This huge 250-meter giant from a distance does not stand out in any way from the general Chicago “landscape”, but as soon as you get closer, it turns into a real waterfall, striking the imagination with the unreality of its design - it seems as if some fabulous ice colossus has grown in the middle of the city
Skyscraper “Aqua”, built near Lake Michigan, despite its unreal, futuristic appearance, nevertheless does not stand out from the general panorama of Chicago. This effect is achieved due to the fact that all unusual lines are hidden from a distance horizontally by the usual structure and become visible only when approaching the building - the greater the angle at which you look at the Aqua giant, the more “waves” become visible on its surface. When you stand right under it, it seems like a skyscraper in literally“stormy”)
The 250-meter high-rise building is divided into 81 floors. The Aqua building houses a hotel and regular residential premises. The facades of the skyscraper are decorated with real “lakes”, in which the role of water is played by windows, skillfully accentuated by hiding the rest of the windows with elongated uneven protrusions of the facade.
Curved, undulating balconies and window panes create the structure of a folded curtain or ripples on the water for the façade. The windows have a blue-green tint, indistinguishable from the color of the water surface. The use of cantilever panels in the design of the building allows protection from the summer sun, but not blocking light in winter, and the light coloring of the facades reduces the heating level of the skyscraper.
According to the results of the recently held prestigious European architectural competition “The Emporis Awards - 2010”, the Aqua skyscraper was recognized as the best skyscraper of 2009. Emporis experts awarded the architects of the Aqua project for achievements in design and for the courage of the architectural solution.
More precisely, 250 meters "Aqua" impressed experts with “an original design solution combined with environmentally sustainable design.” The jury noted that this building should set a high bar for future generations in the field of large-scale hotel construction.
It should also be noted that to compile the ranking of the most beautiful high-rise buildings in the world, experts had to carefully study 305 skyscrapers from around the world, the construction of which was completed last year.
The head of Emporis, Daniel Kieckhefer, described the building in his own way: “The building looks rather ordinary from a distance, but upon approach, unusual “liquid” outlines are revealed, which take the breath away of passers-by.”
This competition, organized by the German real estate data bank Emporis, is held every year and the award is given to buildings with a height of at least 100 meters that have already been completed. For example, the winner of 2008 was the Tokyo Cocoon Tower with a height of 203 meters. But in any case, it cannot be compared with the elegant "Aqua"
For almost 25 years, the Willis Tower in Chicago (until 2009, the Sears Tower) was the tallest building in the world, until it was surpassed by the Petronas Tower in Kuala Lumpur in 1996. Currently, this building is the tallest building in the United States of America in terms of roof level.
Sears Tower skyscraper: history and description
The height of the 110-story Willis Tower to the roof is 442 meters, and taking into account the installed antennas, 527 meters. Design of the skyscraper began in the 1960s for Sears Roebuck and Company. The main architect of this world-famous architectural structure was Bruce Graham.
It's not for nothing that Chicago is called the city of winds; it is here that the wind blows at an average speed of 7 meters per second. Therefore, the future skyscraper had to be provided with increased stability. For this purpose, a system of connected steel pipes was used, which formed the frame of the building. Up to the 50th floor, the frame is formed by 9 connected pipes, then the building begins to narrow. There are seven pipes going up to the 66th floor, and five pipes going up to the 90th floor. The remaining 20 floors are supported by just two pipes. This solution turned out to be very stable; at the highest point, the Willis Tower deviates by only 0.3 meters.
The steel is clad in black anodized aluminum with approximately 16,000 dark glass windows. The total weight of the Sears Tower is 222,500 tons. The building stands on 114 piles driven deep into the rock foundation. The lowest level of the building is 13 meters below street level.
Construction continued from 1970 to 1973. The number of builders simultaneously involved in construction reached 2,400 people. The total cost of the Sears Tower in Chicago was approximately $150 million.
Willis Tower office space covers an area of 418,000 square meters. meters. The highest functional floor is at an altitude of 436 meters. The building contains 104 high-speed elevators. The entire complex is designed for simultaneous visits of 12,000 people. More than 25,000 people now visit it during the day.
The Sears Tower skyscraper has always been one of the main attractions of the city of Chicago. About 1.5 million tourists visit it every year. At an altitude of 412 meters is located Observation deck Sears Tower, overlooking the skyline of Chicago and its surroundings. After the events of September 11, 2001, control was strengthened in the skyscraper. Several dozen police officers patrol around the building, and to get inside you must go through controls comparable to the largest airports in the world.
View from the observation deck
The main purpose of the building is the location of office space. But besides this, the tower performs the functions of television and radio broadcasting. Since 2000, four 9-meter antennas have been installed on the roof, providing a signal to the entire Chicago area.
Tower antennas
In 2009, the Sears Tower in Chicago was renamed the Willis Tower with the arrival of a new tenant.
