Archinect - News

Google unveils updated renderings for Thompson Center rejuvenation

2023-12-13T17:11:00-05:00

New renderings for Google’s $280 million redevelopment of the Helmut Jahn-designed James R. Thompson Center in Chicago have been released by the company ahead of the start of construction activities early next year.

The announcement was made via Google’s The Keyword blog and appears to show improvements to the ground-level plaza area, facades, and HVAC system, minus the significant alterations to the atrium that were first detailed by Chicago Sun-Times columnist Lee Bey back in October.

The existing colonnade and plaza at street level will be redesigned to allow for more food, beverage, and retail opportunities, along with seasonal activations for the public. JAHN, its original architect, will lead the overhaul in line with Google’s pledge to deliver a LEED Platinum and all-electric building. The “postmodern legacy” of their late founder's design will reportedly also be “honored” by retaining its 17-story atrium space — an area that became a point of contention for preservationists ...

Major demolition plans announced for Thompson Center facade and atrium

2023-10-18T12:04:00-04:00

Significant alterations to the exterior of Helmut Jahn’s aging James R. Thompson Center have been revealed inside of planning documents submitted for Google’s forthcoming $280 million renovation of the landmark former government office building in Chicago.

The building’s glass facade and atrium will now be demolished in its entirety at a cost of $6 million, according to permitting documents issued by the city’s Department of Buildings on October 13th. Lee Bey was first to report the news in the Chicago Sun-Times Tuesday when a spokesperson for the tech giant promised a formal announcement could come “within weeks” as the planning process moves along.

Landmarks Illinois’ President and CEO Bonnie McDonald told Bey the demolition would “add to the waste stream” of the building’s carbon lifecycle, though did admit the reuse plan was a “big win” over previous fears it would either be razed or topped by a new supertall construction.

Added McDonald: “While we realize losing the existing ...

Thompson Center sculpture will be relocated following building's sale

2022-08-01T19:31:00-04:00

One of Chicago’s iconic pieces of public art will be getting a new home. French artist Jean Dubuffet’s sculpture “Monument with Standing Beast,” in place in front of the Thompson Center since the building opened in 1985, is moving to a different spot in the Loop.

Following last week’s $105 million sale of the Thompson Center to Google, the famed Dubuffet sculpture will be relocated to a former bank building at 115 S. LaSalle Street, a space purchased by the state of Illinois to house office space lost with the sale. The 29-foot, 10-ton fiberglass sculpture was seen as an extension of the Helmut Jahn-designed building. Nicknamed “Snoopy in a blender,” the piece is made up of four shapes representing an animal, a tree, an architectural form, and a portal. It was inspired by Dubuffet’s 1960 series of paintings called Hourlope.

Previously on Archinect: Google will take over Thompson Center following $105 million sale

“Monument with Standing Beast” was donated in 1984 by Ruth Horwich, an art collector and co-founder of Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, in memory of her husband, Leonard Horwich. It was unveiled outside an under-construction Thompson Center in November of that year. A date for the sculpture’s arrival at its new home has not bee...

Evan Jahn on the Thompson Center sale, office design, and continuing his father’s legacy

2022-07-30T09:00:00-04:00

It’s our duty to give them our perspective, but it always ends up being a collaboration between what our ideas and knowledge are, and what their vision is. I would be doing anyone in development a disservice if we didn’t propose and push for something that is greater than what initially is the expectation. Like many things in life, you think you can run a mile this fast, and then someone challenges you to run a little bit faster and you figure out you can. You’re always moving the bar.

The younger Jahn, now president of the firm his late father established, spoke with TRD about the recently-announced sale of Helmut Jahn's most famous work, commenting that the 37-year-old Thompson Center would be “enhanced to a level and expectation of a 21st-century office” before shutting down speculation about a potential new high-rise being constructed above it. He also mentioned some of the post-pandemic challenges his firm and others designing office spaces are facing and said that working with a well-versed client like Google presents, for him, a career-defining prospect.

“They’re beyond a bellwether. They’re really almost setting a new precedent in how they’re defining the workplace, with their projects in multiple areas,” he said. “They’re really trying to reconceptualize this 21st-century hybrid work environment.”

Google will take over Thompson Center following $105 million sale

2022-07-27T14:58:00-04:00

The sale of the iconic Thompson Center in downtown Chicago is being finalized with Google planning to occupy office space following extensive renovations by the new owner. Google will take over the entire building once the new owners, JRTC Holdings, renovate the Thompson Center to the tech giant's specifications.

