I just had a revelation about Santiago Calatrava’s latest proposal for a twisting, 2,000-foot tower as I was driving south on Lake Shore Drive and staring at the John Hancock Center. The mighty, X-braced Hancock is 1,127 feet tall. Stack another tower nearly as high atop it and you have some idea of how enormous Calatrava’s new skyscraper would be. We’re talking condos piled 2,000 feet into the sky, nearly twice the Hancock’s height. That’s a huge leap in scale, not an itty-bitty tweak.
The distinction is critical because we’re likely to hear from Dublin-based developer Garrett Kelleher and city officials, who are ga-ga over Calatrava, that this design is a mere revision that needs a quick once-over from city planners before it gets the inevitable City Council rubber stamp. Nothing could be faurther from the truth. With the needle-thin broadcast antenna gone and its airspace replaced by sellable condo space, this is practically a whole new building.
And it is not, all things considered, a better one.
The tower’s newly truncated top, which Calatrava advertises as simpatico with the simple profiles of Sears Tower and the Hancock, is a sky-high letdown. Why soar 2,000 feet into the air for what is essentially a buzz cut? With its pinprick spire, the tower was an exultant urban presence, the pinnacle brilliantly culminating its upward drive. Now, for good reason, unhappy e-mailers are offering the following suggestion: Paint it red and call it the “Twizzler Tower.” Tellingly, the nickname is not being conferred with the same affection as the tower’s previous sobriquet — “The Drill Bit.”
I am not saying this skyscraper, which would rise just west of Lake Shore Drive and near the north bank of the Chicago River, should not be built. I am saying it demands the highest level of scrutiny so it can fulfill the highest standards of design.
Provided Kelleher can disprove skeptics and get it built, the skyscraper will become the postcard image of Chicago for the next 50 years, maybe the next 100. Calatrava, a superb architect by nearly everybody’s measure, can do better. And with time and money he surely will. The point is that he needs to be pushed by his client — and by the city. The last thing we need is what transpired when the Chicago Plan Commission approved an earlier version of the project in March: Aldermen fawned over Calatrava, turning his appearance into a performance rather than a public hearing.
At root, the question about the revised plan (which now stands at 160 stories rather than the 150 the developer announced last week) is this: Has Calatrava turned new functional and financial requirements to his advantage — or has he sold out the integrity of the original design?
That tension is most evident on the skyline, where Kelleher’s desire to nearly triple the number of units for sale to 1,300 from 450, has put the architect in a bind. Before, his tower didn’t just twist. It gracefully tapered, getting noticeably thinner as it climbed into the sky. Now, it looks straighter, flatter, less voluptuous, more Twizzler-ish. And it meets the sky weakly, its enormous curving ribs culminating in tiny metal fins that are preposterously small, like so many extended pinkies.
All this is not a veiled suggestion that Mayor Richard Daley do what he did with Donald Trump and order a spire atop this skyscraper. But it is a suggestion for Calatrava and Kelleher to rethink the tower’s top and to refine its middle.
The big gesture of the twist is not enough. God has to be in the details throughout. Based upon renderings I saw last week, the project has miles to go before it achieves the level of refinement evident in another twisting tower, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill of Chicago’s under-construction Infinity Tower in Dubai, or even Calatrava’s own “Turning Torso” tower in Sweden. For those new to architecture, twisting towers are all the rage these days.
There is more reason for concern at ground level, and it’s related to what’s happening in the sky. With the number of proposed units almost tripled, Kelleher’s potential for profit grows exponentially — as does the threat of aggravating Streeterville’s already clogged streets. The tower, which would be the nation’s tallest building, would rise on a tiny side street called East North Water Street. When the skyscraper had just 450 units, that incongruity could be passed over. No longer.
There are, to be sure, some positive features in the redesign, but even they invite further scrutiny. By moving the tower slightly to the north and putting all parking underground, Calatrava and Kelleher generously create the possibility for ample public open space between the tower and the Chicago River. In the same holistic vein, they are proposing two Calatrava-designed pedestrian bridges in an attempt to make the tower less of an isolated object. One would cross the Chicago River east of Lake Shore Drive, forming a link in the lakefront bike trail and pivoting to allow boats through. The other would span Ogden Slip to the north of the skyscraper, joining the bike path and the tower to the planned DuSable Park east of Lake Shore Drive.
But who would pay for the bridges: the city or the developer? And I wonder whether the public space along the riverfront promenade would be usable or ceremonial. Would passersby be encouraged to use it, or would they be made to feel as if they were encroaching upon somebody else’s high-priced turf? The answers will determine whether the proposed improvements turn out to be genuine amenities or mere attempts by the developer to justify his enormous increase in sellable space.
Once so promising, the twisting tower has now reached a crucial stage. It still has the capacity to enliven and enrich Chicago’s skyline and its streets. Literally and aesthetically, it remains head and shoulders above the city’s mediocre residential high-rise norm. The issue is whether city officials, especially Daley, will drive the architect to deliver the greatest possible benefits to the public realm. Calatrava is certainly capable of achieving them.
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bkamin@tribune.com
