Sears Tower a.k.a. Willis Tower - Chicago - by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

[ddny]

Architect: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

Year: 1973

Style: International

Description: Built for the the Sears Roebuck & Co.

http://mywebpage.netscape.com/DDNY%20%20Y2K/sears/sears1.jpg

http://mywebpage.netscape.com/DDNY%20%20Y2K/sears/sears2.jpg

http://mywebpage.netscape.com/DDNY%20%20Y2K/sears/sears3.jpg

http://mywebpage.netscape.com/DDNY%20%20Y2K/sears/sears4.jpg

http://mywebpage.netscape.com/DDNY%20%20Y2K/sears/sears5.jpg

http://mywebpage.netscape.com/DDNY%20%20Y2K/sears/sears6.jpg

http://mywebpage.netscape.com/DDNY%20%20Y2K/sears/sears7.jpg

http://mywebpage.netscape.com/DDNY%20%20Y2K/sears/sears8.jpg

[Gulcrapek]

I'd absolutely hate to work there. But the building itself is ok. Over time, I've grown to like it.

Black is powerful.

[NoyokA]

Working there is in fact the only place in the city saved from its beastly view.

[Fabb]

That's what was said about the Eiffel Tower over a century ago. Well, not exacly working but eating... which is more typically French.

The Sears Tower is a pure wonder. The masses might be lured by the apparent simplicity of its form, but its geometry is a masterpiece of asymmetry.

[Kris]

It's a clunky assemblage. There's worse, but Chicago deserves a more graceful and central skyline peak.

The Hancock is a much more powerful black building to me, and that has to do with simplicity and logic of form. The Sears, although taller, was a feeble symbol next to the twin towers and still is.

[Chicagoan]

Let me weigh in on this. Since the destruction of the WTC towers, I look at Sears everytime it comes into view and I have a chance to see it.

When I first came to Chitown, I did not like Sears all that much. To an extent I still do not. Unlike the WTC, is is bear bones simplicity. Except for the window washing machine grooves and the accentuation where the bundled tubes meet, it is essentially flat. ( Is it not ironic the the WTC towers, spec buildings, were more detailed and Sears, built as a corporate headquarters, was not. Considering the respective architects, one can get an explanation why this is.)

But Sears is a powerful element on the skyline. The pictures here do it no justice. Compared to any WTB holder, it is dynamic, depending on which angle it is viewed. At times is seems tall and slick, others, a bit bottom heavy. Because the glass is not very reflective, it does not have the same dynamic in respect to color, but it is nonetheless an extradinary building. It would be nice if they could do something to the area at ground level. It is not fitting of such a tower.

(By the way, I would hold off on the praise for John Hancock. The building observatory and antannae were renovated/replaced, and the graceful symmetry the tower once had is lost. It now has two different antanna and another "catwalk-like/mezzanine/roof-tent thingy" has been added. I mean it is really really [expletive deleted] up!)

[Fabb]

At times is seems tall and slick, others, a bit bottom heavy.

That's right.
The diversity of its aspects is one reason why I like it. But, because it doesn't have one simple, recognizable image, it can't function as an icon.

Never mind, one day, Chicago will have a symmetrical, super-tall building that will capture the attention of the population.

[Kris]

I don't buy the idea that regularity is a condition for iconic status and popularity. Visual coherence, perhaps.

[Eugenius]

In fact, one of the reasons the ESB is so famous is its duality: broad when viewed from 5th Avenue, slender when viewed from New Jersey or Queens.

[dbhstockton]

Does anybody have photos of the adulterations to the Hancock tower that Chicagoan mentioned?

[Chicagoan]

Quote: from dbhstockton on 3:16 pm on Aug. 6, 2003
Does anybody have photos of the adulterations to the Hancock tower that Chicagoan mentioned?

I have a few, but I have to find a server to post them in order to get them to show up here.

But skyscrapers.com has some recent pics that show the added "thingy" up top. It was added neas the west side, off center. None of the skyscrapers.com photos show the extension to the west antannae.

(Edited by Chicagoan at 9:51 pm on Aug. 7, 2003)

[Twista]

Sears Tower never gets old

[BVictor1]

Some construction pictures of the Sears Tower

http://www.searstower.org/topped.jpg (http://www.searstower.org/articles.html)

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/buildingbig/wonder/structure/images/searstower1_skyscraper_1.jpg


http://www.columbia.edu/cu/gsapp/BT/BSI/MOMENT_F/sears-2.jpg


As for the Sears Tower be a gians series of boxes, well that might be the case, but what were the World Trade Cener towers? Nothing but big boxes clad in stainless steel. Not to many New Yorkers originally cared for those buildings when they were built, and they weren't giben their due respect until it was too late and they were gone. Then the buildings became a big deal as being the pride of New York. They'd always taken backseat to buildings like the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings. Chicagoans know what the Sears Tower is; a big black monolithic and sometimes overbearing box, but we've always shown it respect.

[homeandaway]

i think the tower itself is very unattractive - who agrees?
~AleX~

[Gregory Tenenbaum]

I like it. From a distance I think that it looks good.

