There is a city, that has extreme cold, crazy winds, the coolest jazz clubs and is, undoubtedly, one of the world’s most architecturally diverse places. You Guessed it already… and you’re right: CHICAGO (I guess I gave it away in the title)! 

It was a casual weekend visit to explore a new place and I landed with a cabin-size bag in Chicago. The first thing that took my breath away was the beautiful Tulips everywhere. The roadsides, the central verge, below the flyovers; they were everywhere and in every colour possible. I learnt that, in each fall, tens of thousands of them are planted, destined to bloom into a spectacle like a Van Gogh painting in spring. The Chicago Department of Transportation meticulously selects varieties from all over the world, aiming for a palette that harmonizes with the urban landscape, the result of which was simply spectacular!

As we drove to the hotel, which was only a mile away from Chicago downtown in our Tesla cab ride, I could see these tall buildings looking down at me, through the seamless glass top of the car, with much pride. Each of them was different from the other or should I say more stunning than the other. That intrigued me. After check-in, I threw my bag on the bed and ran back down to the lobby.  I got myself a cab (this time it wasn’t a Tesla) and visited ‘The Bean’ at the Millenium Park (Chicago’s most famous tourist attraction). It was genuinely quite extraordinary and I took some pictures with it too! The Bean is an oval-shaped, larger-than-life artwork made of a reflective material inspired by liquid mercury. It is also the largest outdoor artwork installation in the world. It was designed by our own world-famous Indian artist Anish Kapoor. A proud moment indeed!

In the reflection of The Bean, I saw the magnificent sight of the Chicago skyline against the backdrop of the setting sun. It was twilight and then I took the picture that’s in this very article while I stood spellbound in front of this grand architectural gem called Chicago. 

I could not sleep in the night. The beauty of that sight kept my eyes wide open as I wanted to behold it for as long as I could. The next day, I ran back to Downtown and took the Architectural River Cruise. The tour is on the Chicago River, which flows through the downtown of Chicago and is a ‘must do’ if you are visiting the city. As I sailed through the waters, from the upper deck, a story started to unfold in front of me. The tour starts near this huge glass building called The Trump International Tower: it is a ‘condo hotel’ as they call it. This 100-story mirror-like reflecting and imposing glass structure is as unique as it is bold. Interestingly, the design of the building incorporates three setback features, especially designed to provide visual continuity with the surrounding skyline. Each of these setback features reflects the height of a nearby building and kind of talks to it. It was pretty unique and mind-blowing to see that. They also say that a four-bedroom condo there goes for a whopping Rs. 50 Crores! 

 As we sailed ahead, I started seeing completely distinct buildings (most of them office/commercial/residential and some of them mixed-use), all very different from each other, creating a unique blended skyline that I had never seen before. If there was European industrial-style construction on one side, there was the Chicago Tribune’s marquee building completely made of red bricks on the other, both standing tall in conflicting harmony. While I was still absorbing the contrast between those two, my eyes fell on a building that had pizza-shaped condos. Yes, you read it right, Pizza-shaped! It’s called Marina City, two towers with 68 floors each. The towers literally look like huge pizzas stacked neatly over each other. These highly awarded apartments are pretty unusual; they look like pizza slices and contain almost no interior right angles. On each residential floor, a circular hallway surrounds the elevator core, which is 32 feet in diameter, with 16 slice-shaped units arrayed around the hallway. Pretty unexpected I would say and innovative too.  

Next came the Upside-Down building called the 150 North Riverside Plaza, also referred to by popular names like “The Tuning Fork”, “The Champagne Flute”, or “The Guillotine”. The building was, beyond doubt, one of the best highlights of the architectural tour. One signature aspect of 150 North Riverside building is the way the office floors cantilever out from the central core. Because of the small size of the plot and an active railroad that was going through the narrow property, there was hardly any space to build a 54-story skyscraper with 1.1 M sqft. This limitation gave birth to the almost impossible idea of making an upside-down building. This gravity-defying building is an architectural and engineering wonder and has won all the awards there are to win in the world!

Recovering from my almost impossible discovery of the 150 North Riverside, my eyes got stuck on Gateway 1, 2 & 3, the rectangle box-shaped sharp black buildings, showing off a multi-story steel frame clad in glass and black metal set on a riverfront promenade with public plazas at its base. They are as black as they get and create almost a knight-like presence amongst the other buildings. All three have an interesting history of why and how they were made. In fact, the third Gateway building is also known for a landmark deal. In 1971 an insurance brokerage firm, Marsh & McLennan leased the top eight floors for 20 years, at $36 million— one of the largest commercial office leases in the city’s history at that time. 

Coming over next was the Old Main Post Office building (kind of my personal favourite). Known as the largest post office in the world at one time, the complex was capable of moving 19 million letters in a single day! Designed by one of Chicago’s best-known architecture firms, Graham, Anderson, Probst and White, this massive limestone façade is a mammoth example of the Classic Art Deco style. Not only is it super beautiful, but it also, to my disbelief, has a full-fledged rail line, multiple subway corridors and the Eisenhower Expressway passing through it. Yes, an actual Expressway. With 13 floors and 2.5 million square feet, the Old Main Post Office is truly one of Chicago’s most epic buildings. No longer used as a post office, the building was renovated internally and is now the office of some of the most known business houses in the United States. 

Oh, my good God…just a couple of breaths later, the boat approached close to a gigantic structure, The Willis Tower, the tallest tower in the world until 1998. This 113-floor tower was designed by architect Bruce Graham and structural engineer Fazlur Rahman Khan. Its unique design has a story. Graham and Khan designed the building as nine square “Tubes” clustered in a 3×3 matrix. The different setbacks of each tube create an interesting play too. This was the first building to ever use the tube-style design for building skyscrapers more efficiently and economically. Today, this design is being used by so many other tall buildings in the world. The Willis was no doubt super stunning!

I could go on and on.

There are other cities in the world too which have amazing skylines but what I saw in Chicago was very unique. Each building was strikingly different than the other. Each one had a story. Each one was an architectural masterpiece. Each one overcame site hurdles and turned them into opportunities to innovate. Here’s calling all the architects, engineers and architecture lovers: Make a trip to Chicago. If romance is the way of life in Paris, design is the way of life in Chicago; be it in their Tulips or their Architecture!