio/Gang. The current rendering looks like PR - splash & color, but not much detail.

I think continuing to keep track of that record rather tarnishes the trophy, and I believe I've read that Jeanne Gang feels the same way.

Agreed. Irresistible copy, but reductive.

And so we see the first fruit of Hu Jintao's 2011 post-White-House-State-Dinner visit to Chicago. That was a big deal, an official blessing of sorts for Chinese investors to set up shop here.

Its because humans have notoriously short memories. The peak of the last bubble felt no different.

^We may be due for a correction, but this is far from a "bubble." Things are picking up. The America train is just leaving the station!

At any rate, with a 90% stake, should we expect WANDA spelled out in 20 foot letters along the side facing the river? haaa

I don't think we're in a bubble, but it seems like things are picking up. Regardless, it's harder for a regular person to actually buy a property now versus back then. So while to you it may feel no different, this time it may actually be backed by more real money than last time.

Someone accurately observed on Curbed that this building is channeling Brancusi's Column of the Infinite:

http://ih2.redbubble.net/image.59399...x550,075,f.jpg
redbubble.net

Just further reinforces the idea that Gang is moving towards monumentalism in her designs. It's not about form follows function, it is about form, monumental form...

Didn't get it at first, but contextually with that stretch of the Wacker wall, it fits and expands that wall.

Agreed. I think you have to take in context where this tower is situated in Lake Shore East and the city to truly appreciate that the architecture works really well for that site. Looking at it without knowing that fact just doesn't do the design justice.

Great line. Maybe that's why I'm having an easier time imaging it in the skyline than say, the Spire.

IDK, the last bubble reached pretty far down into the middle even lower middle classes...the current (boomlet?) is pretty much confined to the super-high end. Which I guess fits in nicely with the increasingly stratified makeup of the city and post-bailout recovery :shrug:


As for this building, I'm coming around on the design but starting to question just how real the proposal is. It would be nice to hear some more official confirmation as opposed to regurgitations of a single foreign piece.

That's good height. It has a Gehry vibe to it.

http://www.myfoxchicago.com/story/25...ago-skyscraper
from fox chicago

City hall didn't know about the announcement, and they said it could start construction this year.

Magellan said they would respond at an appropriate time.

I may get pilloried by some for saying, so - but Wanda's own website is definitely wrong about the price tag of their investment in this single project (and of course by implication the price tag of the overall project). I do believe instead the WSJ article that stated they authorized an investment of up to US$226 mil. in the project. That very same Wanda Plazas press release also states that Chicago is the US' second largest city. I stopped reading after that, rather than ingest another handful of factual errors before breakfast. Who knows how they screwed up on that figure (exchange rate calculation flub, lost in translation, general sloppiness, the US$900 figure is an investment representing much more than just the LSE tower, etc - you find these errors about their own information much more often than you'd think - or maybe not - in emerging world company websites) but they assuredly did err here. Total project cost here I'm guessing is less than $600 million (not Wanda's equity investment, but total project cost) - who knows, at the end of the day, perhaps no more than $450-500 million. I also am guessing that height may come in at less than 1,000' from Upper Wacker (consistent with New Yorker article), and that actual construction will not begin this year. Chinese websites in general should not be thought of as reputable sources of information - the WSJ, New Yorker on the other hand are.......

Here's another guess - Magellan was caught completely off guard by Wanda's announcement. They probably have some misinformation they'd like to correct a little right about now!

great post

^ thanks, although I've potentially just exposed myself to a lifetime of targeted cyberattacks..... ;)

Rough, Rough Massing
 

http://i1272.photobucket.com/albums/...ps775f5077.jpg

http://i1272.photobucket.com/albums/...ps0dd4df11.jpg

http://i1272.photobucket.com/albums/...ps56048b5f.jpg

http://i1272.photobucket.com/albums/...psd3b8a1d3.jpg

http://i1272.photobucket.com/albums/...ps88bcaf82.jpg

http://i1272.photobucket.com/albums/...ps7dacc468.jpg

^^^Excellent! Thanks for those Ryan, there's the view north along LSD I wanted.


It's hard to tell from the building render, but is pedestrian access north out of LSE park along N Field Blvd preserved in this design? I wonder if there'll be improvements to the access to the riverwalk and the various levels of Wacker? I love walking through there, but pedestrian access there is rough.

Yes, nice job, Ryan81. Very helpful in visualizing the project's impact

-----

Which is of course incorrect. But the greater Chicago loop area is the USA's second-largest downtown, smaller only than Midtown Manhattan, so that might explain the error. Maybe, as you note, a translation glitch.

BTW, I can't find the New Yorker article - do you have a link?
(Edit: found it. NewYorker, May 2014
)

Certainly an appropriation of Brancusi's Endless Column. Love the scale... the massing seems a little too basic/ predictable. The design needs a twist to give it a voice of it's own. The sketch by LVDW is more successful.

Also claimed as inspiration for the new Roosevelt University tower.