It is what it is. Without Sears Tower, skyscraper architectects would have tried a similar design somewhere else, with less appealling consequences.

I think that at the time they were sick of designing perfectly symmetrical buildings.

[Alonzo-ny]

I like perpendicular to facades
I dont like on diagonal, stumpy and fat.

[TREPYE]

i think the tower itself is very unattractive - who agrees?
~AleX~

I resoundingly agree. Lets count our blessings that this was not proposed for NYC. Almost in the same level as the Metlife Tower for egregious disregard of aesthetics. Boxy, bulky, monolithic all black, all glass; the double antenna's are unique but thats all the quality I can extrapolate from this thing. The JHC is a much better tower. The Chi-Spire should adequately off set this monstrocity's gracelessness. This is IMO, of course.

[Gregory Tenenbaum]

I like the MetLife Building too. A lot.

Does every building have to be symmetrical and square or circular?

I think an oval building would be nice.

As it happens, the Sears Tower is much like a cubist painting. Look at it from one angle, and it can look like two or more skyscrapers silhouetted against each other. Look from another angle, and it looks like one building.

Up close to it, well thats another story. None of these big buildings seem to have enough tenants to make them look swish all the time. There are inevitably going to be some empty floors.

[Alonzo-ny]

The tower actually is disappointing at its base looking up because the setbacks make it look much shorter than it is. heres a pic i took 2 years ago.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/203/467131491_f90806ba91_b.jpg
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/209/467131513_4c8914630e_b.jpg

[OmegaNYC]

I love the Sears Tower. It may look like a giant Lego block gone bad, but there is just something about the building.

[Viktorkrum77]

I have a friend who works there, floor 87, he says he loves the building's windows, but the floor space at the top is rather small and inconvenient.

As far as looks, I prefer the John Hancock Center. But agree with Omega.


I love the Sears Tower. It may look like a giant Lego block gone bad, but there is just something about the building.

BTW yea, I don't like how it feels so much shorter than the WTC's when seen from street level. But that's due to the lack of a very emphasized vertical façade, which the WTC's had plenty of.

[Luca]

i think the tower itself is very unattractive - who agrees?
~AleX~
Yes, it IS ugly. Because it set a record, it's somewhat more forgivable than similarly ugly but less ambitious buildings, but not by much.

I find that massive buildings in dark, opaque grey/brown colors look depressing. The air-con bill for that thing must be eye-watering.

I see the relief of mass through articulation away from a simple parallelepiped, as well as different heights creating a set-back effect. I still think a more symmetric approach would have achieved the same effect with more grace.

Greg asks is every building must be "symmetrical and square or circular?"

The way I see it, beauty in buildings follows very timeless rules, such as attractiveness in people. One era may like a bit more fat or a bit less, but who would want a woman with three breasts or who's ever found a disfigured face more attractive? I think symmetry (among other aspects of classical architecture) addresses something innate in us. After all, panel-attractive human faces are relatively more symmetric (though not perfectly so) than average faces.

Incidentally, elements of symmetry / balacne are present in Sears Tower and you can see that in the cosntruction picture taken from above.

Anybody have a picture of the ground floor / base?

[Alonzo-ny]

parallelepiped

?

[Luca]

“A solid figure contained by six parallelograms, of which
every two opposite ones are parallel; a prism whose base is
a parallelogram.”

In other words: a rectangular ‘box’ shape.

:)

[Alonzo-ny]

Thats what i thought ;)

[Zephyr]

This building is interesting to me for two reasons:


Aesthetic: Sears Tower is ideally situated for the Chicago skyline - one of the nation's most photogenic. Zoning placed it off the lakefront, and real-estate costs pushed it into the South "Loop," thus allowing it to serve the aestheic function of forming a South "bookend" to its counterpart to the North - John Hancock Building - both framed in black and appearing to be the same height, while framing the centrally located Chicago Harbor that transitions from Lake Michigan to Chicago's "green apron" - Grant Park.


One of several Chicago Habor/Lake Michigan Photos (Sears Tower left and Hancock Building right)
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/44/168865858_66c227de4d_b.jpg

A lesser known Aerial of the Chicago Skyline (Hancock Building left and Sears Tower right)
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/159/432746169_061b8ce474_b.jpg

Structural:The development within the Tubular Structural System of the revolutionary "Bundled Tube" by famed SOM Structural Engineer, Fazlur R. Kahn, specifically applied to the bulk of this building for increased lateral support. This system continues to be studied in Structural Engineering programs in High-Rise history, since it represented a milestone in supertall lateral design by the mid-1970s. Subsequently, another effectively took ascendancy over Tubular, including Bundled Tube - the Core and Outrigger System.



"(He was) ... arguable the greatest Structural Engineer of the 20th century..."
Fazlur R. Kahn with daughter Yasmin
http://www.coe.berkeley.edu/forefront/spring2006/images/khan1.jpg

Kahn's Revolutionary "Bundled Tube" System
first used on Sears Tower
http://www.burj-dubai-tower.org/gfx/bundled_tube_design.jpg

You'll note that aesthetic is applied to the skyline, not to Sears Tower itself - which had many issues. And the structural aspect is more historical than active, but it nevertheless provides a bridge for skyscraper development between the Framed Tube and Core/Outrigger to further manage the problems of height, sway, and dynamic load.

