The Aqua Tower in Chicago literally flows like water through the already dense downtown landscape. The building houses hotels, apartments, and condos and features a roof garden (the 2nd largest in Chicago). Over 720 households will be living in the Aqua Tower. Studio Gang Architects considered such factors as views, solar shading and function to derive a vertical system of contours that gives the structure its sculptural form.

Its vertical topography is defined by its outdoor terraces that gradually change in plan over the length of the tower. These terraces offer a strong connection to the outdoors and allow inhabitants to occupy the building façade and city simultaneously. The result is a highly sculptural building when viewed obliquely that transforms into a slender rectangle from further away. Its powerful form suggests the limestone outcroppings and geologic forces that shaped the great lakes region.

In this video, the architects describe the sustainable building in detail:
Aqua Tower

A little more than a year ago, Kyle and I visited Chicago for a weekend for an anniversary, to see my aunt & uncle, and to visit the SOFA (Sculpture Objects and Functional Art) exhibition at Navy Pier. On Saturday we wandered around downtown, and part of this was our search for Aqua. It was under construction at the time, so it wasn’t completely impressive yet, but now that it is done – incredible.

P.S.It is the tallest skyscraper designed by a woman, Jeanne Gang from Studio Gang Architects.

Aqua, the spectacular new Chicago skyscraper with the sensuous, undulating balconies, is the pearl of the long-running, now-ending Chicago building boom, a design that is as fresh conceptually as it is visually.

A skyscraper typically consists of repetitive, right-angled parts, a money-saving device that frequently produces aesthetic monotony. But in this defiantly non-Euclidian high-rise, almost nothing seems to repeat.

Its white, wafer-thin balconies bulge outward, each slightly different from the other. They race around corners and shoot upward in fantastic, voluptuous stacks. This is a new vision of verticality, and it makes Aqua one of Chicago’s boldest — and best — skyscrapers in years.

Located just north of Millennium Park at 225 N. Columbus Drive, the 82-story tower is still in the finishing stages, so it is impossible to fully assess whether its function is as successful as its form. Nonetheless, it can be said that Aqua is remarkable on several counts.

It is the tallest building designed by a female-owned architectural firm and the first skyscraper from Chicago’s Jeanne Gang of Studio Gang Architects, who is only 45 years old. Aqua also is a real estate miracle: Its financing documents were signed in late August 2007 — just before the credit crunch hit it. Had the tower been delayed by 60 to 90 days, says the building’s architect-of-record and co-developer, Jim Loewenberg, it might never have been built.

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Blair Kamin
Chicago Tribune

Studio Gang Architects