Trumpin' In Chi-Town

[snooch]

From Glass, Steel & Stone.

Also known as: Trump Tower Chicago
Built: 2004- 2007
Designed by: Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill
Type: Skyscraper Click to see more of this type.
Stories: 90
Maximum height: 1,276 feet / 389 meters with antenna. 1,125 feet / 343 meters without.
Location: 401 North Wabash
City: Chicago , Illinois Click to see more from this city.
United States Click to see more from this nation.


It's been a long time since Chicago had a new megatower punctuate the skyline. The 1960's saw the Hancock Center rise into the sky. In the 1970's it was the Sears Tower and the Aon Center. Then following the economically turbulent turn of the century, real estate mogul and international showman, Donald Trump stepped up to the plate with a plan to replace the dowdy 1950's Sun-Times building with a 90-story tower bearing his name. At first there was much excitement as The Donald’s organization made the announcement. But that evaporated into disappointment in 2001 when the first sketches came out of SOM. It showed a multi-tiered silver-glass giant that didn’t so much soar into the sky as squat along the Chicago River. Simply put, it was too wide, not majestic, and made a mockery of its architectural neighbors – the Wrigley Building, the Jewelers Building, and the Tribune Tower. A subsequent revision in 2002 by SOM’s Adrian Smith was a significant improvement. It definitely fit in with the city’s recent architectural trend of putting illuminated spires of everything. But alas, it looked a lot like the beloved, yet time-worn Sears Tower. This was primarily because of the use of stacked boxes. Even though they were not square, but octagons and hexagons, the design seemed too familiar. The third time was the charm. The latest edition of the plan drops the angles in favor of curves, and masses the sections in such a way as to evoke the sense of a steaming ship of commerce plowing through the city. It’s the same sense one gets from looking at the Wrigley Building next door from the correct angles. The Trump Tower Chicago makes great use of its available space while creating another icon in the city’s skyline. Moreover, its setbacks pay homage to the Art Deco-era skyscrapers that made Chicago a living architectural museum. And it manages to reach for the stars without stepping on its neighbors. In fact, to its neighbors, it will appear to be an equal. That’s because the first setback is at the same height as the cornice on the Wrigley Building, the second is the same height as Marina City, and the third is at the top of the IBM Building across the street.


>December, 2001 – The initial artists sketch of the Trump Tower Chicago is unveiled. People find it bland.
>July, 2002 – A revised plan is presented to the public. It receives better reviews.
>22 January, 2004 – In a plan to adjust to changing economic realities, the design is changed so that floors 17 through 26 are converted from offices to condominiums and hotel rooms.
>According to the Chicago Tribune, SOM built about 50 models of the building before getting the design they wanted.

[rantanamo]

Are they finally gonna build this thing?

[Columbus Civil]

Isn't that the project that the winner of "The Apprentice" gets to oversee?

[gc]

Isn't that the project that the winner of "The Apprentice" gets to oversee?

Yes it is.

I think they have already started working on it.

[pariah]

wish it were here

[2112]

Whats the height in feet?

[2112]

I always thought Chicago was a cool city: It almost seems to have the same massiveness as New York, but unfortunately, seems to not get its fair attention from being the number 3 city. Los Angeles gets all the attention that New York doesnt, and L.A.'s density and urbanity dont even come close to Chicago's.

[Columbus Civil]

If you put Chicago near some mountains, and gave it a slightly more temperate climate, it would be the best city in the world. I love going there.

[gc]

^ Chicago is my favorite.

[barrycb]

Yes it is.

I think they have already started working on it.

They have yet to tear down the old Sun-Times building, but I believe they now have city approval to go forward. I heard the thing sold out almost instantly.

[CTroyMathis]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/busin...&vote16233640=1

This article gives lots of insight on Daley's taste in skyscrapers and it appears he is a fan of spires while Trump is not.

TRUMP TOWER UPDATE
Daley to Trump: You're spired!
The mayor wants a fancy top. The Donald disagrees. Guess who wins.

By James Janega and Blair Kamin
Tribune staff reporters
Published February 10, 2005

Donald Trump knows what he likes, and he didn't like a spire on his Chicago building.

"I hated the look of it," Trump said in October while discussing a recent design of the tower.

Mayor Richard Daley knows what he likes too. His tastes run toward the ornamental--concrete planters and wrought iron.

And the mayor wanted his skyline to have a spire in it.

In December, when the Donald was in town pitching his new fragrance, the mayor and the mogul went face to face in Daley's 5th-floor office in City Hall.

"He said, `I want a spire. It's important to the skyline,'" Trump spokeswoman Jill Cremer said of Daley.

And so it is that the latest design for Trump tower is topped by a pointy spike that--depending on how one counts it--could make the building the second tallest in the city and in America, not to mention the seventh tallest in the world.

"He does like spires," Trump remarked of Daley Wednesday.

So to the summits of Chicago's skyline--the Sears Tower, Aon Center and John Hancock Center--add the new Trump tower. With a pointed, decorative spire, please.

Advocates of spires say they can add a spiritual presence to an urban skyline. Cesar Pelli, who designed the sky-piercing Petronas Towers, built in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in 1996, has called them the point where the ground blends into the firmament. Profane meets sacred. A silhouette pointing to the heavens is etched into a city's sky.

Exactly how Trump's building will point to the heavens isn't clear yet--the latest design for the tower and its spire hasn't been made public.

