Trump's Towering Chicago Tower
designslinger]
Chicago's Trump Tower opened in 2009 without the kind of fanfare you might expect from
The Donald. There were no fireworks exploding from the rooftop, but his building makes quite a statement.
It soars above Chicago's River and peaks out above all the buildings on the city's skyline,
except for Willis(Sears) Tower, making it the 7th tallest building in the world.
Designed by Adrian Smith when he was still with Skidmore, Ownings & Merrill, (where he
also did the Burj Kahlifa) it has been praised for its shimmering skin and panned as uninspired. I'm not a fan of the lame, spindlely spire that sits on top, it diminishes the building for me. But I must admit, the towering tower catches my eye whenever I'm downtown, and when the sun is out, the place shines.
Posted by designslinger at 1/28/2010 1:21 AM 
Categories: Architecture
Tags: Skidmore Owings Merrill world's tallest buildings Adrian Smith Donald Trump
Categories: Architecture
Tags: Skidmore Owings Merrill world's tallest buildings Adrian Smith Donald Trump
Skidmore, et al., did their best -- but this building is at least twice as tall as it needs to be. True to form, Donald Trump had to ruin the profile of the riverbank by insisting on a building way too tall for its site; was it his enormous ego that was responsible, or merely his greed in wanting to extract as much revenue from the footprint as possible? Doesn't matter: either reason is enough for me to call it 'Trump's dick,' given that it sticks out like a sore, um, whatever among its neighbors. Like a guy in midlife crisis with a sports car (which is a dick substitute of its own), the height of this building is a monument to at least vanity, if not wishful thinking as well, as if Trump the crass New Yorker had poked Chicago in the eye because we don't bow to him. A pity, because in architecture, we are second to no one, having invented skyscrapers in the first place as well as the means to make them ever taller (thank you, William LeBaron Jenney and Fazlur Khan).
All that said, Trump's symbolic appendage should have been built further north on upper Michigan Avenue instead, not on the river where it will be a constant temptation to others to put even taller buildings where they don't belong. Better still, I'd rather that the river's profile had been retained and Trump had built in another city entirely.
Perhaps Chicago won't see anything like this again for a while. Just read that the economy may be in bad shape for the next decade. Certainly don't think there will ever be another spire rising along the water's edge anytime soon.