Aqua

Taking a walk through the city on a sunny day, one may find there are as many masterpieces in the infrastructure surrounding the Chicago Art Institute as there are housed inside. Inside the Institute hangs Georges-Pierre Seurat’s impressively meticulous painting “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of LaGrande Jatte”. Outside, on the corner of State St. and Madison stands Louis Sullivan’s “Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company Building” romantically dripping cast iron. Inside, Edward Hopper’s cool and iconic “Nighthawks”. Outside, Miles van der Rohe’s tall, dark and handsome “IBM Building”. And then, as pure and ethereal as Georgia O’Keeffe’s “Sky Above Clouds IV”, there is Jeanne Gang’s “Aqua”.

Completed in 2010, the award winning skyscraper stands 82 storey’s tall and houses retail and office space as well as 18 floors of hotel rooms, 476 rental units and 263 condominiums. “Aqua” echoes the breezy waves of nearby Lake Michigan with curved concrete balconies that wrap around the structure creating a soft sculptural facade. The structure is a visual relief in (as described on Studio Gang’s website) “an increasingly dense city like Chicago.” The building somehow captures innocence and purity, a rare feat for a mass of concrete and steal.

As impressive as its aesthetics is the building’s simplicity, efficiency and use of green technology. The wavy face of “Aqua” is not only beautiful, but actually disperses high winds allowing for balconies on even the top floors of the building with minimal enclosure. The architecture is technologically advanced without the convoluted mess of materials that exemplifies some contemporary skyscrapers. It seamlessly integrates into its environment, coexisting instead of imposing.

Perhaps “Aqua” is so invigorating because Jeanne Gang’s studio doesn’t primarily build skyscrapers. Studio Gang’s structures come from a fresh perspective with strong principals of both sustainability and creativity. “The Feeder” is a proposal to build suspended hothouses above the Ohio Feeder ramp on I-90. These hothouses would act as an urban farm, producing fresh and local food for downtown Chicago. Locally grown produce in the middle of a city? Brilliant! Then there is “Eco Casino” where gamblers would be entertained and educated with environmentally themed games such as betting on the weather. All profits would go directly to the State’s green initiative. The City Chicago is lucky to have a daughter as talented as Gang and her team of innovators.

Urban architecture such as “Aqua” in its practicality and inspiration is art for the common man. Gang’s work is an invaluable addition to Chicago’s collection that will forever be enjoyed by its passerby’s.