![]() ![]() The tubelike structures that undergird the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center (finished in 19), Chicago's Amoco Building (1973) and Sears Tower (1974) all are indebted in some respect to the Hancock. The design served the building's functional needs by providing big floors on the bottom for offices and parking, and smaller floors above apartments (later condominiums). While the inward-sloping shape created a strong skyline image, it was anything but an arbitrary choice. In contrast, the Hancock's steel tube created vast expanses of column-free space - and it was enormously economical the tower was built for the cost of a conventionally supported, 45-story office building. Though the cage allowed office buildings to reach once-unthinkable heights, it required a relatively large number of interior columns and chewed up valuable floor space. It grew from a major technical advance: a structural steel "tube" of exterior columns, reinforced by the big X-braces.Įarly skyscrapers typically were supported by an internal cage of steel columns and beams. This new concept of urban living was made possible by a stunning synthesis of architecture and engineering. You can even go grocery shopping there, at a market (also on the 44th floor) that overlooks the old Lindbergh Beacon atop 919 N. Indeed, the Hancock is not just a city within a city, as Marina City was conceived, but a city within a building - a vertical village. There's nothing quite so bracing, its cliff dwellers will tell you, as going for a swim in its 44th-floor pool. Like Bertrand Goldberg's Marina City, which preceded it by a half-dozen years and provided one of the first, high-visibility alternatives to the suburban sprawl then sweeping the nation, the Hancock is truly a skyscraper where you can live, work and play. Even in the Chicago area, where its tapering silhouette provides an instantly recognizable backdrop for television news sets, many people are unaware that the Hancock is not simply an office building but a mixed-use tower that also houses a parking garage and more than 700 condominiums. ![]()
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