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Former Calatrava Spire site in Chicago will hold two SOM-designed skyscrapers

Sister Spires

Former Calatrava Spire site in Chicago will hold two SOM-designed skyscrapers

In a generous and surprising nod to the Chicago School of Architecture, David Childs with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill has designed two sister towers in terracotta and glass for the former site of the Chicago Spire. Announced Tuesday night at a community meeting by developer Related Midwest, renderings for the development show two towers rippling upwards, set upon a masonry base resembling a rectangular photo carousel.

Taking inspiration from some of the cities’ most significant buildings, Childs has covered the towers in a familiar architectural form–the Chicago Window–with setbacks allowing for pivot after pivot of the form in various multiples as the building reaches higher. Glazed terracotta became a way for turn-of-the-20th-century Chicago architects like Louis Sullivan, Daniel Burnham and William Le Baron Jenney to craft ornament that could be designed to exact specifications and made hollow, allowing them to decorate the tops of buildings.

Topping off at 1,100 feet, the south tower will be constructed adjacent to the riverwalk and will offer 300 condominiums and a 175-key hotel. The north tower will offer 550 apartments and will be aligned with the Ogden slip, at 850 feet tall. A shared podium will provide pedestrian and vehicular accesses for both towers. Parking will be delivered via four underground levels.

In addition to luxury offerings, Related Midwest has committed to realize the completion of a long-awaited public park on a rectangular piece of vacant land, separated by Lake Shore Drive. The creation of DuSable Park will honor the legacy of Chicago’s founder, Jean-Baptiste Pointe DuSable, and realize the vision of Mayor Harold Washington for public space atop what was once a site contaminated with thorium from the manufacture of incandescent gaslight mantles.

The new towers will feature terracotta cladding and bay windows. (Noe & Associates/Boundary/The Related Companies)

Plans for the development, currently known as 400 North Lake Shore Drive, do not specify how the construction will address what remains of the Chicago Spire, a 78-foot-deep, 104-foot-wide underground cofferdam that sits below what will be the south tower. Construction of the towers is anticipated to take four and a half years.

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