South Loop’s Southbank Development Gets Its First Residents
Southbank, the northern portion of what used to be the Riverline development south of Roosevelt Road, has its first people living in its first residential tower. People have started moving into The Cooper (720 South Wells Street), a 29-story building that is the first of five planned for this project. The Perkins+Will-designed building brings 452 new homes to the South Loop, in one of three new projects hugging the Chicago River....
Lendlease Rolls Out The Barrel for The Cooper at Southbank
We were going to make a bunch of silly puns about barrels of monkeys, or being over a barrel, or fish in a barrel, but we won’t. Except for that one in the headline about rolling out the barrel. That was clever. In case you don’t know, “cooper” is another word for someone who makes barrels for a living. And “The Cooper” is the name of a new residential building in the South Loop where you could...
New Erection Will Have Goose Island Sporting Wood
Yes, we're all a bunch of fifth-graders around here. But in spite of the juvenile headline, what's planned for Goose Island is clearly innovative. Texas mega-developer Hines officially plans to put up a new office building on Goose Island that's made of wood. Crain's Chicago Business first reported Hines knotty notion way back in February, and we noted back then that this isn't Hines' first time going out on this limb. It has a...
Throwback Thursday: Peeking in at Perkins + Will
Last week, Chicago’s largest architecture firm announced it is leaving the historic AMA Plaza (330 North Wabash Avenue) for the even-more-historic Wrigley Building next door at 400 North Michigan Avenue. It made us think of our last after-hours visit to Perkins + Will‘s headquarters in what was once was IBM Plaza, designed by Mies van der Rohe, who never got to see it built. So we’ve set the wayback machine to 2011...
Chicago Lands Just One Firm in This Year’s Architecture Top 25
Chicago, once a world powerhouse of manufacturing, literature, film, music, and video games can now add architecture firms to its list of industries in which it was once a leader. The city of Burnham, Sullivan, Mies, and occasionally Wright is barely a blip in the Architectural Record annual ranking of the world’s Top 300 Architecture Firms. Chicago-based Perkins+Will is saddled with the task of waving the flag for the Windy...
Northwestern Sticks a Fork in Prentice, Then Serves up a New Skyscraper Design
The former women’s hospital known as Prentice is well and truly gone. Dr. Robert L Vogelzang, of Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine sent in this latest photograph of the demolition team wrapping up their work on what some considered a landmark building, and others considered an eyesore. Then just a day into our mourning, comes word that Northwestern University is moving forward with its plan to fill...
When Doing Good for the Community is Good for the Architect
John Syvertsen has been to a lot of ribbon cuttings. The one that he’ll always remember wasn’t a high-profile project. It was the opening of an elevator. Syvertsen, senior principal at Cannon Design, is one of the many Chicago architects who try to give back to the community. He was one of the featured speakers at “Public Interest Architecture In Practice” presented by AIA Chicago on February 8 at the School of the Art Institute of...
Bertrand’s Bulging Beige Beauty Bows to Big Blue Building
Almost a month ahead of its self-imposted deadline, Northwestern University has decided which design it wants for its new Biomedical Research Building at 320 East Huron Street. Chicago’s Perkins and Will has been awarded the commission, according to Crain’s Chicago Business. Perkins and Will was competing against four other competitors for the new skyscraper to replace Bertrand Goldberg’s Prentice Women’s...
Northwestern Selects Five Big Names to Replace One Goldberg
For the last few years, Chicago’s architecture and preservation communities have been waiting for the other shoe to drop. After losing a heated battle against Northwestern University to preserve the beloved former Prentice Womens’ Hospital Building by Bertrand Goldberg, the question has been what would Northwestern eventually replace the building with? Today three shiny, finely tailored loafers fell out of the sky in Streeterville. If...
At Hillshire Brands’ Quirky New West Loop Headquarters, Elvis Is Very Much In the Building
When Hillshire Brands went looking for a new headquarters, it could have squeezed its staff into a couple of floors in the Willis Tower or any number of other standard-issue downtown office buildings. But what fun would that be? Instead, it renovated a 60-year-old art moderne West Loop structure that was originally built to house a lithograph company. Hillshire Brands leases the building from Sterling Bay, which renovated the...
