Heritage at Millennium Park

The Heritage at Millennium Park is a Contemporary skyscraper designed by Solomon Cordwell Buenz, and built between 2002 and 2005, for a reported $169 million dollars, in Chicago, IL.

Its precise street address is 130 N Garland Court, Chicago, IL. You can also find it on the map here.

The lower 9 floors facade on Wabash Av were preserved and restored with the supervision of the City of Chicago Landmark Division. This facade had been declared as a landmark and had to be preserved, as it dated back to before the Cicago Fire.

The buidling is connected to the extensive underground pedway system of Chicago.

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 Heritage at Millennium Park a reality:

• Walsh Construction Company as the Main Contractor
• Mesa Development, LLC as the Main Developer
• Environmental Systems Design, Inc. in charge of MEP Engineering

The Heritage at Millennium Park can be categorized as a Contemporary building.

The Heritage at Millennium Park 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 modular, or panelized system. This type of facade can function as either a window wall or a curtain wall, depending on the design. Unlike traditional glass curtain walls or window walls though, the modular facade is not primarily composed of glass. Instead, it often features more opaque panels that mimic masonry or stone-clad finishes, with smaller windows cut into the panels.

This type of facade allows the building to benefit from the modern qualities of a curtain wall while giving the design team flexibility to achieve visual aesthetics beyond the all-glass modern skyscraper.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features a sensitive tension through curves and straight angles. For example, in the lower part of the building, there is a concave curve; in the upper part, there is a convex one. The tension between these two opposite design operations strengthens an aesthetic vision and balances its features giving a harmonious whole.

The building is divided into three sections as we climb from the ground level. The first 9 floors act as a podium. On top of it, the building rises. Even though it is always one unique building, the first third of the tower seems to be composed of two towers, one concave and one convex. The concave section of the building stops at around one-third of the total height, leaving the convex section alone to rise as the tower that one can identify from a distance.