{"id":208846,"date":"2023-04-13T15:26:42","date_gmt":"2023-04-13T19:26:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/interiordesign.net\/?post_type=id_project&p=208846"},"modified":"2023-04-13T15:26:48","modified_gmt":"2023-04-13T19:26:48","slug":"gensler-willis-tower-design-chicago","status":"publish","type":"id_project","link":"https:\/\/interiordesign.net\/projects\/gensler-willis-tower-design-chicago\/","title":{"rendered":"Gensler Enlivens the Street-Level of Chicago’s Willis Tower"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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In a renovated public lounge, armchairs by Christophe Delcourt, Eileen Gray, and Pierre Jeanneret mingle with a Jaime Hayon side table and Mario Bellini coffee tables. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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April 13, 2023<\/p>\n\n\n

Words: <\/span>Rebecca Dalzell<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photography: <\/span>Garrett Rowland<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Gensler Enlivens the Street-Level of Chicago’s Willis Tower<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

At 1,451 feet, the Sears Tower was the tallest building in the world when it opened in Chicago in 1973. Designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, it rises 110 stories over the Loop neighborhood and is a modernist icon, with a geometric structure and a facade of blackened aluminum and bronze-tinted glass. It\u2019s also a landmark visible from across the city\u2014so much so that locals still call it the Sears Tower, though it was renamed the Willis Tower in 2009. But it was always, as architecture critic Blair Kamin put it, \u201ca dud at street level.\u201d An austere plaza and a granite berm wrapping the base kept pedestrians at bay, and the public could only enter to visit Skydeck, the observation platform. In 2015, Blackstone bought the building and hired Gensler<\/a> to rethink the site, which has resulted in a mixed-use attraction for office workers, tourists, and Chicagoans alike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Todd Heiser, principal and managing director at Gensler\u2019s Chicago studio, grew up in the city and found it surreal to take on the high-profile project. \u201cIt\u2019s walking on hallowed ground,\u201d he begins. \u201cWe approached it with humility, serving to amplify its positives and correct what was imperfect.\u201d Willis Tower, he notes, was the product of an era of urban flight and single-use office buildings; it was designed to be impenetrable. But in the 21st century, aside from the early years of the COVID pandemic, cities have come roaring back to life and tenants seek dynamic, welcoming workplaces. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Designing an Amenities-Rich Hub in the Willis Tower<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Part of a 463,000-square-foot renovation project by Gensler, the main lobby of Chicago\u2019s Willis Tower, formerly the Sears Tower, has been updated with steel columns and beams newly finished in black-anodized aluminum that matches the facade of the 110-story skyscraper.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Gensler brought the supertall up to date with a 463,000-square-foot makeover, including new entrances, lounges, and a transparent six-story podium with a food hall and a rooftop park\u2014elements that prove why the firm not only ranks number one among the Interior Design<\/em> Top 100 Giants<\/a> but also third amid the Hospitality Giants (as well as 14th on the Healthcare list). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heiser and Hansoo Kim, principal and design director at Gensler\u2019s Washington office, started by researching how people used and moved through the building. They met with families visiting the Skydeck, who were often also looking for a place to have lunch, and office workers hoping to get to their desks quickly. \u201cWe had to support demographics of all ages,\u201d Heiser says, and consider \u201cthe person who wanted to linger and the person who wanted a friction-free environment.