... both a pretty face and an athlectic body ...
As I have confessed on another blog site, I have worked on Calatrava projects twice in my career, both of them in the states (although the actual work was primarily performed in Canada): the Milwaukee Art Museum addition, or Quadricci Pavillion; and the Chicago Spire that was formerly known as Fordham Spire.
In both instances, the work performed was the result of the inhouse structural engineering firm, sub-contracting out the simulation testing on dynamic and resting loads to known specialists. If you are unfamiliar with this type of work, and many people are, it is highly technical and consists of charts and several what-if reports on projected sway coefficients, the extent of deformity under load, materials suggestion, and the like, done mostly but not exclusively with the aid of computers.
Just after my sub-contract period was over - we were specifically working on Version D of the Chicago Spire - I decided for the first time to enter the blogging world as an active participant rather than just an observer. What was my motivation? Frustration! I was in possession of photographs of a private session held at Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), in which Version D was unveiled to a limited audience that included the most well-known local Architecture critic in Chicago, the Pulitizer Prize winning columnist Blair Kamin. I had thought the local critic would leak the pictures that were took, but he did not. Someone else, not me, leaked a picture on the IIT website, seen by few before it was eventually pulled a week later. And I took the chance of releasing the photos on the internet because no one seemed willing to violate the excessive secrecy that was surrounding this project, after its new developer took over the reigns.
Since then, there have been several insider visuals printed on the internet after the project finally was approved and went into construction - most are "legit" from what I can determine. So many of these visuals have been seen, that the website adminstrators are now being warned about legal consequences going forward. Version D which seemed risky to reveal is now ancient history, even though it was last year. What was called the final version, was Version H. But Version H is having a curious "scope creep" in the design, even after the project went into construction - something that rarely occurs. No one really knows why, when such a beautiful structure is already widely accepted by the general public, but it just might be that legendary perfectionism that Calatrava is so famous for having in all his projects - for better or for worse.
Chicago Spire is in my opinion, one of the most exciting skyscrapers that will be built in the near term. It is more than a design that is driven by style, those helical rails that twist around the structure has already revolutionized buildings from a structural engineering standpoint. This particular building takes the multi-spiral concept to a still higher level of refinement. Calatrava, in his tortured but charming English, admitted the first day he appeared before the press in Chicago for the then Fordham Spire, that there are two challenges he was going to take head-on with his Spire - thinness and what he phrased as the "heliocal" idea. And those challenges faced him all the way through. At one point, for example, the sway numbers were so high in testing, that we recommended mass dampers in two areas of the structure, which would potentially take up valuable rental space. But in tweaking subsequent versions, Calatrava came up with a most unique solution that ties the surface deflections still further to the structural form, such that it will minimize the need for more than one. That was Calatrava doubling as the Engineer, to Calatrava the Architect.
His building has both a pretty face and an athlectic body, that will occupy the centre of the Chicago skyline from its most photographed angle. It will also continue to push the city that has contributed so much in defining the core of modern skyscraper architecture to the world.