(Here's a glimpse of who's got the upper hand here: Trump ordered the building's latest plans released Wednesday. But his Chicago architects and real estate attorney refused--Daley, they said, had not seen and signed off on them.)

But details trickled out. As currently designed, the spire will rise to 1,360 feet, said Adrian Smith, the skyscraper's chief architect in the Chicago office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.

Trump said Wednesday that he was poised to spend $3 million on the spire alone, adding it to what is already a 1,125-foot, 92-story residential office tower costing $750 million. Two extra floors were added to the original plan without increasing the building's height because the skyscraper will be supported by a concrete frame rather than steel. That will eliminate the need to place concrete floor slabs atop steel beams.

City bureaucrats will have to approve the new plans. If they do, the Trump International Hotel & Tower Chicago would become the second-tallest building in the city--well above the 1,136-foot Aon Center and the 1,127-foot John Hancock Center, but still 90 feet shorter than the 1,450-foot Sears Tower, the nation's tallest building.

It would make Trump's skyscraper 90 feet taller than the 1,250-foot Empire State Building, which is, after the Sears, the nation's runner-up.

Though Trump's Chicago tower will clearly secure a place in the global pantheon of tall buildings, it likely will slip before long.

The planned Freedom Tower at ground zero in lower Manhattan is supposed to rise to 1,776 feet, a height that would symbolically refer to the year of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

And though the world's tallest building is the 1,667-foot Taipei 101 in Taiwan, Skidmore last year announced construction had begun on a multiuse tower it designed for the United Arab Emirates that will soar to more than 2,000 feet.

Further muddying the Trump tower's place in the world is the arcane way in which the informal arbiters of the world's tallest structures decide which spindly points atop soaring buildings count toward a building's total height, and which do not.

On balance, said Seattle engineer Ron Klemencic, chairman of the Chicago-based Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, structural elements like spires count. Think of the spire atop the Chrysler Building in New York City. Communications antennas do not. Think of the twin masts atop the Sears Tower or the John Hancock.

Looking at drawings of the Trump tower's tiptop from May, Klemencic said he smelled a controversy brewing.

"This is not a slam-dunk," he said. When the building's design is finalized--perhaps by the end of the week--Klemencic's group of a dozen or so architects, engineers and designers from around the world will e-mail the drawings to each other, squint at their computer screens and type furious arguments. Thus is the pecking order of the world's tallest buildings mysteriously decided.

"A condition like this is always hotly debated even within our organization, I can tell you that much," Klemencic said.

Whether it sets records or not, the tower's profile in Chicago's skyline will fill a void between the Aon Center and Hancock that is as wide as a gap-toothed child's smile.

It will stand out, too, because its glass and polished steel exterior will glint with sunlight, which Chicago's other three giants make no use of.

But the story of the Trump tower's silhouette says as much about the forces behind urban landscapes as it does about the buildings that make them up.

As with Chicago's ubiquitous flower planters and wrought-iron fences, Daley serves two roles--he is both chief politician and chief planner, and he micromanages design details that other big-city mayors typically relegate to subordinates.

And though it is unclear where he hit upon rooftop spires, Daley clearly liked the idea.

After the original, blocky designs for the riverfront site of the former Chicago Sun-Times building, 401 N. Wabash Ave., were scrapped, the mayor was among those who saw the pinnacle above the redrawn version of the Trump tower and liked it.

Trump was less impressed with the spire in the redrawn design.

"I wanted to shave it for two reasons," he said. "I'd save money and I didn't like the original top of the building."

Plans for the tower--including the off-center spire--had been approved by the city in May, but as recently as October, the mogul's plans for his Chicago tower left the spire off. That changed shortly after visiting Daley's office on Dec. 7.

On a day that produced the heaviest rain in a month, Trump was late for an appearance at Marshall Field's on State Street. Starting shortly after noon, he signed boxes of his signature men's fragrance, called "Donald Trump," as he was greeted by a crowd estimated in the hundreds, said Andrea Schwartz, spokeswoman for Marshall Field's in Chicago.

Then, still whiffing of cologne, he and his entourage climbed into a sedan in the early afternoon and were whisked the two blocks to City Hall.

"I spoke to the mayor and suggested that I didn't like the way the spire was and said, `What's the purpose of the spire?'" Trump recalled. "He said, `Could you go back and give it another shot?'"

Trump agreed, sending his team to work through a few designs.

"They worked out a version that was, sadly, more expensive," he said. But brightening, he hastened to add: "As soon as I saw this, I said, `Let's do it.' It was so beautiful."

[gc]

^ Cool.

Windy City now becomes Spire City

[texman]

I kinda liked the old design. But hey, 2nd tallest tower in Chicago for the new design.

[Cole]

Big render:

[tamtagon]

Nice building and all, but man, what a red hot location.

I hope and pray that Dallas will one day support a residential building that size.

[CTroyMathis]

This tower is all the rage on the local Chicago news it seems.

Well, duh!

[drumguy8800]

I think if a building that size got built and the rates were decent enough, it'd get filled up in no time.

With housing.. its normally if you build it (and people like it,) they will come. I've never viewed it as too much of a risk to build housing, unless its like a Ritz on every corner. Dallas needs more un-luxury yet un-ghetto apartments. Specifically downtown.

[CTroyMathis]

According to a broadcast I overheard during dinner - the aspirations for a spire have finally been given a poke in the eye.

Back to the last height and design.