| Jibba |
Jun 20, 2018 9:48 PM |
Quote:
Originally Posted by 10023
(Post 8226296)
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.
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I'm not looking at it from the standpoint of how it represents Chicago's civic value, either as a market or a level of standards, though I understand those concerns. Any sheathing would be bulky and applied heavy-handedly; the relative delicateness of the slab edges, as compared to the piers, would be lost. Nouvel's "MoMa tower", for example, looks like a plastic toy, and there are seams all over the place. The visible architectonic quality of the structure is greatly diminished, if not completely absent, and a flat, lifeless representation of it, in the form of the cladding, is all that's there.
While I agree that "painted concrete" can be evocative of things cheaply finished, it's going to create crisply delineated bays covered in glass, which the broader piers will outline and group. I think the final effect is going to look great. |
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