I found information on this building called the "Illinois Mile High Tower" on www.emporis.com but I have been unable to find any other info on it other than its architect, Frank Lloyd Wright. Apparently it is the tallest building ever envisioned for Chicago being 5,280 feet tall. How badass would that have been to see built! :eek: Does anyone have anymore info about what happened to this building, why it didn't get built, or what cirumstances brought it about?

Lol, it was a pipe dream. Can you imagine how hard it would be to get people into that tower? I also think I saw a drawing where you had to climb about 100 ft of stairs to make it to the enterance, now that's pedestrian friendly!

These should answer your questions.

http://pstr-m03.ygpweb.aol.com/data/008/74/34/DA/18/+UuPysVOosR654gEEAfSMnu9BCIlyLJt02AA.jpg

http://pstr-m02.ygpweb.aol.com/data4/00A/4F/B4/22/D4/Yy5LxTPqiiGK8TPIRtPCofd9eM6JOgho0300.jpg

Even though the original design for this building would obviously not be feasible economically, I can't help but wonder if any building this tall will ever be built. Hopefully in Chicago of course! :)

That reminds me, I was at the Art Institute today, and I finally got to see the exhibit on "Unbuilt Chicago", it was pretty good. They had a scale model of 7 S Dearborn, the tower that was anounced and nixed a few years ago. There are also a few designs for Block 37. If my memory serves me correct, I think the FLW drawing (for the IL Mile High Tower) was there as well.

I remember watching this thing that talked about how they would get people up there. hy had these neat personal helicopter like things. Where you would get in a pod and it would fly you up. Prety cool. I have no idea where I saw it though.

Bah, you fanciful dreamers. no building can exceed 2000 ft in the USA.

And also, I believe the plan was abandoned as anything more htan just a vision because the sheer number of elevators required was overwhelming.

http://sofa.digitalien.org/sieben/7dusl/duslpics/wright.jpg

It looks like an art sculpture.

Man, Chicago has the best collection of pipe dreams, so many great unbuilt towers.

Bah, you fanciful dreamers. no building can exceed 2000 ft in the USA.

Actually they can, it's just that because the US government owns all the airspace over 2,00ft, you have to get a greenlight from congress. Unless a developer has seriously pissed off a senior congressman, this would be basically a rubber stamp.

As for the Mile High Tower, it was originally concieved as a mile high TV antenna. Frank Lloyd Wright thought there would be no point in constructing something this tall if there wasn't going to be a building built around it. So, he designed a mile tall tower around the antenna. That's pretty much it.

Since this was in the days before skylobbies and express elevators, there would only have been ~6Msqft of leaseable space. That's what killed it. With modern stacking techniques, and modern materials and engineering, this building could indeed be built economically. For a mile tall tower that is.

Economically, maybe... physically, I doubt it. The wind loads at that height would be simply unheard of. I doubt there's any way, with our current set of construction materials and techniques, that this building could ever stand.

Can you imagine what the swaying would be like on the top floor?

Economically, maybe... physically, I doubt it. The wind loads at that height would be simply unheard of. I doubt there's any way, with our current set of construction materials and techniques, that this building could ever stand.

Actually it is physically possible. One mile is about the technological limit these days. Wind sway isn't the problem, even the 30-year old Sears Tower is built to withstand a 3 foot sway in each direction without damage. That's six times what the building is subjected to on a regular basis, four times what it's ever experienced.

Structurally, I've seen a cut-away diagram by FLW himself. The core would have been huge, the foundation would have gone down about 750ft, though it wouldn't be a standard foundation. It was supposed to based on tree roots, though I didn't really see the similarity. At the time of its design it was not possible, today it just is.

I would have serious doubts how economical it would be to build such a tall building. It would cost several billion dollars. My guess would be that several corporations would have to have a serious interest in that much office space for it even to be considered. Seriously, it would take a lot of people to fill a building like that.

That thing is so ugly.

That thing is so ugly.

you can't please them all...

