The wind is broken up so much that the building didn’t require a device known as a “tuned mass damper”-a mass weighing hundreds of tons that engineers place at the top of tall buildings to stabilize them against the vibrations and sway caused by the force of wind. The landscape of rolling hills and valleys created by the balconies effectively confuses the heavy Chicago winds, giving them no clear path. More ingenious still, they protect the building from the force of wind, one of the most difficult challenges in skyscraper engineering. The balcony overhangs of the façade serve an environmental purpose, shading apartments from the hot summer sun. The design is anchored in common sense in two ways that aren’t immediately apparent, making the building, from a technical point of view, even more remarkable than it looks. Not many buildings like that get made at any height, or by architects of either gender.įurthermore, the success of Aqua isn’t just that Gang figured out a smart, low-budget way of turning an ordinary glass condo tower into something that looks exciting. Her building is most compelling as an example of architecture that is practical and affordable enough to please real-estate developers and stirring enough to please critics. Gang’s achievement has more to do with freeing us from such silliness. That’s nice for Gang, but beside the point, and dwelling on it leads too easily to predictable interpretations of skyscrapers as symbols of male identity. He liked Gang and offered her a shot.Ī lot of attention-in Chicago, at least-has been given to the fact that Aqua is the tallest building in the world designed by a woman. A prime site in the project remained, Lowenberg told her, and he envisioned doing something more ambitious there. A couple of years ago, she was seated at a dinner next to Jim Lowenberg, a developer who had built a number of mediocre condominium towers in a huge development over the old Illinois Central rail yards, known as Lakeshore East. The building would be an achievement for any architect, but Gang, who has run her own firm since 1997, had never designed a skyscraper before and happened into this one almost by accident. You know this tower is huge and solid, but it feels malleable, its exterior pulsing with a gentle rhythm. Gang turned the façade into an undulating landscape of bending, flowing concrete, as if the wind were blowing ripples across the surface of the building. She started with a fairly conventional rectangular glass slab, then transformed it by wrapping it on all four sides with wafer-thin, curving concrete balconies, describing a different shape on each floor. But the architect, Jeanne Gang, a forty-five-year-old Chicagoan, has figured out a way to give it soft, silky lines, like draped fabric. Photograph by Steve Hall / Hedrich Blessing / Courtesy Studio GangĪqua-a new, eighty-two-story apartment tower in the center of Chicago-is made of the same tough, brawny materials as most skyscrapers: metal, concrete, and lots of glass. Aqua’s undulating façade is even more technically ingenious than it looks.
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