The new 311 S. Wacker Drive office skyscraper makes at least a few splendid contributions to the fabric and life of downtown Chicago, but almost negates them with a summit that appears oddly unfinished by day and tastelessly overilluminated by night.
This 65-story, 959-foot giant is the city`s fourth tallest, topped only by nearby Sears Tower, the Amoco building and John Hancock Center. It also is the tallest concrete-framed building in the world, having taken that technologically impressive title away from Water Tower Place, which is 100 feet shorter.
Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF) of New York designed 311 in association with Harwood K. Smith & Partners of Dallas. The skyscraper is in the shape of an octagon embedded in a slab, the latter element forming a simple, unbroken plane on its Franklin Street side. Situated on a full block, 311 also is bounded by Jackson Boulevard and Van Buren Street.
How to play off Sears Tower was an important issue in KPF`s approach, and in that respect they succeeded. The light red granite-skinned 311 building for the most part makes a reasonably clear visual statement of its own without appearing to compete with its steely neighbor in any self-conscious sense-at least, not in the daytime.
Indeed, at a distance of a few blocks-particularly from the south-311 not only asserts itself without unnecessary aggressiveness but sets up a new skyline resonance that makes the raw power of Sears Tower all the more pronounced.
This is not to say that 311, as an enormous new presence on the skyline, is a truly distinguished work. Still, in this era of architectural excess, a nose-thumbing gesture aimed at Sears would have come as no surprise.
Viewing the full sweep of the 311 block from the west, one must remember that the tower now in place is only the first of a three-building cluster approved by the Chicago Plan Commission and City Council in 1986. That approval was strongly opposed by such private groups as the Metropolitan Planning Council on grounds of over-density and the setting of dangerously liberal zoning precedents.
In its present one-building stage, of course, 311 stands on one of downtown`s most generous expanses of open space. The northwest quarter of the block is a sweeping carpet of tree-lined greensward crisscrossed by walkways in college campus style. If the southwest quarter is merely a parking lot with token landscaping, it is at least a well-mannered little tract. What the 311 block will look like as the site of three skyscrapers (if they actually are built) is another matter.
The most-noticed and talked about visual flaw of 311 is its summit, topped by a 70-foot-tall central drum surrounded by four smaller cylinders, all of which are crenelated like the Tower of London, or a White Castle hamburger outlet of yesteryear.
In the daytime, the large drum appears incomplete, as though it awaits some kind of final cladding or ornament. If phone calls received by a critic are a fair standard of measure, this perception is widespread and unfailingly negative.
After dark, 311`s top undergoes a drastic change when the five cylinders blaze with the light from nearly 2,000 fluorescent tubes. The intensity of this light is overdone to the point of boorishness and has inspired even more phone calls. The building seems to be pointing to itself like some bumpkin pointing to his Day-Glo bow tie.
Fortunately, 311 provides enough pedestrian-level amenities and beauty to more or less compensate for its bizarre topside.
Architects of KPF calculatedly and skillfully avoided the ground level mistakes made long ago by the designers of neighboring Sears Tower, which rises from an elevated podium that is intimidating to sidewalk passersby.
The KPF designers dealt deftly with the standard problem of Loop streets rising as they approach river bridges, thereby creating sloped sidewalks running alongside large buildings. The lawn north of 311 smoothly adjoins the sidewalk, and the stepped approaches to the building at its northeast and southeast corners are gracefully situated.
Along Franklin Street, much of 311`s frontage is simply given over to a fast-food restaurant whose franchised garishness of appearance was toned down to an acceptable level. One must explore the whole base of 311 to understand why the simple Franklin Street treatment makes sense, but it does.
Yet by far the most praiseworthy element of 311 is its spectacular winter garden, a low, 12,000-square-foot building spliced onto the front of the skyscraper and intended to interconnect the proposed triad of towers on the block.
Winter gardens sheltering treasured plants from the cold date back to antiquity. They became particularly popular during the Renaissance, when explorers from colonial powers began bringing home oranges, pomegranates and exotic flowers. By the mid-19th Century, the technology of building with metal and glass made possible such creations as Joseph Paxton`s enormous Crystal Palace in England.
At 311, real estate developers elected to make their winter garden one word and to capitalize it, a proprietary step that gives it more than generic identity. It seems safe to declare that the resulting Wintergarden is Chicago`s handsomest, cheeriest, most glittering indoor space of recent decades dedicated essentially to eating, gawking and kindred pursuits of pleasure.
The 85-foot-tall structure is a finely executed composition of white-painted steel, glass, marble and granite. Its sets of paired columns support a transparent barrel vault, the details of whose framework are recollective of old European conservatories. On brightly sunlighted days, the space sparkles.
Rising from the lower of the Wintergarden`s two levels are eight 40-foot palm trees of the real-but-embalmed variety that seems to have suddenly become popular. At the same level are clusters of tables and chairs, a few of them reserved for patrons of a white tablecloth restaurant that adjoins the garden but is largely in a conventional opaque-ceilinged space of its own. Even more tables-at which lunchtime brown baggers are welcome-are in a pair of nearby shop-lined arcades.
Yet the true focal point of the Wintergarden is ”Gem of the Lakes,” a bronze sculpture to which a vigorously churning fountain and stepped water basins are integral. It is the most pleasing site-specific art work wedded to the interior of a major Chicago building for many years.
Washington, D.C., artist Raymond Kaskey, who studied architecture at Yale, created ”Gem.” His earlier work includes ”Portlandia,” a popular sculpture that graces an otherwise boring Michael Graves building in Portland, Ore. Kaskey also designed and crafted architectural ornaments for Chicago`s new main library opening this fall on State Street.
While it is an original work of specific metaphorical intentions focusing on Chicago, ”Gem” will nonetheless evoke in many viewers a vision of Paul Manship`s famous ”Prometheus” sculpture in Rockefeller Plaza and perhaps even a subliminal take on Botticelli`s ”Birth of Venus.”
In any case, Kaskey`s 24-foot-tall figure of a bearded but robust old man kneeling above a huge water-deluged shell is an understandable, populist sort of work that is surely drawing admiration. One does not require a fine arts degree to tell a neighbor about it over the back fence.
It is no mere carping to observe that the glittering Wintergarden, filled with the sound of the fountain and looking quite smashing, nonetheless projects an ambiguous but vaguely intimidating quality common to shopping malls and other privately controlled ”public” spaces these days. The walkie talkie-toting security people who patrol such places preemptively veto any activity perceived as outside the bounds of normalcy. If you want to wear an apocalyptical sandwich board, you will have to go someplace like the Daley Civic Center.
Still, the urge to Disney-ize everything is a social aberration one can hardly blame on architects, and the Wintergarden at 311 and its ”Gem of the Lakes” is still one of the loveliest new sights in downtown Chicago. Put it on your sightseeing list even if you share the detestation of 311`s blazingly bright summit.
