Now the third tallest building in the Chicago skyline, the design for The St. Regis Chicago (Vista Tower) asks the question: What if skyscrapers can be porous connectors, rather than barriers, for the public realm? Defining a new edge of the city, the tower tightly knits the downtown Lakeshore East community to its surroundings with unprecedented urban connections and enhanced public access to the Chicago River. Housing condominiums, a 5-star hotel, restaurants, and amenity spaces, the building’s residential and hotel amenities combine at the upper levels to create a vibrant social center.
Looking up from the river and park, the tower presents itself as three interconnected volumes of differing heights. Moving rhythmically in and out of plane, the overall flowing appearance of the building is the result of an alternating geometry between these three volumes. An innovative structural system allows the central volume to be lifted from the ground plane, creating a new essential pedestrian connection between the Chicago Riverwalk and the nearby community park’s outdoor recreational facilities.
The essential “building block” of the architecture is a 12-story truncated pyramid called a frustum. Stacked and nested, right-side up and upside-down, the frustums to form the tower’s flowing volumes. The unique geometry creates a tall building with eight corners instead of four, providing inhabitants with daylight and fresh air from multiple orientations, while also allocating green space atop the building’s various heights.
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