IDS Tower

The IDS Tower is a Postmodernist skyscraper designed in 1960 by Johnson/Burgee Architects, with Philip Johnson as lead architect, and built between 1969 and 1973 in Minneapolis, MN.

Its precise street address is 80 8th Street South, Minneapolis, MN. You can also find it on the map here.

In 2015 the IDS Tower was awarded with the BOMA 360.

Crystal Court, a lobby and commercial area at the base of the tower, offers aerial connections between the tower and the four adjacent blocks. The building has an 8-story annex on Marquette Avenue that can only be accessed using the elevators in the IDS Tower.

The building underwent a major restoration between 1978 and 1979.

Johnson/Burgee Architects, with Philip Johnson as the lead architect, 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 IDS Tower a reality:

• Severud Associates in charge of Structural Engineering
• Turner Construction Company as the Main Contractor
• Manntech in charge of Facade Consultancy
• Otis Elevator Company as the company in charge of the elevators system
• Investors Diversified Services as the Main Developer
• Michaud Cooley Erickson in charge of MEP Engineering

The IDS Tower can be categorized as a Postmodernist building.

The IDS Tower was completed in 1973. At that time Postmodernism was the prevailing style. Fresh, bold and daring, architects were exploring the freedom of designing without having to follow the strict, sometimes arbitrary rules of a specific architectural movement (which ironically became a movement itself). The IDS Tower was therefore every much in line with what the architecture community, and the people liked and wanted at the time.

The IDS Tower uses a trussed-frame structure made of steel columns and steel and concrete slabs.

A trussed-frame structure uses a combination of beams and columns to sustain the building's weight, and diagonal elements to provide stability against horizontal forces such as wind or seismic activity by triangulating the structure. 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 a curtain wall with large mullions, which unlike most curtain walls of this type protrude from the glass, creating a grid of windows 76cm wide.

At the corners, the curtain wall is articulated to form steps that the architect called "zogs," which create a fractured series of reflections. This zig-zag floorplan provides 32 corner offices on each floor.