860–880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments
The 860-880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments denote two high-rise buildings along Lake Michigan in Chicago. They were built in 1951 by architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and are now considered seminal buildings of modern architecture or the International Style.
History
1947 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe received by the project developer Herbert Greenwald and the land owner Robert Hall McCormick the contract for the design of two high -rise condominiums along Lake Michigan in Chicago.
Mies van der Rohe in 1921 with his competition design for a high-rise building on Friedrichstrasse in Berlin a decisive impulse for the further development of high-rise buildings ever given by all layout and facade conventions he suggested dispensing with a large area use variable interior and fully glazed facades using a modern steel structure.
The Lake Shore Drive Apartments thirty years later he sat now this of him as " skin and bones " ( = glass facade and steel frame ) - architecture called and technically innovative design for the first time into action. He succeeded here almost completely vitrify in high-rise construction as the first architect all the facades to indemnify the homes of design limitations and to create by a consistently technical design and subtle design a whole new perception, in which the technical means even unfold the aesthetic effect.
Upon completion in 1951, the apartment buildings by the press were mostly very positive and in the aftermath of Mies van der Rohe himself, and numerous other architects as the basis for planning their high-rise buildings, the use of office came to the fore (eg Lever House of Gordon Bunshaft, Mile high Center by IM Pei, John Hancock Center, by Bruce Graham).
The 860-880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments are since 1980 in the " National Register of Historic Places" and count since 1996, the " Chicago Landmarks ".
Description
The two nearly identical high-rise buildings stand on a roughly triangular site on the shores of Lake Michigan north of Chicago just off the busy coastal road ( Lake Shore Drive ). They are aligned parallel to the two short sides of the property and are thus at a right angle, that they open out to Lake Michigan.
Approximately 380 condominiums, spread over 26 floors found building heights of 266 feet ( 82 m). To access cores with stairs and elevators in the center of the building is a square column grid of 21 × 21 feet ( 6.47 × 6.47 m) with three fields placed on the narrow side and five fields on the long side. The steel supports are partially connected to the bracing of the building with shear walls of reinforced concrete (statics with Frank Kornacker ). The entire steel structure is clad fireproof.
The apartments are accessed by a hallway, in the middle of the building cuts through the service core in the longitudinal axis. They are up on a wall installation that receives all plumbing lines, with variable subdivisions and glazed floor to ceiling on the facade side. The aluminum windows can be open at the bottom and open about it all as a rotary wing. In the initial all the walls were painted white and the flooring is finished with black linoleum.
The inside and outside of the silver frame aluminum windows remained untreated. They were assembled over several floors, raised to the installation and fixed to the outer columns and ceiling edge beams. This procedure enabled a fast construction. All frame posts and supports received a reinforcement by double-T rolled sections, which are the pre- construction building appears high and continuously on the outside and the facade structure visually slim.
On the ground floor with a height of two standard floors, the façade is set back behind the outer row of columns, so that a colonnaded like dealing arises. Again, the walls are fully glazed, with about 60 percent of the glasses were carried out opaque. Besides a large hall are located in this zone range of function rooms and an office property management, or a small grocery store.
Inside and out, the floor space of the building and the connecting part between them covered with travertine. In the two lower floors, which almost occupy the entire land surface, there is an underground car park with about 115 parking spaces. On the surface, the half of the property is approximately landscaped with lawn and trees.