The The Fordham Building is a Contemporary skyscraper designed by Solomon Cordwell Buenz, and built between 2001 and 2003 in Chicago, IL.
Its precise street address is 25 E Superior St, Chicago, Chicago, IL. You can also find it on the map here.
Some of the most expensive apartment ins Chicago are in the Fordham, with all top 10 floors being considered penthouses.
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 The Fordham Building a reality:
The The Fordham Building 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 The Fordham Building is inspired by the neogothic style.
The The Fordham Building reaches an architectural height of 574ft (175m). It has a total of 52 floors, 50 above ground and 2 basements.
Ever since opening its doors to the public in 2003, the The Fordham Building has mainly been used as Residential space.
The The Fordham Building has a total of 224 residential units throughout its 50 floors.
The The Fordham Building uses a frame structure made of 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 of the building however, is load bearing. This doesn't imply that it is a traditional load-bearing wall. Rather, it means that the structure's exterior pillars have been pushed to the very edges, becoming integrated with the facade, and therefore, technically, a part of it.
From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features precast concrete sections that resemble limestone (which is actually used to clad the first 3 floors) with large openings. These openings are divided into different green-tinted glass panes, some fixed and some which can be opened.
One of the most singular design elements of the building's exterior is its château-like roof, which seems to belong to the time of neo-gothic or art-deco architecture.
