CHICAGO | Recent projects and construction (non-high rise)

[GRADOSTROY]

Starting this new thread everything on new construction in Chicagoland (non-high rise). Please post all new construction photo updates here.


image hosted on flickr

Chicago Art Museum - New Wing by johnche, on Flickr

[GRADOSTROY]

[GRADOSTROY]

[Inspector Urbano]

I love Park Ridge IL !!

[desertpunk]

Oh good, pictures are fixed. Good looking stuff going on in the Big City!

[GRADOSTROY]

[GRADOSTROY]

[skyduster]

Originally Posted by Inspector Urbano

I love Park Ridge IL !!

huh?!

All of these 3/4-story residential buildings posted by Gradostroy look very Lincoln Park, and perhaps Wicker Park or Ukrainian Village.

As far as suburbs:

Park Ridge's center ("Uptown") and some of its other commercial thoroughfares (like the area around Talcott and Devon Avenues) are quite charming. In the neighborhoods just north of Uptown there's also some incredible mansions. But most of Park Ridge is your usual boring 50s/60s-style suburban houses, with some of those homes torn down 1995-2008 and replaced with McMansions, including an entire tacky faux-Victorian section on Canfield between Higgins and Talcott.

When it comes to suburban architecture, Oak Park and River Forest can't be beat.

Anyways...great to see traditional architecture making a comeback in Chicago; it's been going on for years now, and it carries on. On the homes in the very first picture: I'm just not too crazy about that diagonal setback on the bottom left of the buildings. But they're otherwise beautiful homes. The home in the second picture, the one on the right, is just lovely. A playful combination of bauhaus and traditional architecture; and it worked very well, IMO. And kudos on the exposed brick: a trademark of traditional American urban architecture. The 1st and 2nd pictures all show great examples of fine exposed brick. The cylindrical building under construction in the 3rd picture looks interesting. I'm curious if it'll be traditional or more modernist.

[untitledreality]

This thread contains some of the most hideous new construction in Chicago I have seen in recent years. Cheap split face, disproportional facades, contextual issues, lazy faux historicism and just plain bad contemporary works.

Vomit.

[skyduster]

The first picture, and the building on the right in the second picture, are quite good, IMO.

In the 3rd picture, the buildings that are to the right of the under-constriction cylindrical building, are indeed awful. The 4th picture tries too hard (and misses the mark...love the door, though, but the rest fails), the 5th and 6th ones are "eh".

IMO, these pictures don't accurately illustrate the overall historical revival in Chicago that's been going on over the past 15+ years. There are many more historical-revival buildings not pictured here that are very good. But yes, there's also a lot of god-awful pseudo-historical ones. It seems, though, that since this movement began, the general trend has been that they are getting better.

[desertpunk]

Burberry store shines on the Magnificent Mile

image hosted on flickr

Burberry Store by archidose, on Flickr

image hosted on flickr

Burberry Store by archidose, on Flickr

[desertpunk]

GEMS World Academy Ready to Rise at Lakeshore East

An informed tipster told Curbed to watch out for a GEMS World Academy construction start in the coming days. The Lakeshore East private school will focus on its phase 1 building for K-4, expected to open in time for the 2014-15 school year. The broad and shallow 9-story building will total 82,000 square feet at the northwestern corner of Magellan Development's self-contained skyscraper city, and will face inward toward the park. Nearby, squeezed between two towers, a phase 2 building will start at a later, unannounced date and will offer 285,000 square feet to grades 5-12 in a 16-story tower facing Wacker Drive. Both are designed by bKL Architecture and broadcast a more interesting, irregular facade to the city than the surrounding residential towers (except for Aqua).

[desertpunk]

Has Google outgrown River North?

Google Inc. is mapping new office territory in Chicago.


1000 W. Fulton St.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based technology giant is in talks to move its Chicago office to the city's meatpacking district, where it would lease more than 200,000 square feet, sources say. If a deal is struck, it would dramatically reshape the gentrifying Fulton Market-Randolph area, where foodies flock to a thriving restaurant row but major office tenants have yet to arrive.

Landing one of the world's most recognizable companies would bring instant legitimacy to an office market now made up of small tenants in low-rise loft buildings. And the departure of Google's more than 500 Chicago employees would represent a rare loss for tech-centric River North, downtown's hippest and tightest office submarket.

“Google is an unbelievable engine,” says Chicago tenant broker Bob Chodos, a principal at Seattle-based Colliers International who is not involved in the Google deal. “Wherever they go gets bigger.”

Google's employees, mostly in sales, are outgrowing the Kinzie Street tower where the company's lease for about 150,000 square feet expires at the end of 2015. As Google expands here, it is expected to need more than 200,000 square feet, and possibly up to 300,000, sources say.

Enter Sterling Bay Cos., which reached an agreement to buy the 10-story Fulton Market Cold Storage warehouse, the tallest in the neighborhood, in 2011. The Chicago developer is converting the existing building and an attached new structure into about 540,000 square feet of office and retail at 1000 W. Fulton St. by late next year.

In addition to Google, Boka Restaurant Group—which includes chef Stephanie Izard's nearby Girl & the Goat and Little Goat Diner—is finalizing a deal for a steakhouse on the ground floor of the former meat storage facility, sources say. A spokeswoman for Google and a Boka executive did not respond to requests for comment.

[...]
Read more: http://www.chicagobusiness.com/artic...#ixzz2VDq2pq3u
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[desertpunk]

Revealed: New Addition to Fourth Presbyterian Church







All: http://chicago.curbed.com/archives/2...atz-center.php

[desertpunk]

West Loop Condo Buyers Getting Low-Rise Contemporary





All: http://www.redfin.com/IL/Chicago/165.../home/45930027