Yes. Start with Columbus. Make it a pedestrian path (with fine gravel) like it was meant to be.

^ I was going to say that since the shadows from the South Wall make the park totally useless for anyone that we should "restore the street grid" and sell it off to developers to help pay for the pensions...


:shrug:

Haven't posted for a while but I wanted to share my thoughts about this project.

The massing and design in general are really gorgeous in my eyes. Obviously evocative of Sears but I think it's a respectful, unique, and interesting tower. Viñoly did a great job balancing the classic 'broad-shouldered' Chicago architecture with modern planning and design. For me, this project nails all the important things.

As for the less important things...the fuck is a NEMA?
NEMA=North-East of (some sections of) Michigan Avenue?

NEMA isn't an acronym for anything, its simply a brand name for luxury apartments used by the developer, Crescent Heights. There's several other NEMA complexes, such as in Boston and SF.

But yes, its stupid. Keeping it One Grant Park, or even simply 1200 S. Indiana would have been better options.

A Nod to the Museum Campus - Nematode.

God this is gorgeous, smokey, almost clear glass. Black trim, but virtually all exterior surfaces of the window wall are glass. The detailing on the balcony door is off the hook, no wonder it took them a while to do it right!

Imagination ready
 

June 12

They just did a crane jump the other day for this bad boy. Crane is about the height of the Essex crane for those curious

https://c2.staticflickr.com/2/1754/4...be8d5ccc_h.jpg

https://c2.staticflickr.com/2/1807/4...3e4d8630_h.jpg

https://c2.staticflickr.com/2/1805/4...f02e652d_h.jpg

https://c2.staticflickr.com/2/1767/4...0e831b1e_h.jpg

So dissapointing. I wish they would have went with a very dark gray or black paint. Maybe the white is just primer.

I mean its white in the renderings

Thanks for the pics, Le Baron!

Damn that glass is looking good. Very dark and smokey. I'm seeing a bit of blue in it as well, but that might just be a reflection from the sky.

Looks like they are pouring floor 48. Only 32 more to go!

I can't wait to see how they pull off the crown. I hope they stick to the rendering religiously. A perfectly open cube outline. A fitting top for such a boxy building sporting so many pleasing 90° angles.

+1

At least the paint isn’t River North Beige. But a real cladding material instead of painted concrete would be better, as always. It’s a shame that Chicago developers don’t do real curtain walls.

^Unless it was skin-thin aluminum or stainless, it would disrupt the proportions of positive-to-negative space. Cladding would also obscure the structural subtleties of the concrete, which I'm glad are expressed.

I was led to believe the crown was a no go from the start of construction, has something changed?

I just don’t see painted concrete elsewhere. None of the big NY towers have it. Nor the bigger London residential towers. And that includes the ones that aren’t all glass. I’m excited for the terracotta on 400 LSD, though that will probably be VE’d out and ruin the project entirely.

Chicago didn’t used to be all painted concrete. And I don’t just mean pre-war towers; somehow it went from marble or white granite (can’t remember) on Water Tower Place, to various shades of pink and red on 980 Michigan, 900 Michigan and others in all of their PoMo glory, to beige paint on Park Tower. And that’s a prime location, so that’s not the problem. Did something change in the building codes? If so, change it back quickly.

But yes, use metal cladding, or stone, or brick would be nice (and actually looks very cool when applied to a large tower). If real stone or some other cladding material is not a possibility for cost reasons, then maybe the ratio of positive-to-negative space needs to change. I don’t think the white paint looks good. It looks like a condo tower in Ft Lauderdale.

^^I generally agree with your comment, but wanted to point out that Park Tower is not painted. It is pre-cast.

^ also, LOTS of painted concrete residential towers from the '60s/'70s all up and down the lakefront.

and lets not forget the most famous beige-painted concrete towers in town, global icons of mid-century modernism:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...0%2C_DD_01.jpg
source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...C_Illinois.JPG

Renderings from the 1000M sales center, which include NEMA and Essex. This rendering includes a version of NEMA that I hadn't seen, which includes decorative greenery on all the balconies. While I understand that greenery is appealing, it detracts a bit from the building's bulk. But that's just me.

https://i.imgur.com/g5BWEo9h.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/eAIVUtSh.jpg