[STR]

For those that have enjoyed my digging on the Chicago WTC and Schaumburg Planet, here's another abortive attempt at the world's tallest building. This was a very secretive project. The only way I found out this much was by following a hunch on a single sentence buried in a long article on the WTC, which compared to this was a piece of cake to research.

There remains little to no information on this tower, which was to be 109 stories tall and house 6,000,000 square feet of space. No height is mentioned, but it would likely have been the tallest given the size.

There is no public name for the tower, it was and will always be known as Project D.

Enlargement of previous photo

Those were the only articles I found after exhaustive searching, so here's something else cool that kept coming up in my searches.

 

[wickedestcity]

im glad that at least onee of these plans made it through for crying out loud!

see how many wtb proposals were on the drawing boards durring that building boom that eventualy fell through i wonder now with our current scraper boom if anyone is planning to come to the table with any more wtb proposals for chicago to be unvailed.

 

[Chicago Shawn]

Damn, that 6,000,000 square footer would have been a fat beast. I can't even imagine how massive such a structure would be in real life.

 

[STR]

^No need to imagine. I'll render a few angles of a model when I'm done with Burj Dubai.

 

[STR]

see how many wtb proposals were on the drawing boards durring that building boom that eventualy fell through i wonder now with our current scraper boom if anyone is planning to come to the table with any more wtb proposals for chicago to be unvailed.

Seems there was a glut of them rangining from around the completion of the
Hancock to the final death of the WTC twenty years later. The earliest was the Schaumburg proposal, which almost paralelled JHC.

 

[Steely Dan]

^ don't forget about the MB skyneedle in the late 80's.

 

[STR]

No, Skyneedle was a different generation. The older gen were all massive developements meant to be economical by using massive floorplates to cover the premium of building tall. The developers were also all a little off their rocker (my conclusion) and none had any previous experience in building large real estate developments.

Skyneedle was the first of the thin-scrapers that didn't try to equal the price of other Class A towers, but charged a premium and reduced the cost of building tall by putting as little real estate high up as possible.

There was also quite a few years between it and the WTC. The WTC essentially died 10 years before Skyneedle. It's just that Raskow dragged it out 6-8 years after he had his shot.

 

[Chi649]

From the Sears article: Sears said yesterday that it will build the next world's tallest building. Work will begin next week.

The article makes it sound like they just found out about the Sears Tower yesterday, and by the way, construction will start next week. News stories weren't available back then like they are now, but could it have really happened like that?

 

[ChicagoSkyline]

Nice find!
I would love for Chicago WTC project to revive and built to become the new world's tallest in 2012! Just slim it down a bit from the past projection and utilized it vertically instead!
:eek2:

 

[Azn_chi_boi]

Where is the antenneas for the Sears Tower, or was that planned after construction begins?

 

[STR]

Where is the antenneas for the Sears Tower, or was that planned after construction begins?

You couldn't have planned after construction, they're an integral part of the structure. The antenna bases start around the 100th floor. It's just that the original model and preliminary render didn't have antennas, but they were added at an early stage.

 

[Bo B]

Are there any other new major skyscrapers in Chicago? If the should ever try to build super tall buildings again, it should be surrounded by other slightly shorter ones like this iIi so that the critical lower floors will not be vulnerable as what has happened to the WTC Towers in NYC.

 

[Bo B]

But I sure do hope that America and Chicago will be able to regain the title of having the world's tallest. They should also utilize a reinforced concrete core much like what was proposed a few years back.

 

[XCRunner]

Man, forget all the new proposals in the current building boom, lets just build all these old ones.

 

[Bo B]

But the old ones are now obsolete. For example, elevators specified then would not be available now. Got the point?

 

[matt_sbs]

jess why didnt they build marina city