With its future sorted, the Helmut Jahn-designed building is here to stay. A sale agreement with JRTC Holdings was finalized in March; however, today’s announcement includes revisions to the agreement and the addition of Google as the primary tenant.

Originally, Illinois was set to receive an initial payment of $70 million for the property and would retain 425,000 square feet of the office space. Now, the entire space will be purchased for $105 million. The state will use $75 million of this total to purchase a site at 115 S. LaSalle Street where approximately 1,800 state workers from the Thompson Center will move.

Previously on Archinect: Thompson Center may find new life as Google's Chicago office

JRTC Holdings will now renovate the building, and once complete, Google will purchase the site. The renovations will reportedly respect the original design of the building, with changes aiming to make the structure more energy-efficient, environmentally sustainable, and inclusive. Goog...

Thompson Center may find new life as Google's Chicago office

2022-07-04T09:00:00-04:00

Google is negotiating to buy the spaceship-like James R. Thompson Center in Chicago in a deal that could provide a much-needed boost to the city’s Loop business district. The Mountain View, California-based tech giant is seeking to buy the Helmut Jahn-designed building at 100 W. Randolph St., where it plans to expand its Chicago offices into a large portion of the 17-story building’s soon-to-be-renovated office space, according to people familiar with the deal.

The future for Chicago's James R. Thompson Center, designed by the late Helmut Jahn, may be looking a bit brighter after the National Trust for Historic Preservation added the postmodern gem to its annual “America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places” list in 2019.

Last year, the Chicago Architecture Center and Chicago Architectural Club jointly hosted a design ideas competition to promote adaptive-reuse scenarios for the center and save the landmark building from the wrecking ball.

An LLC attached to Helmut Jahn's erstwhile firm has now filed for bankruptcy

2021-09-01T10:54:00-04:00

Chicago Business is reporting that an LLC related to the firm founded by recently deceased architect Helmut Jahn is filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in an unfurling landlord-tenant dispute that began taking shape during the pandemic.

Jahn LLC reported gross revenues under $13,000 last year and has reported liabilities totaling $11 million compared to a little over $600,000 in available assets. The firm reported a total of $1 million in revenue between 2019 and 2020 comparatively.

Jahn was the sole proprietor of the LLC (which is separate from Jahn Architecture, Inc.), which has seen its prospects decimated by the architect’s loss this spring. The firm stands to bring in significant fees from its forthcoming 1,000m supertall development (to which the LLC is registered as the copyright holder), which will now fall subject to potential judgment creditors, particularly its landlord at 353 Clark St. DUS, depending on the court’s decision.

Crain’s has also reported that DUS was being sued ...

A new Thompson Center's rezoning proposal pushes plans for a supertall development even closer

2021-06-07T15:07:00-04:00

A path forward in Illinois’ plans for the redevelopment of the Thompson Center has been made a little clearer in Chicago this week, a month after the accidental death of architect Helmut Jahn in a tragic bicycling accident at the age of 83.

A City Council committee approved a proposal from Alderman Brendan Reilly to upzone the troubled building this past Tuesday, doubling the amount of space that can be built on the site and fueling further speculation that the iconic Randolph St. location could be the site of Chicago’s next supertall tower should the measure be approved in a vote that could come as soon as Wednesday.

The change came at the request of Governor J.B. Pritzker, who has been an outspoken proponent of the state’s push to sell the 36-year-old signature building to private developers in an effort to get off the hook for the nearly $17 million in annual costs it takes to maintain the aging property as it currently stands.

Preservationists now face an all-out fight to save J...

Renowned architect Helmut Jahn dies at 81 from cycling accident

2021-05-10T16:14:00-04:00

Helmut Jahn, the highly respected German-American architect, was tragically killed on Saturday from a vehicular collision while riding his bicycle in the Chicago suburb of Campton Hills.

Born in Germany, near Nuremberg, in 1940, Jahn arrived in Chicago in 1966 to study under Ludwig Mies van der Rohe at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT). A year later, he joined architecture firm CF Murphy Associates and worked on several high-profile projects, including the McCormick Place in Chicago and the J Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, DC. He later took full ownership of the firm, renaming it Murphy/Jahn and then eventually JAHN in 2012.

Jahn’s work is best defined by his postmodern steel and glass structures that combined historical and contextual references with high-tech engineering solutions, both paying homage to and departing from the modernism of Mies. It was in the late 1970s and ‘80s that Jahn made his mark, and, in Chicago, his work propelled him as one America’s most p...

