"Situated on prestigious North Michigan Avenue, the one-hundred-story, multi-use tower
tapers from bottom to top in order to accommodate the different floor space requirements
of a variety of uses. Commercial spaces occupy the base of the tower while parking,
office, and residential zones rise above. The tapered form provides structural as well
as space efficiency. The exterior columns and spandrel beams, together with the diagonal
members and structural floors, create the steel tube. The diagonals, spandrels and columns
are clearly articulated to depict the primary elements of this tube. Less than thirty
pounds of steel per square foot of floor area were used in the building, equaling that of
a forty- to fifty-story traditional tower. The exterior cladding is black anodized aluminum
with tinted bronze glass."
The Creator's Words
"The design of the John Hancock Center, in Chicago, was influenced by its unique site.
Just off Lake Shore Drive, it is surrounded by huge, residential high-rise buildings and
yet faces one of the city's most attractive commercial streets. John Hancock insisted on
producing a tall building with residences above, offices and commercial uses below. The
search for a new kind of structure which would accommodate multiple uses and also express
the scale and grandeur of a one-hundred-story tower, lead Dr. Kahn and me to the diagonal
tube. It was as essential to us to expose the structure of this mammoth as it is to perceive
the structure of the Eiffel Tower, for Chicago, honesty of structure has become a tradition."
Details
100 story steel structure tower, 344 meters tall.
Floors 1-5 commercial, 6-12 parking, 13-41 office, 44-92 apartment, 93-100 television,
observatory, restaurant, mechanical
American Institute of Architects 25 Year Award, 1999
