Originally Posted by LouisVanDerWright (Post 8234482)

Lol, no.

The Sears Tower is probably one of the least bland buildings ever built. At the time it went up it was radical and striking. Just another big tapering stick is not bold, it is bland. 110 floors of a purely vertical wall with setbacks arranged in a series of bundled rectangular tubes that set back dramatically as the building rises all clad in a bold black facade is like the antithesis of bland. Especially in 1973.

Maybe it looks bland to you when viewed through the 2003 lens of "everything from the midcentury period is boring because it doesn't look like ye olde beige Parisian concrete manor", but no one alive at the time it was complaining it was boring. Complaints were largely thrown at it's radical size and big blocky massing. Nothing about that suggests a bland design, it suggests a design so bold that a lot of people couldn't handle it.

This runner up design is decent enough, but it's boring compared to the complex geometry and detailing of the winning design. I'm glad we are getting something more adventurous here.

The trope of "two angular shafts of different heights seemingly angled away from each other" has already played out in two large Manhattan developments alone including that ugly ass Hudson Yards tower with lame helipad thing sticking out of it. The losing design would be a notch above that, but it would represent a true regurgitation of the scheme. Obviously this firm was just designing to the client in an attempt to win the business. We should be lucky that Related actually did the right thing for once and picked something new and interesting instead of being like "we made lots of money last time we built two angular sticks, let's do it again" which is basically what this architect was proposing to them.

Originally Posted by ardecila (Post 8235617)

TBH I think the cladding on the SOM design is already dead. Not sure why the architects chose to show it so prominently in their presentation. Terra cotta is in vogue right now for a set of uber-luxury boutique midrises in NY, so I can see why SOM chose it, but using it on a supertall is a whole other ballgame.

It's not even about Related being cheap, it's just an extremely expensive system to engineer and build with a lot of unknowns. Highrise cladding systems are like designing the hull of a submarine, they have to be water tight under extreme conditions. I don't think terra cotta has ever done that before, when the material was originally being used . One Vanderbilt will have such a system, but nobody knows about the long term performance. If you're Related, why deal with the uncertainty?

Originally Posted by ardecila (Post 8235637)

There are only two US manufacturers of terracotta, Boston Valley in Buffalo and Gladding-McBean in California. Chicago has historic expertise in this with American Terra Cotta and Northwest Terra Cotta but one is defunct and the other has shifted to metal fabrication and lost all terra cotta capability.

If SOM does manage to convince Related on this facade, they will absolutely use one of the two proven manufacturers.

Originally Posted by ardecila (Post 8235617)

Terra cotta is in vogue right now for a set of uber-luxury boutique midrises in NY, so I can see why SOM chose it, but using it on a supertall is a whole other ballgame.

Originally Posted by ChiHi (Post 8235872)

If anyone subscribes to WSJ there was an article about terra cotta being used in developments recently

https://www.wsj.com/articles/terra-c...ice-1530024302

Originally Posted by Investing In Chicago (Post 8235889)

111 W 57th St is ~1,450ft tall (Which is nearly the same height as the Sears Tower) and is clad in Terra Cotta all the way up.
Not saying that has anything to do with the feasibility of using that product in Chicago, but it is used more than in "boutique midrises" in NYC.

Originally Posted by Kumdogmillionaire (Post 8237033)

If you look at the renderings, you'll notice that there isn't that much terracotta actually on the building's surface. It's mostly accenting.

Originally Posted by ardecila (Post 8236909)

Yes, and One Vanderbilt. But the price per SF you can charge in NY is so, so much more. For those developments, it's worth it to use an exotic material like terra cotta just for the competitive advantage they get from good design. 400 LSD, even at the tip-top of the Chicago market, won't have that kind of luxurious budget and I don't know if Chicago buyers will put up with that.

If I'm a hedge fund or tech millionaire, why would I pay an extreme price per SF at 400 LSD for a 3BR when I could go buy a 5BR penthouse in another building with the same or similar views? Just less value placed on prestige in this market IMO.

Originally Posted by ardecila (Post 8236909)

Terra cotta is in vogue right now for a set of uber-luxury boutique midrises in NY, so I can see why SOM chose it, but using it on a supertall is a whole other ballgame.

Originally Posted by left of center (Post 8235924)

Could anyone with a WSJ account outline the major points of this article?

Originally Posted by Steely Dan (Post 8237067)

that was my thought as well.

the exterior of the building seems to be >75% glass.

that doesn't mean related still won't VE the terra-cotta out, but we're not not talking about the woolworth building here or anything like that.

Originally Posted by ardecila (Post 8238681)

Looks to be about the same proportion of terra-cotta to glass as the Reliance Building, though.

And we're not talking about random terra cotta details like fins or accent panels that can just be clipped onto an off-the-shelf curtain wall. Literally every vertical element and every spandrel is terra cotta which needs to be installed and set in something approaching the traditional way, probably with stainless clips and real honest to god mortar.