\u201d Kim adds that to create a vibrant multipurpose destination, they had to connect different types of programming, like coworking and retail, and \u201cblur the boundaries between work, life, and play,\u201d he notes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gensler Creates an Expansive Communal Space for All Ages<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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In a renovated public lounge, armchairs by Christophe Delcourt, Eileen Gray, and Pierre Jeanneret mingle with a Jaime Hayon side table and Mario Bellini coffee tables. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The block-long building has entrances on three different streets (Wacker, Jackson, and Franklin). Originally, there were two for tenants and one for Skydeck visitors. Gensler opened them all to the public. \u201cThe entire base of the tower is now porous,\u201d Heiser continues. Like a transportation hub or civic plaza, it hosts everyone from United Airlines employees who work in the building to toddlers and Midwestern retirees; the Skydeck alone draws 1.7 million visitors a year. Security is discreet. There are guards and cameras, but nothing like the airport-style measures we\u2019ve come to expect in skyscrapers since 9\/11. Touchless turnstiles use fingerprint scanners to admit employees into the tenant elevator bank at the building core.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Gensler, which partnered with SkB Architects on the facade, also reimagined the design of the entrances. At the Wacker Drive entry, earlier renovations had added a barrel-vaulted glass lobby and stainless-steel cladding on columns. The teams demolished the former and installed a portal of white-glazed terra-cotta, a common material in Loop architecture, and replaced the incongruous cladding with black-anodized aluminum that complements the original facade. (Gensler, which also tops our Sustainability Giants list, recycled more than 24,000 tons of demolition material.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The existing entry sequence had its own issues: Visitors went downstairs to get to reception. \u201cIt was like walking into a bowl,\u201d Heiser recalls. \u201cYou should be able to walk in and go up, because that\u2019s logical.\u201d A backlit staircase now leads to the main level, on the second floor. Here, Gensler leaned into the \u201970\u2019s glamour of the building\u2019s heyday. An existing travertine wall was polished and unobstructed for the first time, and a lounge has been furnished with such late mid\u2013century signatures as Cini Boeri<\/a>\u2019s furry Botolo chairs and chain-mesh drapery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the top of the stairs hangs a site-specific artwork: Jacob Hashimoto\u2019s cloud of paper-and-resin discs. Its location in the Wacker lobby implicitly connects it to an Alexander Calder sculp\u00adture that originally hung there. \u201cThe client sought an installation as impactful as the Calder,\u201d Heiser says. Gensler also commissioned an outdoor sculpture from Olafur Eliasson to mark the entrance to the new retail podium on Jackson Boulevard.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Composed of 7,000 paper-and-resin discs, Jacob Hashimoto\u2019s site-specific In the Heart of this Infinite Particle of Galactic Dust fills the main lobby.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Gensler built the glass-walled podium on what had been an unwelcoming granite plaza, extending the base of the building to the sidewalk. The centerpiece of the addition is a soaring atrium and food hall called Catalog, a nod to the Sears mail-order business, that brings together local eateries beneath an enormous skylight. Diners can slide onto oak benches under bistro-style lights and look up at the tower. \u201cOur goal was to create a Chicago streetscape inside the atrium, so you feel like you\u2019re outside,\u201d Kim explains. Above Catalog, a public roof garden with winding paths and native prairie grasses faces a neighboring park. Like the rest of the podium, it connects the building to the street and draws pedestrians into the once-forbidding landmark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\"Giants<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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2023 Top 100 Giants Revealed<\/h2>\n

