Ever since Chicago lost the distinction of hosting "the tallest building in the world" (the Sears Tower went down after Malaysia's Petronas Towers added an additional 30-plus feet of decoration in 1996), we've been looking for a way to get back.
After all, a city with this kind of architectural history - especially considering it all burned down less than 150 years ago - is exactly the right home for a super skyscraper. And apparently local architects think so too.
Though widely considered a pipe dream by the building community, the 112-story project being planned for 7 South Dearborn might just reclaim Chicago's "tallest" title and distinguish us yet again as the city for one-stop architecture shopping. (For more on the current building boom and the state of architecture in Chicago, see this week's feature story, "Going Up?")
Designed by Adrian Smith of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill LLP - the Cadillac of local architecture firms and the people who brought us the Sears and the John Hancock Center - South Dearborn's raisons d'etre are two 463-foot-tall digital TV antennae. A consortium of local stations would use the antennae, part of a FCC-required upgrade to digital television signals.
Slated for the southeast corner of Dearborn and Madison, the building itself would measure 1,537 feet - edging out Sears' meager 1,450 feet and Petronas' 1,483. When topped by the antennae, the total height will be 2,000 feet. It's a mixed-use building and - pending approval by the city's zoning administrator - will boast at least forty-two floors of residential units; twenty-nine floors of office space; eleven floors of parking and thirteen floors at the top for telecommunications.
The light green building's TV-antenna-like design (which, depending on your mood, also resembles a retractable police baton), calls for the top four groupings of floors to be cantilevered from a concrete core. (Imagine the floors extending out beyond the sides of the building, balanced only by the downward force in the walls.)
"[T]he design makes it possible to deliver residential units with no columns on the exterior walls, and thus provide 11-foot clear views in all directions," according to the developer, European American Realty Ltd.
And if it's ever built, lucky tenants will also be able to boast that they are living in the highest residential units in the world, with enough amenities - retail, restaurants, health club - to make 7 South Dearborn a world unto itself.
European American Realty won approval for an eighty-two-story building on the site in September. In June, they filed for the current design, which has an extra 327 feet. And while the company has declined to say why the extra height was added, it's clear that, for tall buildings being planned in Chicago, size matters. Don't buy those tickets to Malaysia just yet.
(Ellen Fox)
copyright 1999 New City Communications, Inc.