Damn...... am I dreaming......?

This feels too good to be true. I can't help but think of all the home run designs from the last boom that never got built. That being said, I have the feeling a lot of the stuff in this cycle feel less like pipe dreams.

And rentals? So much for oversupply of rental units I guess.

Perhaps it may have been better to orient them differently, but it/they are certainly not the boxiest in the vicinity of Grant Park.

Yes I know. That is part of my problem. I feel there is already too much boxyness surrounding Grant Park and in Chicago in general. I really like to see explorations in other forms especially tapered designs.

This thing is giving me blood flow. I'm loving the verticality of it. Even if we don't get phase two I'll still be seriously happy with this one. :cheers:

My 2 cents...build the first one and skip the second. It couldn't hurt to slim it down a bit too. The fatness goes up too high. I like the backside better than the front. The white frame is making it look a little cartoony and fatter than it really is. As twins it's just too much of a big flat wall for such a prominent location. I get why everyone is saying that it's so Chicago but make it thinner and more elegant and it's still Chicago but pushing us forward...Haha, now I sound like all of the overly critical people that pick every new design apart. I want height and density as much as the next geek but does anyone understand what I'm getting at here?

File under, not gonna happen, right? :sly: At best one of the two and VEed? Would be cool if it happens. But I'm not holding my breath on a project this, uh, ambitiously huge.

Looks like a vertical completion of the Apparel Mart. It looks almost like it could have been an abandoned early proposal for the Apparel Mart (notwithstanding the windows that were added later), designed to ape the just-completed Sears Tower, before getting chopped down to its podium after a mid '70s oil shock.

Also, are those heavily-expressed columns going to be clad, or just painted concrete? If just painted concrete, this would be a minimal improvement on the countless '70s and '80s boxes we already have. If they're clad, and the fenestration is excellent, for example with a perfectly flush and glossy facade, it could help redeem the design.

And are we looking at references to rust belt smokestacks, another cliche that out-of-town architects immediately seize on?

The doubling up of the podium party walls looks like the work of a rural China developer who fired his architect and decided to finish the job himself. Surely you could at least chamfer the party walls where they meet the north facade so that combined they appear as a single unit. There are many ways to do a podium where 2 towers come together and this is a ham-handed one.

I expect the first one to be completed but as I have said before the second I assume will be redesigned later just like 90% of all twins proposed in Chicago.

Vinoly
 

Vinoly, IMO, is one of the best of the starchitects.

He knows how to detail a building.

As others have pointed out, there is a straightforward, muscular, structural expressionism with this design that reflects Chicago tradition.

Unlike other designs we've seen lately, this design will not have to waste, uhh, I mean, spend a substantial portion of the budget on geometric gymnastics that all can see have nothing to do with building's program or function.

If it is painted concrete with cheap detailing, yeah, that would be a problem. But, knowing Vinoly, I highly doubt it. Rather, it is a design that is ripe for beautiful detailing that also has an excellent chance of surviving any VE process.

Lol, have you ever seen a smokestack? They aren't square, they aren't made of multiple vertical segments, and they don't have setbacks... In short, other than these being tall, slim, structures, they have absolutely nothing in common with smokestacks. What this does reference is the square geometry of Chicago industrial architecture, it reminds me a lot of the tops of a grain elevator with the multiple little poured in place concrete penthouses or the massing of the water tower bases that rise up out of many old school concrete loft buildings:

http://www.chicagoarchitecture.org/w...nstruction.jpg
chicagoarchitecture.org

If these are the best criticisms of the design we are going to see, I think it's an instant classic.

All sorts of slobbers over this! Love it. I usually don't like twin towers but these work for me, but the base needs a redesign.

The NIMBYS are throwing shit like monkeys on the DNAinfo FB comment section of the story about this project.

http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20150...all-south-loop

I've been having a bit of fun with them... :)

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/reale...-in-south-loop

Wow we really need to add density to the skyline south of Van Buren.

This is a really good location though and it is totally trumping OMP. OMP has a very huge impact on the skyline due to its location.

Agreed. if only we could let some bulldozers run rampant in Dearborn park.

I have matches :cheers:

its a nest of nimbys and old people and some questionable people too.

These are so 90s. I like the designs well enough. The terraces or whatever they are need some finessing, but the strong "piers" with the hash-mark spandrels is a great look.

Excellent point, I agree. But I also agree that we are most likely to see the design of phase II evolve and change if and when we reach that point.

We just got the full set of high res renders at curbed, stand by