Two Prudential Plaza vs North Harbor Tower

Comparing the Two Prudential Plaza and the North Harbor Tower is interesting because they both stand in Chicago, IL, and were completed within 2 years of each other, but they were designed by different architects.

This offers a unique glimpse at how rival designers approached projects in the same city during the same era.

The Two Prudential Plaza is clearly the larger tower of the two, both in terms of height and number of floors. It rises to 994ft (303m) with 64 floors above ground, while the North Harbor Tower reaches 554ft (169m) with 55 floors above ground.

Of course, each project may have faced different briefs or regulatory constraints, which we don't really know about and could also explain the outcome.

Both the Two Prudential Plaza and the North Harbor Tower were designed in line with the aesthetic conventions of the Postmodernism style.

At the time, this style was at the height of its popularity. So both Loebl, Schlossman & Hackl and Fujikawa Johnson & Associates followed what was in many ways expected of them, producing designs that fit comfortably within contemporary architectural norms, rather than breaking with convention.

The Two Prudential Plaza is primarily commercial, while the North Harbor Tower is primarily residential.

The North Harbor Tower offers 600 residential units.

Both towers provide significant parking capacity, with Two Prudential Plaza offering 325 spaces and the North Harbor Tower offering 404.

The two buildings opted for different structural and facade solutions.

The Two Prudential Plaza uses a Framed Tube In Tube system, which combines a strong central core with a perimeter tube of columns, while the North Harbor Tower uses a Frame system, that relies on a regular grid of columns and beams to sustain its weight.

And when it came to the facade, the Curtain Wall went with a Curtain Wall facade, which uses a lightweight glass curtain wall hung from the structure, while the North Harbor Tower opted for a Window Wall facade, that uses panels fitted between floor slabs, leaving slab edges visible.