CHICAGO | BMO Tower | 727 FT | 50 FLOORS

[donnie]

BWAHAHAHAHA!

Thnx, i needed that.

[left of center]

Originally Posted by Mister Uptempo

It looks like someone dropped a cookie cutter West Loop midrise on top of venerable Union Station.

That would actually be an improvement over the proposed design.

[Natoma]

Originally Posted by Ned.B

Somewhere I have the drawings for LaGrange's tower addition. Of course, no surprise it was clad in precast and detailing wasn't nearly as refined as the rendering would lead one to believe.

Blair Kamin's column mentioned Lucien Lagrange's 2002 proposal. Was anyone able to dig up some drawings?

[left of center]

^ Was it this?

Originally Posted by Mr Downtown

That's pretty much exactly what Lucien Lagrange planned to do with Prime Group for one of the stillborn development schemes circa 2003. There's no ornament on the "tower;" it's just limestone and punched openings.

[Mr Downtown]

A practical consideration the architect mentioned at tonight's meeting is the need to cantilever the residential and hotel floors out a few feet from the current office floors. The main reason is to get sufficient depth. The existing floors are only 50 feet deep, which wouldn't work very well for double-loaded corridors of apartments. By cantilevering both into the light well and on the outside walls, they get 65- or 70-foot-deep floors.

I found the reasoning for this design choice persuasive, and the results inoffensive. The architect said they'd done some studies that used stone cladding; I'd like to see those. But I'm not sure what really would work any better than this.

[TallBob]

I hope this is an "April Fools" joke (two months late)!!

[ardecila]

Why even have apartments at all? Seems like a natural site for a large hotel instead of a small one, and with a mixed-use program they need two different cores and access. A large hotel could even market to small conventions and work out an arrangement with Amtrak so the spaces off the Great Hall could be used as meeting spaces.

This design doesn’t kill me, I love how solid it looks from an oblique angle. Seems appropriate to go on top of a clunky limestone pile like Union Station. With Goettsch, I was afraid we would get some blue glass thing that was truly a UFO. This is one place where beige is a good idea, IMO, especially if it’s a good quality precast or terra cotta. The larger rendering appears to show a Morris Adjmi-esque “flange” on each of the beige panels, so up close it will probably resemble a beige version of Landmark West Loop, using beige powder coated sheet metal (not a bad thing necessarily). The floor-to-floor heights are really squat, though... seems like they could make the proportions a little better by raising the ceiling heights.

[Austin55]

Architectural atrocity

[trvlr70]

Originally Posted by Rizzo

Had a hunch this design would be a train wreck

Good one!!!

[the urban politician]

I don’t think it’s a crime, I think it’s a practical vertical extension. My main beef is with the materials.

The city should demand, and get in writing, that certain high quality materials will be used here, such as stone cladding. Anything less should be DOA

[k1052]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

I don’t think it’s a crime, I think it’s a practical vertical extension. My main beef is with the materials.

The city should demand, and get in writing, that certain high quality materials will be used here, such as stone cladding. Anything less should be DOA

Raise the ceiling heights (really looks too squat as proposed), use black granite and black aluminum clad, do something about the mishmash of different windows slapped on this.

Then perhaps tolerable.

[rlw777]

Oh hell no!

Why are they doing anything to this gorgeous building?

[MayorOfChicago]

Wow, how sad.

[ChiHi]

It's pretty much the Soldier Field of office buildings.... (That's not a good thing)

[Loopy]

...

[Mr Downtown]

Originally Posted by rlw777

Why are they doing anything to this gorgeous building?

Because Amtrak loses $1 billion per year. Property owners in need of money sometimes lease their excess property (or air rights).

Why apartments? Undoubtedly to spread the financial risk. There's been little new hotel lending in the last couple of years. Though—by European standards—Union Station would seem like a killer location for a hotel, it's too far from Michigan Avenue and McCormick Place, the traffic generators that really get Chicago hotels through the long winters.

From the way it was discussed last night, I got the impression that the wall system would be bronze-colored, and would match the restored windows in the older portion. I imagined something like 401 N. Michigan, but that was never said explicitly. TUP, where are you thinking there will be any stone?

[Jim in Chicago]

Originally Posted by Mister Uptempo

Larger image-

img src - crain's

This angle makes it look like the top whatever it is actually flares out, making it even fuglier.

Dear sweet Jesus, NO. Just NO, NO, NO.

Is there any hope that the landmark status can prevent this from happening?

[sentinel]

Originally Posted by Mr Downtown

A practical consideration the architect mentioned at tonight's meeting is the need to cantilever the residential and hotel floors out a few feet from the current office floors. The main reason is to get sufficient depth. The existing floors are only 50 feet deep, which wouldn't work very well for double-loaded corridors of apartments. By cantilevering both into the light well and on the outside walls, they get 65- or 70-foot-deep floors.

I found the reasoning for this design choice persuasive, and the results inoffensive. The architect said they'd done some studies that used stone cladding; I'd like to see those. But I'm not sure what really would work any better than this.

The reason for the cantilever is one thing, the final facade design of the addition doesn't have anything to do with former; it's just a lazy, graceless, distracting, and ultimately disrespectful design that negates the beauty of Union Station. Really ugly and unfortunate.

[maru2501]

wow

[Vlajos]

Freaking hideous. This should not be allowed.