Image by: R.L. Segal
We’re about to do something we really shouldn’t do on a proprietary blog – talk about another firm’s project. But the world is not made up of Plex projects…although wouldn’t that be something?
From our living room window, one can see the top of the Aqua Tower, which is quickly nearing completion in the River East area of Chicago. Many bloggers, critics, and laypeople have had their say about this building, so I’ll attempt to add my take on the topic quickly, as to get you back to your more thorough investigation of it. As with many new buildings in Chicago and throughout the world (including the Trump Tower and the Calatrava Spire), one may say what they want about the aesthetic of the building. One may like it or dislike it. One may think it’s too wavy, or from certain angles, the slabs look to thin, or it’s too tall, or its not tall enough, or the facets of certain balconies looks strange, or it doesn’t fit within any context, or the patterns do not align or coexist beautifully enough. There are certain criticisms of Studio Gang’s design which might actually be worth something. But to anyone outside of the architectural sphere – to the people who this building was actually built for – what does it really matter? This is a new building which makes people talk about architecture. From the street merchants, to the investment bankers, every day thousands of Chicagoans are looking up towards the sky and seeing something they’ve never seen before – and boy, is that refreshing.
We must applaud Studio Gang not only for designing a(nother) groundbreaking piece of urban architecture, not only for thinking it up in the first place, but for remaining steadfast in their vision for YEARS, for taking all the punches from the typical Chicago folk who only want to see (ridiculously) simplified Louis Sullivan buildings and Wal-Marts constructed. For convincing their client that, yes, design IS worth extra time, headaches, and maybe even money. (Can you imagine?) That through art, inspiration, and passion, maybe a stupid building CAN create a better, more thoughtful and wonderful life for us who are lucky enough to either live in or within eyeshot from this new beacon of imagination.
While this building is growing on me, as a rival architect, I am contractually bound not to like it 100%. But for anyone to discuss this building and NOT to give it immense credit is certainly either jealous, ill-informed, or naive. The Aqua Tower represents everything that architecture should be: technologically advanced, simple, audacious and stimulating.
Filed under: Architecture, General
I am neither jealous, ill-informed, nor naive, however I completely disagree with your assertion that Studio Gang deserves “immense credit” for designing a building that capitalizes on the public’s love of spectacle.
You list several possible criticisms that are all based on a lay-persons observation of the tower such as “too wavy” or “not beautiful enough”. What your post ignores, however, it that aside from the protruding slabs of the undulating terraces, this is just another concrete tower with a cheap storefront glazing system sitting on a giant parking deck (with some ground level retail). Not what I would call ground-breaking or innovative.
Studio Gang’s Starlight Theater with it’s operable lotus-blossom roof and innovative structural system is a masterpiece: groundbreaking and beautiful. Aqua on the other-hand, is an almost post-modern expression of ornament.
Calling anyone who disagreed with me jealous, ill-informed or naïve was clearly ludicrous on my part. But I could not disagree more with your assertion that the Aqua Tower is a post-modern expression of ornament.
While the Starlight Theatre is yet another beautiful, innovative expression of Jeanne Gang’s imagination, it is situated on a college campus in Rockford, Illinois. Not even close to the public, difficult site the Aqua Tower resides on, just South of the Chicago River. It’s quite a bit easier to achieve an imaginative product when the audience is a small, well-educated, private group of clients.
Regarding the Aqua Tower, I can’t quite figure out what’s so wrong with taking the well known and inexpensive typology of glass storefront system on cast-in-place concrete, and subtly modifying it to create an affect, which is new, contemporary, and perceptually deep. By slightly extending the concrete slab past the glass envelope in a curvaceous and parametric manner, Studio Gang has achieved exactly the opposite of a stagnant, useless post-modern expression of ornament. They have allowed the function of the building to give it its character. With each new floor plate and variation on the balcony sequence, new relationships of unit types and adjacencies are achieved, creating a migration of user types, purchase prices, and social networks. This is perhaps the most contemporary example of high-rise residential architecture in, at the very least, the city of Chicago – where the building’s program has a definitive influence on the building’s appearance, which creates a feedback loop and redefines the functions inside.
I had the distinct pleasure to work with Ali Rahim and Contemporary Architecture Practice (C.A.P.) in developing his “Migrating Coastlines” tower project in Dubai. While the Dubai residential tower is certainly more ambitious on some levels, the two towers act similarly in that they use a generative external, formal stimulus to agitate the unit types within. This is a thoroughly parametric concept, and one that has implications from top to bottom of the structure. Post-Modern ornament, described even by Venturi as non-functional elements used to communicate a “meaning” to the public, has no direct affect on the use or interior space of a building. I cannot begin to see where you draw connection between these two concepts, and fully disagree with your assertion that Studio Gang’s Aqua Tower is neither ground-breaking nor innovative.