That thing is so ugly.

Are you kidding!? That building would be glorious in the chicago skyline! Especially being a mile tall.

matthew - I think the building would be gorgeous.

STR - let me change my wording a bit... it might be possible to build the structure, it just wouldn't be possible to inhabit it. A highrise building must be built to withstand an oscillation (or sway) equal to 1/500th of it's height (hence the 3' sway for the Sears - 1500/500 = 3). Therefore, if you take a building that is 5280' tall, it would need to be able to sway about 10.5' (so, even if it only sways a quarter of its capacity under typical conditions, that's still a motion-sickness-inducing 2.5' sway - well beyond the comfortable limits of occupation).

This appeared in today's NY Times...

NY Times

Frank Lloyd Wright's Mile-High Rise

By PHILIP NOBEL

Published: October 17, 2004

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT had a problem with the skyscraper. "Incongruous mantrap of monstrous dimensions!" he wrote. "Enormity devouring manhood, confusing personality by frustration of individuality? Is this not Anti-Christ?"

He was talking about other people's work, of course. In his own, the man known for his ground-hugging prairie houses (and his habit of matching ceiling heights to his own diminutive stature) worked through a series of revolutionary ideas for the construction of tall buildings. Only two were built (one in Racine, Wis., and one in Bartlesville, Okla.) and they weren't all that tall. But that never stopped Wright from claiming that, on paper, he had solved all of the nagging structural problems - and not a few of the social ones - associated with skyscrapers.

"Frank Lloyd Wright: The Vertical Dimension," a show at the Skyscraper Museum in Manhattan, is the first to examine this conflicted aspect of the master's work. Wright often claimed that to preserve open land, building tall was a necessary evil. And how better to preserve the land than to pack a city of 100,000 into a single mile-high tower? Wright presented that idea in Chicago in 1956, standing before a 26-foot-tall, 6-foot-wide drawing of a building called the Illinois.

The origins of the tower are in dispute. One historian says it evolved from a request to design a television antenna; another claims that a client asked for a half-mile-high tower and Wright answered, "the hell with that." But on one count everyone agrees: it was the single most grandiose gesture in Wright's grandiose seven-decade career. He claimed that the transmitter at the top of the tower would reach every television set in the nation. And you just know he wanted to be a part of that broadcast.

Following is a key to the picture, above right:

1.SKY BOX
The highest habitable floor was to top out at 5,280 feet. Wright proposed atomic-powered elevators for travel within the structure.

2. CORE
Like many of Wright's towers, the structure is conceived to resemble a tree. All of the floors hang off of a central ''trunk,'' here made of reinforced concrete.

3. MULTI-USE
The total rentable area of the tower was to be six million square feet, comprising residences, shops, offices and space for concert halls seating 70,000.

4. SCALE
As a reminder of his place in history — and for scale — Wright sketched in the Pyramid of Cheops, the Eiffel Tower and the Empire State Building. His tower is much bigger.

5. FOUNDATION
Never content to leave well enough alone, Wright developed a novel structure to underpin his towers, which came to be called a tap root foundation. Wright wrote that it would be ''three times stronger in any disturbance.''

6. HISTORICISM
Late in his life, Wright began quietly working historical allusions into his designs. Here, Gothic flying buttresses support the spire.

7. WONDERS
Hanging gardens, much higher than those in ancient Babylon, appear on several levels. Wright did not shy away from pronouncing himself the greatest architect who ever lived, nor from taking on the wonders of the world.

8. INFLUENCE
When Daniel Libeskind unveiled his plan for a 1,776- foot-tall tower at ground zero, many observers noted a resemblance to the Illinois. Both designs feature triangular floors, a tapering profile, hanging gardens and a needlelike spire on top.

9. TOWN AND COUNTRY
The tower replaces the old-fashioned city beneath it while preserving Wright's beloved prairie landscape.

