"The Cartridge" Snaps into the Chicago Skyline

 

click images for larger view

It's already the most distinctive addition to the Chicago Skyline since Trump Tower: VOA's new baby-blue, LEED-green, 479-foot-tall dorm building for Roosevelt University.  It's scheduled to be completed in time for the winter semester in January of next year, and if that seems kind of close for comfort, keep in mind it didn't even begin to rise from the ground until last November.

It didn't reach the height of the next-door Adler & Sullivan Auditorium tower until this March.  In May, it was here, but as late as the beginning of June, it still looked like this.

After watching it go up, I finally realize what it's wafer-thin, notched profile reminds me of: one of those ink-jet cartridges - the magenta one, to be specific - that snaps into your personal printer.  Hence the nickname, "The Cartridge" for the way it snaps into the skyline between the fire-engine red CNA Building and the limestone tower of the Auditorium. 

The view from the north, as it rises behind the landmark Michigan Avenue streetwall, grabs red checkmarks from the reflections of the CNA into the windows of its tall bustle like a grid-like study of color and form.

To the south, we now have a year-round, patriotic red, white and blue trifecta, if not in that order, in which the upward punch of the proud Auditorium tower more than holds its own.

Chicago Streetscene: Filmstrip Laminate

 click images for larger view

Curtain Wall, Lightly Crumpled, emerges at VOA's Roosevelt U Vertical Campus

 click images for larger view

The glass is starting to go up at Roosevelt University's new, 32-story-high Vertical Campus, designed by VOA Associates. I kind of like the windows to the left, which give the building a sort of Scottish Parliament vibe, however temporary.  On the north side of the building, the pegboard back cover is also rising.

It's there because there's a big parking lot on the corner waiting to be filled, once economic conditions revive, with another Solomon Cordwell Buenz residential high-rise, Buckingham II.  You can see the Vertical Campus rise and the empty site to the northwest in this shot from our indefatigable correspondent Bob Johnson.

Buckingham II was projected to be almost as tall as the Vertical Campus whose height, I think, is something like 469 feet, although I can't quite recall where I saw that figure.

This is what it's supposed to look like  when it's all finished.  With that corner space empty, it looks like half of a Miesian duo, laid out, as at the Federal center, right angle to each other, but ditching the black tie formality for a full-up "let's party" mode.

You can read our previous post on the construction - copiously illustrated - here.