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Looking Up Aqua’s Skirt
For the last few years, Aqua (430 East Waterside Drive), the Studio Gang skyscraper that anchors the west end of Lakeshore East, has generated more local and international buzz than pretty much any...
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Reading About Jeanne’s Gang
There is a pattern that people follow when they make the transition from ordinary to noteworthy on the way to celebrity. It goes like this: Toil in obscurity Do something people like Get lots of local...
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Inside Solomon Cordwell Buenz
Another Chicago architecture firm has invited us into its offices to give us a look behind the minds that shape our city. Solomon Cordwell Buenz is among the city’s more prolific firms. If you’ve...
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Looking at Lakeshore East
One of the very first posts we put on this blog almost ten years ago showed the early days of the development of Lakeshore East. Back then the area that would become downtown Chicago’s newest master...
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Lakeshore East Finally Gets A School But Not What It Expected
For as long as there have been bulldozers turning dirt in Lakeshore East, there have been neighbors anxiously, even angrily, awaiting the construction of a new public elementary school to once and for...
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Smoking Hot Models: The Light-Up Lakeshore East [Video]
Magellan Development, the people behind the downtown architectural Disneyland that is Lakeshore East, have this wonderful model of their project that gets updated as more and more buildings go up....
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Inside Studio Gang Architects Exhibit Features Works By Celebrated Chicago Firm
The Studio Gang-designed Aqua Tower is featured in the Art Institute exhibit celebrating the Chicago-based firm. When the City Hyde Park mixed-use development (1501 East Hyde Park Boulevard) is...
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Smoking Hot Models: Lakeshore East Goes Blue
A few months ago, we brought you Smoking Hot ModelsSM: The Light-Up Lakeshore East. The photos of that candy-colored miniature were taken when the display was in the hands of Magellan Development....
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Pretty Much the Most Epic Photograph of Aqua You’re Likely to See This Year
Whether you consider Aqua (225 North Columbus Drive) an architectural masterpiece or a simple conjuring trick, it is at least pleasing to the eye. Over the weekend, Loop Spy Daniel sent in this...
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Chicago’s Iconic Aqua Tower Gets A Doppleganger In Texas
For a supposed “second” city, an awful lot of places want to be like Chicago. In the past on this blog, we’ve shown you the second-hand American clothing store in Tokyo called “Chicago.” We’ve taken...
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Your OHC Photos: Radisson Blu Aqua
Everyone in Chicago knows Aqua. But good luck finding a cab driver that knows where the Radisson Blu Aqua hotel is. More than once, I’ve had a cabbie try to take me to some random suburb from O’Hare...
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Slice of Life: The View From Aqua
A couple of weeks ago, before people were eating Turkey and the snow was falling, we received two interesting photos in the e-mail. Both were of views from different apartments in Aqua (225 North...
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Slice of Life: Can You See the Face Hidden in Aqua?
Do you see it? On a typically frigid December afternoon, I snapped this photograph of the celebrated Aqua tower (225 North Columbus Drive). As I was taking the photo, a man said to me, “Do you see the...
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Can Jeanne Gang Pull Another Rabbit Out of Her Hat at Lakeshore East?
For the first time in a long time, there is no residential tower under construction at Lakeshore East. The decade-old community on the edge of downtown Chicago was formerly an old urban golf course,...
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“O,” Dear! The Tips Just Keep on a-Coming!
When it rains, it pours. Two days ago, one of our anonymous readers dropped a dime on our tip line and showed us the place on McHugh Construction’s web site where we could confirm that bids are going...
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Chicago Neverbuilt — Episode 7: SOM’s LSE
Plan for Lakeshore East. Courtesy of SOM. Our Chicago Neverbuilt series continues to celebrate the work of great architects that, for one reason or another, failed to make the transition from...
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Lakeshore East Tower Trio Tipped in Text
It looks like the plan to build three new skyscrapers in the northeast corner of Lakeshore East is getting ready to move forward. August 2018 rendering of Lakeshore East (Courtesy of Magellan...
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Groundbreaking Leaves Lakeshore East With Just Two Skyscrapers to Go
With skyscraper nerds across the Midwest still giddy from yesterday’s groundbreaking ceremony for the Cirrus and Cascade towers in Lakeshore East, it’s worth tallying what’s left to build there. The...
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Aqua: Before and After COVID
We’ve all seen, read about, or stumbled across the restrictions placed on Chicago due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Here’s another illustration of how things have changed. A before-and-after look at the...
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