How to Build a Flying Staircase

More from the Loews Hotel construction site at 435 North Park Drive. (watch on YouTube for highest res.)

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When they're all done, it will look something like this . . .

rendering courtesy Solomon Cordwell Buenz

More:
435, Cool Even in Daylight

Coolest Construction Site in the City?

Am I Boring You?

435: Way Cool, Even in Daylight

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Remember when I wrote about Streeterville's 435 North Park, across from the AMC River East,  being the ‘Coolest Construction Site in the City?’

Well, it still is, even as it's come out of the ground, and even in the daylight.

The site has so much surplus ground space that stuff that would have to been kept somewhere else with more constricted job sites is piling up like Citizen Kane's storeroom.

With rising sidewalks to the east and north doubling as visitor balconies, this is a great place to spend a brown bag lunch hour.

Some buildings are more interesting under construction than they'll ever be as a finished product.


Also Read:

Coolest Construction Site in the City?
Am I Boring You?

Coolest Construction Site in the City?

click images for larger view (recommended)

From the north, the view from the escalator mezzanine at the AMC River East is more entertaining than many of the movies.

It's street theater to the nth degree.  Usually, construction sites are closed off from public view behind chain-link fencing and green netting.  Along Illinois and New Streets, the site of the 600-foot tall 435 North Park, designed by Solomon Cordwell Buenz, is no exception.  Walk north down Park Drive, however, as it rises on an incline, and the entire two-block square parcel falls open to your view.

Upper North Water Street now serves as a viewer's balcony, looking down unobstructed on the noisy, bustling hub of construction activity. 

We've written about this project - and posted renderings and daytime video - less than two weeks ago, but coming upon it, floodlit at night, is one of the most dramatic cityscapes you're likely to encounter. It's like stumbling across the landing strip at Roswell.

Once the building begins to rise above ground, of course, all of this will again be hidden.  So don't hesitate.  Wait for the end of the workday at nightfall, grab a bag of popcorn, some coffee or a flask of warmed brandy, lean against the concrete street balustrades, and enjoy one of the best shows in Chicago as caissons for the tower's foundations are dug deep into the soil.

 

Am I Boring You?

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Watching it is vaguely arousing:  the drill plunges deep, deep into the shaft, and then it starts screwing.  It screws in.  It screws out.  When it finally pulls clear, the drill-bit tip is encased in a horse hockey canister of dense Chicago clay, which it then spins away, like a dog shaking off rain, onto a ground that takes on the appearance of an over-painted canvas, there for but moments before a  power shovel smears the brushstrokes, scoops up the heavy muck, and dumps it on a growing nearby pile.
This is a site, just south of the Sheraton Chicago, that's been vacant as long as anyone can remember.  For a brief time in the delusional part of the century's first decade, it was to be home to a 107-story, 1,265-foot-high Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, designed by DeStefano+Partners.

Unlike the equally hallucinatory Chicago Spire, however,  it never even got to the point of being a big hole in the ground.

The south end, was  a surface parking lot, complete with its own anemic forest.

The north end, across from the AMC River East, was a garden of rubble that served briefly as the dumping ground for architectural mock-ups used in the filming of Transformers 3: Decepticons Trash Wacker Drive.

Now, after multiple delays, work is actually beginning to fill up the full city block with a Solomon Cordwell Buenz-designed, 53-story, 590-foot-tall mixed use project combining about 400 apartments with 400 hotel rooms.

Stop by in 2015 to see the completed product.  For now, enjoy the mud . . .