10. PARKING
A structure at the bottom was to provide parking for 15,000 cars (and pads for 100 helicopters).

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/10/14/arts/architechture.650.jpg

Great article save! But, who, in their right mind, could compare Wright's masterpiece will Libeskind's hulking hunk of garbage (no offense intended to anyone who happens to like the tower)?

I think it's very beautiful. (The Illinois, that is)

Frank Lloyd Wright's mile high tower was never build (obviously). It would have ben too high (a whole mile) and too top heavy to ever have been able to be built. It was one of the few buildings of Wrights to not be built.

I will try to find out more information and post again.

Considering how successful Dubai has been in building structures that are seemingly uneconomical, I wonder if the current condo boom would support this mile high tower. Just look at the international buzz that the Fordham Spire is generating. I would bet that people might flock to the Illinois just for the novelty of living in a crazy mile high tower.

Me too. It would be an awesome building to have, but it would also be very very pointless...

Surely it woud be less expensive to build two of 800m.I woudn't what to spend my life in an elevator!

It would have to be built away from the main cluster, becuase it would dwarf everything else RIDICULOUSLY. jUst think about, this thing would FOUR TIMES as tall as the Sears tower!

^Why not just build it in the suburbs. A few of these would really slow the sprawl. I think that this would make a fantastic addition to the woodfield mall area. Just bulldoze Busse Woods Forest Preserve for the base and it would fit in just fine. :lol:

is it just me, or does this building somewhat resemble the Burj Dubai? I'm pretty sure that's what its called.

^Why not just build it in the suburbs. A few of these would really slow the sprawl. I think that this would make a fantastic addition to the woodfield mall area. Just bulldoze Busse Woods Forest Preserve for the base and it would fit in just fine. :lol:

ABSURD!!! :crazy2:

^Why not just build it in the suburbs. A few of these would really slow the sprawl. I think that this would make a fantastic addition to the woodfield mall area. Just bulldoze Busse Woods Forest Preserve for the base and it would fit in just fine. :lol:

I think a better place to put it would be to get rid of one of those huge ass parking lots next to Schaumburg Corporate Center (located next to Woodfield mall). Please, no more deforestation.

is it just me, or does this building somewhat resemble the Burj Dubai? I'm pretty sure that's what its called.

I was thinking the same thing. I'm glad someone mentioned it.

^Why not just build it in the suburbs. A few of these would really slow the sprawl. I think that this would make a fantastic addition to the woodfield mall area. Just bulldoze Busse Woods Forest Preserve for the base and it would fit in just fine. :lol:

The tower only covered 9-12 city blocks. Why would you demolish an entire forest?

is it just me, or does this building somewhat resemble the Burj Dubai? I'm pretty sure that's what its called.

Except the Illinois is more graceful IMO.

I like it a lot. It would fit great near the Fordman Tower, because it wouldn't dwarf the skyline as much. And talking about the Fordman Tower, doesn't it look like the Fordman Tower if it didn't have those spikes bulging out of it or is it just me?

The tower only covered 9-12 city blocks. Why would you demolish an entire forest?
I was joking. Although, even though this building would obviously not destroy all of the forest preserve, Busse Woods is probably the only place in Schaumburg with enought open space to accomodate this. Especially since the last piece of farmland in Schaumburg was bulldozed four years ago to make way for a giant subdivision.

Chi649- Those parking lots would probably be far too small to accomodate this building anyway. As STR said, it would cover 9-12 city blocks.

Why 9-12 city blocks? Is this needed for the building structure?

Why 9-12 city blocks? Is this needed for the building structure?
Well it has other buildings they plan on building around

Why 9-12 city blocks? Is this needed for the building structure?

About 9 blocks for the structure.

Seriously....how big a foot priint would this thing require?......I imagine they could include indoor parking on the first oh...70 floors or so :)

I think it would be awsome if they built it, I love the stuff that Frank Lloyd Wright did. I wonder how many floors that would be?

^^^^I believe 528 floors at 10 feet per floor total = 5280ft