Five Things I learned from Dirk Lohan about Mies van der Rohe's IBM Building

The IBM Building before Trump Tower - click images for larger view

. . . from a presentation architect Dirk Lohan gave at a Tuesday press event for The Langham Hotel Chicago, which will open in the Mies van der Rohe designed IBM Building (330 North Wabash) this coming July:
 
1.  Unlike buildings like Aqua even today, the IBM, completed in 1972, incorporated thermal breaks in its steel construction that insulated the building from outside weather conditions and made it much more energy efficient than most of the skyscrapers of its time.

2. When you walked over the IBM's south plaza, you were walking over the next day's news.  The space beneath the  plaza was controlled by the Chicago Sun-Times, which operated out of its own building across Wabash from the IBM until it was demolished to make way for Trump Tower.  The below-grade space was where the Sun-Times stored its supply of massive roles of newsprint.

That is why the plaza along the river edge is basically a flat surface that goes vertically down to the river without any gesture to bring the river into this [IBM] development . . . I've always regretted that in a way because I think it would have been wonderful to open up the plaza and cascade down, similarly to what Trump has done since then.

3.  The newsprint was delivered via the train tracks that run under the IBM, under Marina City and points west, part of an original railyard dating back to the time when the Wells Street Station was on the current site of the Merchandise Mart.  These tracks ran right under the center of the IBM, and so instead of the usual central service core for elevators and staircases, the IBM actually has two cores, split on either side of the old tracks.

4.  If they had followed an initial scheme done by the Mies office, the IBM might well be known today as The Bow Tie Building.  That was because Wabash originally ran in a way that cut a triangle into the middle of the IBM site, making the usual rectangular box impossible.

Mies was willing to live with it . . .  It was a triangular piece that came right into the property that was public right-of-way for Wabash Avenue, and it would have meant to build the building with a reduced width in the center of the building and then towards the north and south make it wider again as a typical office building.  And we developed this scheme in the Mies office that expressed that.  So it was in a way very un-Miesian, but we of course rebelled and we said why don't we go and talk to the city about IBM acquiring it.  And in the end, they did. 

5.  “The building was also fairly expensive at that time, ” recalled Lohan. “I think it cost $33.00 a square foot.”    Looking at the IBM's enduringly iconic place in the Chicago skyline four decades later, I'd have to say it proved to be a pretty good bargain.

first floor hotel lobby.  Image Courtesy The Langham Chicago

Lohan was asked by the owners to design the ground floor lobby of the new Langham Chicago, and we'll talk about that - and give you a tour of the hotel -  in our next post.

Godfrey, My Man - You're Alive!

click images for larger view

When last we left The Godfrey Hotel Chicago, in March of last year, it was still enshrouded and dormant as a pupa that had been lingering in that state for almost four years, ever since the money run out and construction halted at the LaSalle and Huron site for what was originally known as the Duke Miglin hotel, to a design by Valerio DeWalt Train.

The troubled property had just been acquired by Oxford Capital Group, the folks who even now are  putting the finishing touches on The Langham Chicago, the 316-room hotel being constructed on twelve floors of the Mies van Der Rohe designed IBM Building, at 330 North Wabash, anticipating a July opening.  Last year, the 212 room Godfrey was also announced for a 2013 completion, and while their website now just says “Coming Soon”, things are definitely stirring.

With the coming of spring, the building has shed its winter coat.  The fabric sheeting that protected the innovative staggered-truss frame when the project was in mothballs has been stripped away.  According to website where you can follow the hotel's construction, it was not entirely effective. “The old construction site sat for a long time so we needed to remove all the old fire proofing on the building and apply new.”

The facade framing is in place . . .

. . .  the exterior walls continue to be affixed . . .

Spring-green Securock glass-mat insulation makes its eye-opening appearance . . .

With the exception of the still empty hole on the site of aborted Chicago Spire, the Exquisite Corpses we wrote about in 2008 have all revived as part of a 2013 construction boom that also includes a new Virgin Hotel in Rapp and Rapp's Old Dearborn Bank Building at Wabash and Lake . . .

giant Angry Bird, Virgin Hotel, 203 North Wabash

 . . . and the long-stalled Waterview skyscraper on Wacker, where work has resumed with a new name (111 West Wacker) and a soaring new crane.

111 West Wacker

Read:
Mummy No More: Valerio's Staybridge About to Escape its Wrappings
The Mummy of River North
Staggered Truss: not as Painful as it Sounds
Exquisite Corpses
Waterview has Risen from the Grave! (as 111 West Wacker)