See which firms top the list.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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TOP 100 GIANTS<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Inside the Spacious Street-Level of the Willis Tower<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Treads of honed Kirkby stone and illuminated glass risers form the stairs to the main lobby. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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White-glazed terra-cotta clads the new entry portal on Wacker Drive, one of three building entries, codesigned with SkB Architects; photography: Tom Harris.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Marble flooring meets an existing but newly refurbished and revealed travertine wall dating to 1973, when the Sears Tower first opened.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Olafur Eliasson\u2019s 30-by-60-foot Atmospheric wave wall, made of 1,963 motion-activated, powder-coated steel tiles, appoints an elevation of the site\u2019s new six-story podium, which features a public food hall and a rooftop park, on Jackson Boulevard; photography: Tom Harris. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Inside the podium structure, a vaulted steel-framed skylight measuring 75 by 85 feet crowns the Catalog food hall, where LED pendant globes hang from a catenary system.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Back in the lounge, \u201970\u2019s-esque chain-mesh drapery counterpoints custom oak booths.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Third-floor office-tenant spaces overlook Catalog\u2019s 70-foot-high atrium.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Concrete-paver paths wind through native prairie grasses along the podium structure\u2019s 30,000-square-foot rooftop park; photography: Tom Harris. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Heidi stools by Sebastian Wrong stand under Hoist pendant fixtures by Rich Brilliant Willing. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Gianfranco Frattini\u2019s Sesann sofa and Estudio Persona\u2019s Nido chairs cluster around a Stahl + Band L Series table in a small lounge. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
PROJECT TEAM<\/h6><\/div>\n\n\n\n
Gensler<\/span><\/a>: grant uhlir; benjy ward; michael townsend; neale scotty; scott marker; stephen katz; hua-jun cao; kelly bogenschutz; marissa luehring; shawn fawell; todd desmarais; jeffrey peck; kim lindstrom; kate pedriani<\/span><\/section>\n\n\n\n
skb architects<\/span><\/a>: facade architect<\/span><\/section>\n\n\n\n
olin<\/span><\/a>: landscape architect<\/span><\/section>\n\n\n\n
thornton tomasetti<\/span><\/a>: structural engineer<\/span><\/section>\n\n\n\n
esd<\/span><\/a>: mep<\/span><\/section>\n\n\n\n
v3 companies<\/span><\/a>: civil engineer<\/span><\/section>\n\n\n\n
burlington stone; campolonghi<\/span><\/a>: stonework<\/span><\/section>\n\n\n\n
parenti & raffaelli<\/span><\/a>: millwork<\/span><\/section>\n\n\n\n
clayco corp.; turner construction co.<\/span><\/a>: general contractors<\/span><\/section>\n\n\n\n
PRODUCT SOURCES<\/h6><\/div>\n\n\n\n
FROM FRONT<\/h6><\/div>\n\n\n\n
cascade coil drapery<\/span><\/a>: chain drapery (lounge)<\/span><\/section>\n\n\n\n
bloomsburg carpet<\/span><\/a>: rug<\/span><\/section>\n\n\n\n
pk-30 system<\/span><\/a>: backlit wall<\/span><\/section>\n\n\n\n
B&B Italia<\/span><\/a>: sofa<\/span><\/section>\n\n\n\n
cassina<\/span><\/a>: black, white coffee tables<\/span><\/section>\n\n\n\n
phantom hands<\/span><\/a>: green chairs<\/span><\/section>\n\n\n\n
novum structures<\/span><\/a>: skylight (food hall)<\/span><\/section>\n\n\n\n
tegan lighting<\/span><\/a>: catenary system<\/span><\/section>\n\n\n\n
concrete collaborative<\/span><\/a>: flooring<\/span><\/section>\n\n\n\n
newmat<\/span><\/a>: stretched ceiling (lounge)<\/span><\/section>\n\n\n\n
Avenue Road<\/span><\/a>: green barrel chairs<\/span><\/section>\n\n\n\n
hanover archi\u00adtectural products<\/span><\/a>: pavers (roof)<\/span><\/section>\n\n\n\n
rich brilliant willing<\/span><\/a>: pendant fixtures (food hall)<\/span><\/section>\n\n\n\n
arflex<\/span><\/a>: teal chairs<\/span><\/section>\n\n\n\n
established & sons<\/span><\/a>: stools<\/span><\/section>\n\n\n\n
tacchini<\/span><\/a>: sofa (small lounge)<\/span><\/section>\n\n\n\n
estudio persona<\/span><\/a>: chairs<\/span><\/section>\n\n\n\n
stahl + band<\/span><\/a>: coffee table<\/span><\/section>\n\n\n\n
Pulpo<\/span><\/a>: side table<\/span><\/section>\n\n\n\n
throughout<\/h6><\/div>\n\n\n\n
linetec<\/span><\/a>: custom aluminum cladding<\/span><\/section>\n\n\n\n
boston valley terra cotta<\/span><\/a>: terra-cotta paneling<\/span><\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n