Not everyone knows about the history of skyscrapers and how they came to be. This is enough interesting story and about this in our new article.
As time went on, small companies grew into mighty corporations, and a new generation of industrial and financial magnates demanded ever more impressive quarters for their headquarters. The need for new offices conveniently coincided with the development in the nineteenth century of techniques for constructing a new type of building - skyscrapers. Until the 1880s, the construction of buildings higher than 8-9 floors was considered irrational, since buildings made of brick required such a strong foundation that even windows and doors on the lower floors were unsafe to open, however, as a result of many small and one large innovation, the construction of skyscrapers suddenly it became possible. The main innovation was that the walls of houses began to be made lighter, because the building was not supported by them, but by a steel frame.
The word skyscraper has existed in England since 1794 and was used in a variety of meanings: a tall hat, a tall baseball, the topmost sail on a ship. The word was first used to describe a house in 1888 (although the term skyscraper building appeared four years earlier) and not in New York, as one might think, but in Chicago. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Chicago was the leading city in the world in the construction of large structures for a very simple reason - the devastating fire of 1871. Chicago's first skyscraper was the Home Insurance Company building, built from 1883-1885, quickly followed by the Leiter House (1889), the Confidence House (1894), and the Carson, Peary and Scott House (1889). Soon, skyscrapers so changed the cityscape (urban landscape, Americanism of 1850) throughout America that the word skyline, which previously meant “horizon line,” acquired a modern meaning - the outlines of skyscrapers against the sky.
The Home Insurance Building is the world's first skyscraper, built in 1885 in Chicago, USA, demolished in 1931.
House of Krason, Peary, Scott. Built in 1889.
Skyscrapers were born in Chicago, but New York became their real home. The first New York skyscraper, the twenty-two-story New York Peace House, opened in 1890, and soon other high-rise buildings rose above the city: Pulitzer (1892, 93 meters), Flatiron (1903, 86 meters ), Times Tower (1904, 110 meters), Singer (1908, 180 meters), Metropolitan Life (1909, 210 meters) and finally, built in 1913, Woolworth House (240 meters).
It seemed impossible to build anything bigger than the Woolworth, with its 58 floors and 14,000 employees, and indeed for seventeen years it was the tallest building in the world until the Chrysler was built in 1930. It had 77 floors and was almost one and a half times taller than Woolworth's (320 meters). According to the project, the Chrysler was supposed to have a height of 282 meters, but the architect's rival decided to build a building 60 centimeters higher on 40th Street. Then Chrysler architect Van Allen hastily and secretly designed a 37-meter steel spire, which became a remarkable decoration of the building. Chrysler retained its undisputed leadership for a very short time. It had not yet been completed when work began on the even more ambitious Empire State Building project on 5th Avenue on the site of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Rising to a height of 381 meters, the 102-story building held the world championship for forty-three years, until the 110-story, 443-meter, murderously ugly Sears Tower was erected in Chicago in 1974.
The use of a steel frame and lightweight walls made it possible, in principle, to build high-rise buildings, but by no means solved all the problems. A lot of improvements had to be made to make these houses functional. Among them were revolving doors, which made it possible to avoid drafts that interfered with the normal regulation of the temperature of the building and were extremely fire hazardous, and most importantly, fast and safe passenger elevators were needed.
The elevator is believed to have been invented by Elisha Otis, although various lifting devices had long been in existence when Otis became famous in the late 1850s. He never claimed to have invented the elevator. His contribution was the invention of a simple, reliable device - a spring mechanism with clamps on gears - that made the use of a vertical elevator safe. Loving spectacular shows, Otis traveled around the world demonstrating the safety of the elevators he designed. The elevator he was in was pulled up on a rope to a height of 15 meters, and his assistant, to the horror of the audience, cut the rope with an axe, but the elevator only managed to fall a few centimeters before the mechanism invented by Otis stopped it. Orders for his device came in hundreds. (Yet the first elevators were not very reliable. In 1911, the New York Tribune reported that in the previous two years at least 2,600 people had been killed or injured in elevator-related accidents.)
Skyscrapers have changed beyond recognition appearance American cities, but added almost nothing to American speech. It is said that the expression twenty-three skiddoo, meaning “get away quickly” in slang, appeared thanks to the Flatiron skyscraper, located at the intersection of 23rd Street, 5th Avenue and Broadway. The unusual geometry of the house supposedly created strong drafts that lifted women's skirts as they approached the building along 23rd Street, where men gathered to gaze at women's legs, but the police were on alert and chased away onlookers with this exclamation. Unfortunately, there is no evidence for this theory. It is known that the word skiddoo, meaning “to run away,” was the invention of the prolific neologism cartoonist T.A. Dorgan, who worked in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, but how it became inextricably linked with the number 23 remains (like much else) unknown.
