Making a tall architectural design statement in the sprawling flatness of suburbia presents an unusual challenge in the Chicago area. This is not Houston, or Phoenix, where skyscrapers are sprinkled around in isolation as well as in clusters. Chicago is a traditional sort of American city where tall towers are concentrated downtown and outlying buildings seldom rise above a dozen stories.
That is why the 31-story, 418-foot Oakbrook Terrace Tower has received such an inordinate amount of attention since its recent completion. Most people are startled at their first sight of so lofty a solo structure on the Du Page County skyscape. Others, fascinated, have actually believed a bizarre rumor that the building is tilting.
Not since John Hancock Center was under construction 20 years ago has a tall structure here received such close and sometimes misinformed scrutiny
(the immense Hancock was vulnerable because it dominated everything in its vicinity and was totally exposed to view by its deep setback from Michigan Avenue). But that is where the urban-suburban analogy ends.
Most people will never see Oakbrook Terrace Tower at close range except from a moving automobile. Relatively few will ever approach the speculative office building on foot, or stand next to it, let alone go inside. One might almost raise the question of whether new standards are required to judge the architectural comeliness of such a suburban high-rise.
Architect Helmut Jahn of Murphy/Jahn designed the tower, which is the tallest building in Chicago`s suburbs for the time being. There was no familiar urban matrix within which he could proceed, no tight street grid, no context of older buildings hemming in the site. Still, it was the airy vagueness of the venue that actually informed the building`s final appearance. Jahn is sometimes accused of making buildings as ”objects” that stand aloof and perhaps disrespectfully from their urban environs. In this instance, Jahn says he deliberately created an object that is almost a kind of signboard since it must arrest the attention of mobile passersby.
Yet the tower is no garish exercise in the McBuilding style of architecture, no fast food for the eyes. On the contrary, it is a softly shimmering structure that takes on a surreal appearance during most hours of the day, except when a rising or setting sun sets its reflective glass sides ablaze. This shifting, ephemeral quality is most pronounced when seen from a moving car. Viewed from a stationary vantage point, the tower assumes a still- pleasing, if sharper, focus.
Jahn made the building octagonal, a shape he has used before on projects in other cities. Oakbrook Terrace Tower is thus omnidirectional, to use Jahn`s term, and that is reasonable on a site that makes no particular orientation demands. The eight-sided building with its elevator cores in the center also yields flows of uninterrupted floor space and window views that tenants find attractive.
The upper quarter of the tower is defined with setbacks and gabled, chevronlike shapes that are also a reprise on a theme Jahn has used before, most notably on an 840-foot skyscraper in Philadelphia. This topside treatment gives the Oakbrook Terrace building an assertive but not overbearing focal point that is in gentle counterpoint to the less sharply drawn character of its lower surfaces.
Like every other architect who works in the suburbs, Jahn had to agonize over the overwhelming visual presence of the automobile. Oakbrook Terrace Tower stands on land once occupied by Dispensa`s Kiddie Kingdom, an amusement park that was something of a local landmark for 30 years. Today, the 16-acre site is essentially an L-shaped parking lot for 1,800 cars, with Jahn`s skyscraper in one corner.
Only by putting all parking underground can the problem of ugly suburban auto clutter be truly solved, but that solution is regarded as too costly for most developments. Jahn softened the parking lot`s impact a bit by running a rather long and formal drive up to the tower`s main entrance on its east side. A secondary south entrance also received careful attention, and a small underground garage for 300 autos was connected to a lower lobby in a tasteful way that avoids the commonly grubby look of such junctures.
Jahn`s overall aim in these matters was to employ some of the urban-style, pedestrian-oriented ceremony that accompanies the entering of a major downtown building. With the limited means at his disposal, he did as well as anyone could hope for.
The building`s all-glass skin led to even more acute agonizing on the part of Jahn and his project architect on the job, Philip Castillo. Their desire was to make the tower`s sides more than a drab assembly of reflective planes and to enrich them with rhythmic patterning ordinarily (but
expensively) achieved with granite, marble or limestone.
They succeeded by benign deception, banding the glass curtain walls horizontally in one, two and four-story increments that create a pleasing rhythm as one`s vision sweeps up and down the tower. Large sections of the walls still reflect sky and clouds, but not in the relentlessly uninterrupted way that ultimately becomes boring.
The appearance of stone banding was achieved by using glass whose reflectivity was dulled by patterning it with thousands of closely spaced gray dots, each about the size of a dime. Jahn and Castillo spent six months testing variations of the glass with its manufacturer until they were satisfied with a gray-on-gray tonal look. The dots are visible only on the building`s exterior, and seem to vanish at a distance of about 100 feet.
Upon entering the building through its grand east portal, one is confronted by a split-level lobby ranging up to six stories in height, clad with gray and white marble and floored with terrazzo whose pattern of triangles echoes the building`s chevroned top-a motif that Jahn also used on elevator doors, carpeting and other surfaces.
The most striking feature of the lobby is a floor-to-ceiling expanse of white marble that is shaped and grooved to resemble a profile of the building itself. This works well, but the rest of the lobby extravaganza is overdone and includes a reception desk that looks like a sarcophagus. Jahn paid great attention to details in this nervous, pour-on-the-luxury space, but there are too many of them.
A below-grade level in the office building houses a health club of some opulence. The topmost penthouse floor is intended for use as a restaurant and offers a rather extraordinary view of the downtown Chicago skyline. At night, the exterior of the tower`s upper stories is tastefully illuminated.
Gertrude Stein`s famous criticism of Oakland, Calif. (”There is no there there”) can no longer be applied to Oakbrook Terrace. Perhaps there did not used to be a there there before Jahn arrived, but there is certainly a there there now.
