Archinect - News

Tribune Tower voted Chicago’s best building in 2024

2024-04-11T12:53:00-04:00

Chicago’s Tribune Tower has been voted the best building in the city by readers of Urbanize Chicago. Thousands of votes were cast in the Urbanize Chicago People’s Choice Best Building 2024, with the Tribune Tower seeing off competition from the second-place Wrigley Building.

Designed by Howells and Hood and completed in 1925, the iconic Gothic Revival building was the result of an international design competition held by the Chicago Tribune newspaper. The winning design drew inspiration from the medieval Gothic cathedrals of Europe, reinterpreting their features for a modern skyscraper.

The tower rises to a height of 462 feet, culminating in a series of flying buttresses that crown its top. The building's façade is adorned with sculptural details and stone carvings that evoke the craftsmanship of Gothic architecture.

Related on Archinect: 16 designers to display new "Tribune Tower" models at the 2nd Chicago Architecture Biennial. Image: Wikipedia

A notable feature of the tower is it...

Plans unveiled for Chicago's second tallest skyscraper alongside repurposing the Tribune Tower

2018-04-17T15:59:00-04:00

Developers on Monday unveiled plans for Chicago’s second-tallest skyscraper, a tapering shaft of metal and glass that would soar above historic Tribune Tower, resemble the top of Batman’s black mask and be only 29 feet shorter than Willis Tower. If completed, the $1 billion-plus project to repurpose Tribune Tower and build a skinny, 1,422-foot high-rise just northeast of it would bring more than 700 residences and 200 hotel rooms to an area north of the Chicago River.

Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture are working with Los Angeles developers Golub & Co. and CIM Group to build Chicago's next skyscraper. Their design would take over Trump International Hotel & Tower's title of second-tallest in the city.

Current plans for the new tower have construction beginning in late 2019. The new skyscraper would house a 200 room hotel, 439 rental apartments, and 125 condos in its upper floors. The site would be on what it now a surface parking lot behind Tribune Tower.

Their plans also call for repurposing Tribune Tower with 163 condominiums. This conversion will be headed up by Solomon Cordwell Buenz (SCB), with Vinci Hamp Architects brought on as historic preservation consultants. The earliest of these condo's would be ready by 2020.

Tribune Tower project rendering, Chicago. Image: Golub & Co. and CIM Group.

16 designers to display new "Tribune Tower" models at the 2nd Chicago Architecture Biennial

2017-03-07T19:41:00-05:00

The 1922 contest drew 263 entries from 23 countries and led to the construction of a landmark neo-Gothic skyscraper. In 1980, Chicago architects Stanley Tigerman and Stuart Cohen organized a "Late Entries" version of the legendary contest...Now, the curators of this year's Chicago Architecture Biennial are putting together what might be called the "Late Late Entries" to the Tribune Tower competition.

Although the names of the sixteen designers picked to create a new "Tribune Tower" at the Chicago Architecture Biennial haven't been announced quite yet, according to this article their designs are already being value-engineered in order to be as feasible as possible for potential construction. Whichever design may ultimately go on to the big time of 1:1 scale, the Biennial will be a delightful experience for all of those who still enjoy enormous physical models of both the built and the unbuilt variety:

In addition to the 16 new versions of Tribune Tower, the curators are commissioning two other 16-foot-tall models of designs for the skyscraper from early in the last century. One is a famous, columnlike version by the Austrian architect Adolf Loos that was part of the 1922 competition. The other, which was not officially entered, is a gridded modernist design by the German architect and urban planner Ludwig Hilberseimer.

Chicago Tribune Tower sale closes; mixed-use redevelopment likely

2016-08-31T13:42:00-04:00

Los Angeles-based developer CIM Group has agreed to buy Tribune Tower for up to $240 million, marking the end of media ownership for the historic North Michigan Avenue building and the beginning of a new chapter, likely as part of a mixed-use redevelopment. [...] Tribune Media unveiled conceptual plans last year to redevelop the parcel, adding several buildings to maximize the space with residential, retail and hotel components.

The Tribune Tower sale previously in the Archinect news: Chicago Tribune Tower inches closer to hotel & residential redevelopment

Chicago Tribune Tower inches closer to hotel & residential redevelopment

2016-05-20T19:34:00-04:00

A group of developers on the short list to buy Tribune Tower want to convert the Gothic Michigan Avenue landmark into condominiums, apartments and even a hotel [...] The property also comes with something all developers love: land for new buildings. A buyer could build one or two more towers on the parking lot next door and on space created by demolishing some of the existing Tribune building that is not landmarked. [...]

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