Postmodern building named to "11 most endangered" list for the first time

2019-05-30T13:59:00-04:00

In a sign of the rising concern over the future of postmodern architecture in the American preservation community, the National Trust for Historic Preservation has named the 34-year-old Helmut Jahn-designed James R. Thompson Center in Chicago to its annual “America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places” list.

In making the cut, the 17-story Illinois state government building becomes the first work of postmodern architecture named to the influential list.

Exterior view of the James R. Thompson Center in Chicago, Photo courtesy Landmarks Illinois

The orange and blue-tinted glass and steel building opened in 1985 as a rebuke to a then-dominant modernist architecture ideology that called for austere and aseptic expanses of curtain walled glass for office buildings. Designed with sloped exterior glazing and a base marked by a perimeter arcade accented with alternating colored panels, the building presents a degree of consideration for the public that challenged the conventional notions of...

Bill approving sale and potential redevelopment of the controversial Thompson Center moves forward

2019-02-15T16:06:00-05:00

Illinois governor, J.B. Pritzker, plans on signing a state bill that would authorize the sale of the James R. Thompson Center, paving the way for its potential redevelopment.

The postmodern building designed by Helmut Jahn has housed offices of the Illinois state government since opening in 1985. Due to its polarizing design and its notoriously hard to heat and cool nature, state lawmakers have been pushing to sell the state-owned property, which could bring in a potential $300 million.

First passed in 2017, SB 866—which would move offices across the street into the state-owned Michael A. Bilandic building—has been stuck in legislative limbo for the past two years. Under Prtizker's new governorship, the state has regained interest in the possibility of a sale, from which funds could be used to address pension liabilities and other unpaid bills.

However, the threat of endangering what preservationists see as a unique representation of transparent government and Chicago's architectu...

“Starship Chicago” documentary tracks preservation battle of Thompson Center

2017-11-14T15:07:00-05:00

Can Helmut Jahn's Thompson Center be saved? A newly released short documentary, Starship Chicago, delves into the struggle and controversy around preserving the state of Illinois building. Some see the building as a unique representation of transparent government and Chicago's architectural spirit, while others see a rundown waste of space.

"Chicago preservationists, along with the building’s original champion, Governor James R. Thompson, are gearing up for a major battle to save the city’s most provocative architectural statement" tells the director and producer Nathan Eddy. The documentary interviews the architect himself, Helmut Jahn, the governor whose name is on the building, James. R. Thompson, along with Stanley Tigerman and other Chicago architects, critics, and historians.

Watch Starship Chicago below.

Will the Willis Tower lose its claim to being the tallest building in Chicago?

2017-01-27T17:51:00-05:00

The Willis Tower may soon have to say goodbye to its title as the tallest building in the Windy City. Two competing designs for a redevelopment of the Helmut Jahn-designed James R. Thompson center stretch high above the tower. One, by Jahn himself, would preserve the original, curving structure while adding a 1,340-foot hotel and residential skyscraper besides it. Another, by Chicago architects Adrian Smith and Gordon Gill, would demolish the Jahn building and build a 1,700-foot mixed-use tower. Apparently, Governor Bruce Rauner is in favor of demolishing the older building.

According to the Chicago Tribune, it’s not clear if any of these plans will actually be realized. Budgetary disputes between Dems and Republicans in the state government may preclude any action.

Can Helmut Jahn's Thompson Center be saved?

2015-10-19T13:56:00-04:00

I confess that I feel the sort of ambivalence toward the James R. Thompson Center as I did toward Prentice Women's Hospital: I do understand why people want to raze it, I don't find it pretty, I understand the functional problems. But all the same, I believe the Thompson Center should be saved. [...] Chicago remains full of examples of money and vision coming together to create wonderful buildings.

Berlin heals war scars with ambitious architecture

2015-05-07T16:00:00-04:00

Seventy years after the end of the war, Berlin is finally filling the last gaps left by Allied bombs, which destroyed more than two-thirds of the buildings in the city center. Architects say the construction boom offers Berlin a chance to make up for decades of bad planning and mediocre architecture. “This is a new time in Berlin,” says Libeskind [...]. “It’s one of the great cities of the world, and we expect it to compete. We don’t expect it to be some backwater.”

Previously:

Helmut Jahn chats about his latest NYC tower, 50 West

2015-01-21T13:24:00-05:00

The idea is always that a building like this in a particular light merges with the sky. The building is on a very small site, and has a very small footprint. There was a requirement from a planning point of view, which we fully supported and were actually happy about, that we had to provide a plaza on the ground floor. And that’s actually why the building toward the base, it pulls in its belly and it slopes so that the urban space is adequate and a required size.