Aqua Skyscraper Review

Nobody in their right mind would refer to the Chicago skyline as “an eyesore”. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for many of the buildings that compose it. The Sears Tower (it will never be the Willits Tower) is objectively one of the most impressive pieces of architecture of the 20th century, but at face value, the only thing (besides its height) that sets it apart from any other giant slab of offices in the city is that most Chicago office buildings are giant blocks, whereas the Sears Tower is several giant blocks. As Monty Python once said, “There’s no place for sentiment in big business.” Well, Jeanne Gang disagrees.

Gang is the designer of the Aqua, a building with a strikingly fluid design that made quite a splash when it was introduced, and continues to hold water as one of the most creative buildings of the last decade, with the potential to usher in a new wave of architecture. ...Liquid. Anyway, Gang is the founder of Studio Gang Architects, and the Aqua is to this date the largest skyscraper ever designed by a woman. In a city with as much financial business as Chicago, a woman’s touch stands out like a Rolls Royce in Appalachia. She set out to design a building that radically differs from all other Chicago skyscrapers, and succeeded on nearly every level. Even compared to other buildings that were designed with aesthetics in mind, it stands out. It’s not sleek and shiny, like Trump Tower or the new Roosevelt building. Nor is it grand and classical, like the Chicago Board of Trade. Honestly, it looks more like a balsa-wood model than an actual building. Yet in some ways, it almost looks more structurally sound than anything else. The building gets its name from the unique appearance of the balconies, which are designed to resemble ripples of water, and indeed, it’s impossible to look at this building without picturing a gentle afternoon breeze rolling over Lake Michigan. Unless you’re looking at it straight on from really far away. What you take out of this building depends almost entirely on what angle you see it from. If you’re looking at it straight on, as opposed to standing underneath it and looking up, you won’t realize the effect of the balconies. You will, however, notice that the balconies create a pattern in the empty space of the windows between them; a pattern that appears to be four rising plumes of flame. It’s an endlessly original design. Perhaps a statement is being made here, something about opposites being forced to coexist, even if they don’t want to. Or, maybe it’s something about how everything is different depending on how you look at it; like those optical illusions where the painting becomes something different when you turn it upside down.

Or, maybe it’s just hard to make a building like this and have it look pretty from every single angle. Regardless, kudos to Ms. Gang for designing one of the most refreshingly different buildings in decades.