To me, this seems more like the Column of the Corpulent. Those look like Aon-sized floorplates, and I don't understand how that can work with hotel rooms or luxury condos.

When I first saw this tower I got a very Gehry 8 Spruce Street vibe from it.

I think the problem Im having is that the render is just crap right now, looks like a screenshot from Simcity 4. I think it will be a hell of a lot better once better renderings appear.

They are probably larger than Aon in the lower floors, but they are narrower, that's how it works. The width of the building is irrelevant, it is the depth of the floor that matters. Since this building is extremely rectangular on the E-W axis, the depth from core to the exterior is actually not much more than that of the Coast or any of the other recent buildings in LSE:

http://i1272.photobucket.com/albums/...ps7dacc468.jpg


I also have decided that probably the best "justification" Jeanne has here for the arbitrary design is the good old "views" excuse she used with Aqua. Having an undulating facade pattern like this is essentially the residential version of the "multiple corner offices" approach used by many 1980's pomo skyscrapers or the first Chicago Schools bay windows. Just add more corners to the building and you open up more views, more air circulation, etc.. Some units here will have their views pinched a bit (whereever the frustums narrow in the middle tier), but many many more units will have artificial corner views created where the frustums expand.

The best thing about Aqua isn't how it looks from the ground, it is the exhilarating feeling of actually experiencing the units. I had the pleasure of spending an evening in a condo on a high floor of that building with one of the deepest corner balconies (where they soar 12' or so away from the corner) and standing on that balcony was literally breathtaking. You were projected out beyond the rest of the balconies and felt almost as if you were flying. The effect of the wavy balconies is about 10X stronger on floor 64 than it is on the ground. This building will likely have the same effect particularly in the units on the projecting edge of the frustums. Part of the reasoning for the Hancock's tapered design was to reduce vertigo in the residential units, part of the effect here will be to greatly increase vertigo in half of the units. Can you imagine having a downward facing corner unit in the top of the middle stack? It would be like living inside the Hancock's new "Tilt" attraction, but on a 90 degree corner. Absolutely thrilling, just like standing on a 60th floor balcony projecting on a 6" slab of concrete 12' out into the air. It's exciting and that is almost justification enough in itself...

Think there'd be an elevator shaft for each column? I wonder how the wind would react to that shape. It's hard to imagine a damper being used in an asymmetrical design.

http://ep.yimg.com/ca/I/akaristore_2254_12097923
Link

I think each column would be united be a single core. All the undulations will help break up the wind and minimize the formation of sway inducing vortices. An asymmetrical design is still going to have a center of mass where a damper could be located if necessary.

BTW: MysteryGuitarMan approves of the design:
http://i.imgur.com/hLi2mOM.gif
Or maybe not. I'm not sure. It does match his lights though.

There's not going to be a core in the middle because the middle will apparently have a massive lobby over a roadway. My guess is that there will be a hotel core in the right leg of the tower and a residential core in the left. They might share the huge lobby in the middle or might have separate entrances, but barring an extra expensive bit of engineering over the LSD axis, there probably won't be a core in the middle.

Chicago is going to look real wacky if all of the recent proposals somehow make it to fruitiation!
http://i61.tinypic.com/2csgu8y.jpg
http://i60.tinypic.com/ogmh5t.jpg
http://i59.tinypic.com/2eojomc.jpg

Thanks for the mock up Ryan81. I agree with Aaron that the view from South LSD looking north is amazing, and pretty much has me sold. I also love the shadow effect, as it almost has a checked look. Is that a bit exaggerated in your models?

I didn't even think about how this would look from the river confluence. The Chicago river IMHO is the best architectural gallery in the world and this is shaping up to be a great addition.

^It is the best, indeed. I applaud WP and RP for making such good use of the vista looking East. Hard to imagine why these sat as parking lots for as long as they did..

Great work, Ryan81.

Yes Chicago will look GREAT if those all get built!!! I like this design, but the glass used may totally change the look when it is finished. We will have to see what happens. Either way it will be good.

How long does everyone think it took Carlins and Loewenberg to place a call to Reilly's office after Wanda pushed 'send' on this press release (which I believe likely caught Magellan completely off guard, ass well as likely be full of factual errors - size, height, cost, their investment, etc etc)? Anyone think more than one minute?

Dozens of news outlets ran with their release.....a lot of people are probably more than a little upset right about now.........hopefully know significant relationship damage here....

Here's a badly photoshopped mockup of how the building would look from my office building:

http://i.imgur.com/MlRNO6k.jpg

Maybe someone with a built out 3D model could do better. I have no idea about the relative sizing, it's just for position more than anything else.

Seems this has a pretty good chance of getting built if it's been in the works for a while, this would be an amazing addition to Chi town.

all of these proposals are beautifully futuristic, I love it!! I just wish everything proposed for Chicago was build now and the way that is proposed. by the way, is Fifield making any efforts to start 625 west Monroe? that's one of my favorite supertall proposals in the city