Chicago has long been known as the birthplace of the skyscraper. Since his arrival in Chicago in 1937, Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe became the leading figure in the Second Chicago School, the City which would become his architectural playground. The clarity and ethos of his work harmonized with the city’s architectural past and trajectory. For Mies, “Less is More” suggested less about miminalism than it did about the architectural legibility of his projects. The repetitive, and to some, mundane qualities of his work bring its platonic aspects to life; the plane of the city (the plinth), the dissolution of footprint (the glass lobby), and vertical movement (consolidated core as a centerpiece).

As contemporary space and the public realm become increasingly fluid, we propose the radical re-a rrangement of these elements that have so defined the figure-ground of chicago’s downtown. We propose the typical hard, consolidated core to be replaced with a a soft one: an extension of the plinth where the core no longer resists the continuous plane of the city, but rather inhales public activity, bringing a new life to Mies dissolved public boundary which before only appeared in plan. The Marble clad cores that defined Mies’ iconic works defined weak sectional relationships between floors. The Collaborative core is the logical extension of Mies’ “universal space” which was never fully resolved in his towers or in his beloved playground (Chicago).