The first information is known about plans to build a new skyscraper in Chicago on the banks of the river of the same name. According to the plan, the 88-story skyscraper will become the third tallest building in the city. designed by Gang Architects in the gallery below.
Designed by Chicago studio Gang Architects Led by architect Jeanne Gang, the new complex, called Wanda Vista Tower, is a union of three high-rises. If Zhanna's project is finally approved, this complex will decorate the Chicago skyline by 2019.
The tallest tower of the Wanda Vista Tower complex will rise 335 meters, and the total area of the premises will be approximately 167,225 square meters. m. The complex will accommodate a hotel, boutiques and apartments. In addition, the new skyscraper could become the tallest building in the world designed and built by a woman.
Let us remind you that the closest competitor of the new high-rise, the Aon Center tower in Chicago, rises to 346 meters, however, taking into account the height difference at their base, Wanda Vista Tower can move it down one step. If we do not take such formalities into account, then the new high-rise building from Jeanne Gang will become the fifth tallest in Chicago, giving way to the Hancock Center skyscraper. The tallest building in Chicago is the Willis Tower, rising 527 meters.
Photo | Skyscraper Wanda Vista Tower in Chicago
Is it possible to see a city, especially one as big as Chicago, in 2 hours? Of course, there is no detail, but don’t despair, even in 2 hours in Chicago you can see a lot, especially since the main attractions are still concentrated in one place. And skyscrapers look good from a distance.
The history of skyscraper construction in Chicago goes back more than a hundred years, from the 80s to the 19th century, and the fashion for architecture has changed several times. If buildings of normal height are interspersed with buildings or form entire blocks of the same style in the case when the area was built up at the same time (perhaps Paris, with its fairly homogeneous buildings, is the most shining example), then skyscrapers are visible from everywhere and are intricately combined together as stylistic signs of different eras.
On the left is Marinatower - the 60s, in the middle is the rounded tower of Trump, the current president (Skidmore, Owens and Merrill, 2009), in the depths of the tower of different years of construction.
In 2007, a list of the best buildings in America was compiled, in first place was New York with 32 objects, and second place was shared by Washington and Chicago - 17 each. The Chicago school of architecture is famous, or rather, it is not one school, as the architectural history of Chicago went uneven.
A modest village of the first settlers at the confluence of the river. Chicago in the lake Michigan received city status in 1830. In 1871, its population reached 30 thousand people. The city consisted almost entirely of wooden houses, made in the “baloon frame” construction style, which is still used in the USA. The fire of 1871 almost completely destroyed the city; recovery progressed unevenly at first. Around 1880, an unprecedented rise in construction activity began.
The founder and head of the Chicago School of Architecture is William Jenney. In 1868 he opened an architectural studio in Chicago. Jenny got perfect technical education in Paris at the Polytechnic School.
Chicago's silty soil required a new foundation design. So-called floating foundations were developed. The architects of the Chicago School used a new type of construction - a metal frame. At the time it was simply called the "Chicago design."
The significance of the Chicago School for the history of architecture is that for the first time in the 19th century the gap between design and form, between engineer and architect, was bridged. This division characterized the entire previous development of architecture of the century. With amazing courage, the architects of the Chicago School tried to master pure forms in which structure and architecture are combined into a whole.
William Baron Jenney first used the "Chicago design" when building the Insurance House in 1884-85.
And also built in 1889 the first building in which there was not a single self-supporting wall - an eight-story Leiter store
Unfortunately, at the moment when the Chicago School achieved mastery in the application of the new means created by it, its further development and the influence ended. The event that directly influenced this process was the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. American architecture came under a variety of influences, the strongest being the influence of "merchant classicism" that developed in the east of the country. Architects began to copy examples of French architecture, which were not always of the best taste. Lush decorative style imported from Paris High school fine arts, celebrating its triumph, stifled in the bud the desire for new architecture and set back its development by 50 years.
On the right in the background is one of the new skyscrapers Aqua Tower, 262 meters, 87 floors, 2009
The Dark Tower - Willis Tower, 1998, was the tallest in the world before the Dubai construction boom. 110 floors.
The architecture of skyscrapers from the Art Deco era in the USA will remind us of our Moscow high-rises; it’s not surprising, Boris Iofan was still in America back then.
Very nice art deco. Carbon&Carbage building. Built by the Barnham brothers originally as the Carbide and Carbon Union building in 1929. Now a hotel. The building has 37 floors and is 503 feet (153 m) high.
A funny thing is a neo-Gothic style skyscraper owned by the Chicago Tribune newspaper. In 1922, the newspaper decided to build a building for the newspaper and announced international competition for "the most beautiful and original office building in the world." Out of 260 applications, a neo-Gothic skyscraper by New York designers was chosen. Walter Gropius, a fairly well-known architect, participated in the competition, whose project seemed not beautiful enough. The architects of this building copied the Butter Tower of Rouen Cathedral.