Written By Editor on September 30, 2013

For a supposed “second” city, an awful lot of places want to be like Chicago.

In the past on this blog, we’ve shown you the second-hand American clothing store in Tokyo called “Chicago.”

We’ve taken you inside the Chinese restaurant chain “Dan Ryan’s Chicago Steakhouse.”

And let’s not forget the dunderheaded boasting of New Yorkers who claim that their city invented the skyscraper, even though anyone who can figure out the front door of a public library knows that skyscrapers were born on these shores of Lake Michigan.

2929 Weslayan under construction. Courtesy of HAIF member triton.

Now Texas is getting into the game.

Aqua, the undulating Chicago skyscraper that’s been on the cover of pretty much every major newspaper and magazine from here to Shanghai, is gong up in Houston.  Or, at least a Houston-sized version of it is.  And by “Houston-sized” we mean a mere 40 stories, less than half of the 83 stories* of the original.

2929 Weslayan under construction. Courtesy of HAIF member Jax.

We were first tipped off to the potential of an Aqua-inspired building last year by the people on HAIF, the forum portion of our Houston Architecture sister site.  But we didn’t want to do anything with it until we could actually see that it really was going to be an homage  Now that construction is moving along, you can clearly see from these photos posted by HAIFers that it  is going to look quite a lot like Aqua.

The Aqua tribute goes by the name of 2929 Weslayan, but also has signs and literature calling it 2800 Weslayan, 2801 Weslayan, and 2900 Weslayan.  Truly this is one slippery eel.

It uses Jeanne Gang’s curvy-balconies-over-a-glass-box technique to create a visually interesting form.  One that is very familiar to people in Chicago, and design magazine editors around the world.   It is being developed by PM Realty Group, which describes it thusly:

(If SOAR can pretend that the Hancock Center is in Streeterville, then it’s OK for PM Realty to pretend 2929 Weslayan is in River Oaks.)

RTKL is based in Baltimore.  It also has an office in Chicago.  But the design of the Houston Aqua is being credited to RTKL’s people in Dallas.

Aqua and 2929 Weslayan height comparison

Strangely, even though the two designs are strikingly similar, some Houstonians criticize Aqua’s design.  When shown a picture of the original,  HAIF member cloud713 wrote, “So glad ours doesn’t look like that.”  More humor can be found in a post by HoustonBoy who stated of the 40-story tower, “Dear god this will be a huge building,” apparently unaware that in Chicago a building doesn’t even get mentioned in the press if it has fewer than 80 stories.

We have contacted Studio Gang for a comment on 2929 Weslayan.  When we receive a response, we’ll post it here.