River Point Tower

The River Point Tower is a Contemporary skyscraper designed in 2008 by Pickard Chilton, and built between 2013 and 2017 in Chicago, IL.

Its precise street address is 444 West Lake Street, Chicago, IL. You can also find it on the map here.

The River Point Tower has received multiple architecture awards for its architectural design since 2017. The following is a list of such prizes and awards:

• Chicago Building Congress Merit Award Winner for New Construction in 2017
• Structural Engineers Association of Illinois Award Winner in 2017
• Connecticut Green Building Council Award Winner in 2017
• Finalist for the Urban Land Institute’s Global Awards for Excellence in 2017
• Americas Property Award for Commercial High-Rise Architecture in 2018

Covering an impressive expanse of 60,702 square meters, the publicly accessible park stands as downtown Chicago's largest riverfront green space, offering a generous area for leisure, recreation, and community gatherings along the water's edge.

Pickard Chilton was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design.

But that's not all, there was also a whole team of architects involved, which included: Anthony Markese, David Brown, Benjamin Simmons, Rachel Howlett, and Charisse Bennett.

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 River Point Tower a reality:

• Magnusson Klemencic Associates in charge of Structural Engineering
• Lend Lease as the Main Contractor
• Permasteelisa Group, and Curtain Wall Design and Consulting, Inc. in charge of Facade Consultancy
• Hines as the Main Developer
• Alvine Engineering in charge of MEP Engineering
• OJB Landscape Architecture in charge of Landscape Architecture
• Santiago Calatrava as the collaborating Artist

The River Point Tower can be categorized as a Contemporary building.

That being said, and even thought being a contemporary building, probably taking advantage of modern materials, construction techniques, and technology, the design of the River Point Tower is inspired by the international-style style.

The River Point Tower uses a framed tube-in-tube structure , with steel columns and poured concrete over metal decking 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 employs a non-load bearing curtain wall system. This means the curtain wall modules are anchored to the building's structural frame at the edges of the floor slabs. The perimeter columns are set back slightly from the facade, allowing them to remain independent of the curtain wall system.

This configuration enables a completely free design of the curtain wall, unencumbered by structural elements, thus providing greater flexibility in aesthetic choices and maximizing the visual impact of the exterior.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features a continuous surface of reflective, light-blue tinted glass with a distinctive curved shape. The glass uses minimal steel framing, with slightly thicker horizontal aluminum bands marking the level of each floor slab.

Crowning the building, an inwards tilted straight cut cuts through the curved volume, mimicking to some degree the 10-story high parabolic arch that adorns the facade on both sides at ground level.