The Aqua Tower – Architecture Review

Chicago was, and will always be a modern city. The roots of the modernist movement still grow deep here along every street from 31st to Sheridan Avenue. Occasionally these roots will sprout massive steel buildings into the sky like grapes growing on a vine. The seeds of these buildings can be traced back to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, one of the members of the Bauhaus and a founder of modernism. Van der Rohe fled Nazi Germany before World War II and found his way to Chicago where he founded the Chicago's Armour Institute of Technology, now known as IIT, to continue the work he began at the Bauhaus. From this school the modern style of architecture known as the International or Chicago style was born. One of the most recent additions to this proud architectural heritage is Jeanne Gang's Aqua Tower. This building is a shining example of how far architecture has come since the invention of the modern skyscraper nearly a century ago.

The Aqua Tower sits near a large park in the Lakeshore East area of downtown Chicago. At 86 stories, the building feels right at home nestled inside the endless rows of International Style towers which stretch off to either side of the Chicago River. The form of the building is similar to its neighbors, yet at the same time entirely different. Not one floor plan is identical and the abstraction of the glass seems to fill in between the concrete like water rushing to fill the low parts of a valley. The play of the forms are rather subtle as each floor changes shape slightly to suggest flowing forms. The description sounds like a hiking trip rather than a building, and this is what makes Aqua Tower something special. The harshness of the lines and materials of construction are still present, yet they intertwine with the fantasy of the shape so effortlessly--so organically--that the suggestion of the movement in form is always present.

Jeanne Gang feels just as at home in Chicago as her Aqua building. She was born in Illinois in 1964 and leads Studio Gang Architects, a Chicago-based architecture and design firm. The Aqua Tower is the tallest building in the world designed by a woman which holds the promise of opening the field of architecture, dominated for so long by men, to young women in the future. Jeanne was recently honored with the very prestigious 2011 MacArthur Fellow Award for her ground-breaking work in architecture. She has brought a holistic approach to the art, combining the principals of the Chicago Style with concern for the environment and the people who will use the structure. All of her projects make use of 'green' building techniques and employ things like recycled or recyclable materials, energy conservation, and sustainable construction methods.

Modern Art always begs the question of what is next, and in the case of architecture the answer can be found in the pursuit of nature. Chicago has seen several buildings attempt to take this path. The Trump Tower plays with sweeping curvilinear lines which seem to catch the setting sun from any angle, while buildings like Bertrand Goldberg's Marina Towers have been experimenting with the organic floor plan idea since the 60's. What separates the Aqua Tower from these other attempts is the execution. While the Marina Towers is using the same principals, each floor is identical which creates the never-ending vertical structures we all expect when we look at a skyscraper. The Aqua destroys this barrier by eliminating any vertical continuity between floors. While the this topographic approach has surely been conceived before, it was not until computer and material technology advanced to a point that the execution was financially viable to produce. In this way, the Aqua Tower still embodies the essence of modernism and the International Style even though it appears so radically different from its predecessors.

The Aqua Tower will prove to be a crowning jewel for the city and one of the most significant architectural advancements to grace the Chicago skyline in many years. Not only is it fantastic to look at, but the implications for international architecture and the culture of Chicago are wide-reaching. Mies van der Rohe is known for coining two phrases: “less is more” and “God is in the details”. While Mies van der Rohe may not have been able to foresee a woman designing such an important architectural work, both of his phrases certainly apply to the Aqua Tower. You could even make the case that in exploring the ties architecture has to nature, the Aqua building is indeed finding God in the details.