6/21/2023 0 Comments Marquee at block 37The bays are clumsy compared with the elegantly curving balconies of Studio Gang's Aqua Tower. But the overall outcome is, at best, more interesting than good. Here, at least, the architects avoid the trap of placeless design that plagues the mall's interior. The bays - their undersides painted orange, a favorite color of the developers, the architects say - combine with marquee-style lighting on the building's entrance canopy to absorb and amplify the theatricality of the Randolph entertainment district. The design creates the illusion of a thin projecting plane attached to a glass box. Washington.Īlong Randolph, at least, this Janus-faced arrangement addresses what the architects viewed as one of their prime aesthetic challenges: how to break down the massiveness of this superlong building, which is essentially two apartment buildings with an elevator core in the middle. It was a miscue for SCB to take its design cues from these second-rate buildings: to the north, along Randolph, a series of angled, randomly arranged bay windows that extend the mall's undulating facade into the sky to the south, flat silvery glass walls that echo 22 W. The city and the transit agency mothballed the project in 2008 after cost-overruns and the prospect of spending at least another $100 million to complete the underground station and a connector tunnel linking the Red and Blue line subways. The absence of the much-hyped CTA superstation was especially grating. The mall disappointed on many counts, from metal exterior walls that aped the materials and free-form geometry of Frank Gehry's Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park to a pinched atrium that had all the panache of a suburban mall. The meek, glass-sheathed office building was no match for such muscular neighbors as the Richard J. ![]() Washington office building, by Perkins + Will, which opened in 2008. ![]() Unfortunately, the building, designed by Chicago architects Solomon Cordwell Buenz (SCB), continues down the same mediocre path as Block 37's previously completed projects: the four-story mall, by Gensler architects, and the 17-story 22 W. Light reflects off the windows of the retail section of Block 37, casting sunlight onto North State Street.
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