The Loews Hotel Tower is a Contemporary skyscraper designed in 2007 by Solomon Cordwell Buenz, and built between 2012 and 2015, for a reported $200 million dollars, in Chicago, IL.
Loews Hotel Tower is not the only name you might know this building by though. The building is, or has also been known as Loews North Park Drive.
Its precise street address is 455 North Park Drive, Chicago, IL. You can also find it on the map here.
Solomon Cordwell Buenz was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design.
That being said, architecture is a complex discipline involving many professionals from different fields, without whom this building would have not been possible. We will surely be leaving out a lot of names here, but here is a list of the people we do know also played their part in making the Loews Hotel Tower a reality:
The Loews Hotel Tower can be categorized as a Contemporary building.
Contemporary style architecture builds on top of the principles of Modernism and Postmodernism, but incorporates other variables which might not have been that important in the past, but certainly are today, such as technology, sustainability, inclusivity, and others.
From a historical point of view, it is hard to categorize things from a not-so-distant time, and therefore we choose to categorize most buildings built after the year 2000 as "Contemporary". It is possible that as time goes by and we, as a society, gain perspective on the things happening today, we'll be able to look back and recategorize all these buildings into more concrete subsections, some of which might not even exist today.
That being said, and even thought being a contemporary building, probably taking advantage of modern materials, construction techniques, and technology, the design of the Loews Hotel Tower is inspired by the modern style.
The Loews Hotel Tower reaches an architectural height of 568ft (173m). It has a total of 54 floors, 52 above ground and 2 basements, which combined offer a total of 926,998 sqf (86,121m2) of usable space.
If you want to get a nice view of Chicago the Loews Hotel Tower offers an observatory deck.
Ever since opening its doors to the public in 2015, the Loews Hotel Tower has been a mixed use building. It incorporates 2 main uses, which are hotel, and residential spaces.
The hotel is a 4 stars category hotel, with a total of 400 rooms available to the public. The name of the hotel is Loews Chicago Hotel. You can learn more about the hotel by visiting their website here.
The Loews Hotel Tower has a total of 389 residential units throughout its 52 floors. If you are interested in learning more about the residences and their availability, you can check the Loews Hotel Tower's website.
The Loews Hotel Tower uses a frame structure made of reinforced concrete columns and beams.
A frame structure uses a combination of beams and columns to sustain the building's weight. The walls in this case are non-load bearing, which allows for more flexibility when distributing the interior spaces.
The facade uses a non-load bearing curtain wall system. This means the curtain wall modules are anchored to the building's structural frame, typically by being attached to the edge of the floor slabs. The curtain wall system connects to the slabs using brackets, anchors, and mullions, which transfer the loads imposed by wind and temperature changes, to the building's primary structural elements.
This setup allows the curtain wall to accommodate differential movement between the facade and the structural frame, such as thermal expansion, floor deflection, or sway from wind forces. This system's integration with the slab edges also allows for continuous insulation and weatherproofing layers.
From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features an extensive curtain wall made of blue-tinted reflective glass with thin, light-colored horizontal lines marking each floor's slab. The use of positive and negative spaces throughout the curtain wall creates a second layer of rhythm on the facade.
