Richard J. Daley Center

The Richard J. Daley Center is an International Style skyscraper designed by C.F. Murphy Associates, with Jacques Browson as lead architect, in association with Loebl, Schlossman & Bennett, and Skidmore, Owings & Merill, and built between 1963 and 1965, for a reported $87.0 million dollars, in Chicago, IL.

Richard J. Daley Center is not the only name you might know this building by though. It is common for companies to want to attach their names to iconic buildings when they move in, or for the general public to come up with nicknames, and this one is no exception. The building has changed names several times over the years, and is also known as:

• Daley Plaza.
• Chicago Civic Center between 1965 and 1976.
• Richard J. Daley Center from 1976 until this day.

Its precise street address is 55 West Randolph Street, Chicago, IL. You can also find it on the map here.

All the architecture firms invovled in this project were heavily influences by the teachings of Mies van der Rohe, and therefore it comes as no surprise that the building follows many of the solutions that Mies's skyscrapers did, some of which are literally just a couple blocks away.

The plaza at the north end of which the building stands provides public spaces for various events and features an untitled sculpture by Pablo Picasso, known as "The Picasso".

C.F. Murphy Associates, with Jacques Browson as the lead architect, was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design, in association with Loebl, Schlossman & Bennett, and Skidmore, Owings & Merill.

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 Richard J. Daley Center a reality:

• Chicago Public Building Commission as the Main Developer
• Pablo Picasso as the collaborating Artist

The Richard J. Daley Center can be categorized as an International Style building.

The Richard J. Daley Center was completed in 1965. By 1965 the International Style movement had already left its early days behind and could be considered a mature movement, which does not mean it was loved and accepted by everyone, on the contrary. The International Style was accepted by the architecture community way before it was by the general public, and it is therefore likely that the Richard J. Daley Center was not well received by everyone at the time.

The Richard J. Daley Center uses a framed tube-in-tube structure , with steel columns and concrete slabs.

A framed tube-in-tube structure uses a central core, known as inner tube, which usually holds stairs, lifts and installations, and a perimeter of columns around it, which form the exterior tube. The interior tube is tipically more massive (often made of reinforced concrete), and the exterior tube is "lighter" (made of steel or concrete columns). Both tubes are conencted via horizontal elements which make up the floors and also transmit any horizontal froces from the facade to the core.

The facade of the building is load bearing. This is a direct consequence of the integration of the exterior "tube" into the facade, something which most framed tube-in-tube buildings do in order to liberate the interior space from structural elements and achieve a more flexible interior.

So the facade of the builing is techinically load-bearing, yes, however, in between the load-bearing colums we find a curtain-wall type of facade, which by itself would not be cosnidered load-bearing.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features a reddish-brown color combined with bronze-tinted glass curtain wall that rises above the first floor. It was one of the first buildings clad in Cor-Ten steel, a material that develops a natural rust that forms a permanent protective layer that doesn't require maintenance.