.

[stache]

Construction and remodeling -

Go to - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-XeKrAdSI8 ----------------------- (part 1)
------- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aswJTvUpGFY&mode=related&search= (part2)
------- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qg3m78PvFVA&mode=related&search= (part 3)
------- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiqeJg8FBrM&mode=related&search= - (part 4)
------- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cd_Hq1yIeU ----------------------- (part 5)
------- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQ3se1-yOFU&feature=related ------- (part 6)

[Chiboy]

I recall hearing way back in the 70's that there was supposed to be a central tower on the Sears, rising from the middle core. I wonder if anyone will ever dust off those plans and make the Sears the world's tallest once again...

[Cytoskeleton]

I've really warmed up to this building, which only gets more impressive as you see it from around the city (and even from the distant suburbs).

Very '70s - sort of the midnight blue coupe de ville of supertalls. It's big, stark, and macho, and is a good anchor south of the mag mile. It's got a subtle side to it as well - when the light hits the setback on the southeast corner in the morning, the reflection creates the illusion of a gold-colored volume extending up to the next step.

[OmegaNYC]

Did anyone else here that the Sears, may be repainted silver, and starting in June, it will officially be named "The Willis Tower" named after the London based insurance company, Willis Groups Holdings, Ltd. I kid you people not.

[Alonzo-ny]

Silver? No thanks, its a landmark building it should remain black.

[scumonkey]

I've heard about the name change- it was on the news, but that silver bit- where did you hear that at?

[Travis]

I anticipate a deluge of phallic jokes.:rolleyes:

As to the reclad: http://www.suntimes.com/business/roeder/1448083,CST-FIN-roeder25.article

Sears Tower in silver?

REAL ESTATE | 110-story icon may get paint job to boost tenants, energy


February 25, 2009

DAVID ROEDER (droeder@suntimes.com) droeder@suntimes.com

[scumonkey]

That would be a travesty! :cool:
(thanks for the link)

[Shadly]

God, our brain trusts here in New York are effecting the rest of the world now as well. :eek:

[spyguy999]

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i3yxEh-UAZhaZkJV1GLJjcVmo07AD9915HQ01

Sears Tower to undergo $350M green remodel
By CARYN ROUSSEAU – 7 hours ago

The Sears Tower will undergo a $350 million green remodeling effort at the 110-story skyscraper, including wind turbines, green roofs and solar panels.

Owners and architects said Wednesday that the plan will reduce electricity use in the building by 80 percent and save 24 million gallons of water a year.

Plans also include construction of a 50-story, 500-room luxury hotel next door.

Building officials say the project should take five years to complete and create 3,600 jobs.

The famous skyscraper is to be renamed Willis Tower later this summer. Officials say they'd like to achieve "LEED" status, otherwise known as Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.

It's a standard monitored by the U.S. Green Building Council.

[spyguy999]

http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/939/searstowerbuildingandho.jpg
http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/707/40875294.jpg
http://img329.imageshack.us/img329/2083/79707791.jpg

Plus the addition of "The Ledge"
http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/1652/357423932054689e8f5eb.jpg
http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/2417/357343424925a2d51873b.jpg

[stache]

Looks like the hotel won't make a dent in the skyline.

[HoveringCheesecake]

Hotel is ugly, and the green areas on the setbacks appear to be where at least some of the window washing rig tracks are. Huh.

[Citytect]

Hotel design looks fine to me, albeit nothing special. However, it doesn't compliment Sears Tower at all.

[BenM]

Sears Tower unveils glass balconies on Skydeck (http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Sears-Tower-unveils-glass-balconies-Skydeck/ss/events/tr/070109searstower103;_ylt=A0wNdO44gE1KGE4BLVGUU80F; _ylu=X3oDMTFlcWFuNHZ0BHBvcwMzBHNlYwN5bl9yXzNzbG90X 3NsaWRlc2hvdwRzbGsDc2xpLWV2LWxpbms-#photoViewer=/090701/480/9ffd3328812f4de8a2b4e00e351417d9)

http://d.yimg.com/a/p/ap/20090701/capt.9ffd3328812f4de8a2b4e00e351417d9.aptopix_sear s_tower_ledge_cx104.jpg?x=400&y=262&q=85&sig=5VCoWVs837whYwwCeAe45g--
http://d.yimg.com/a/p/ap/20090701/capt.2191a619b4aa4dddb90087df6a231b0a.sears_tower_ ledge_cx102.jpg?x=400&y=271&q=85&sig=ynO9W7kQEmdhryM7TX8bCw--
http://d.yimg.com/a/p/rids/20090701/i/r3800073608.jpg?x=400&y=240&q=85&sig=gVOuutUft8hM.YEp.X2F0Q--

[Bob]

My reaction to these planned retrofits:

ZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzz z z z

[HoveringCheesecake]

I hope people enjoy the view from the blandest side possible. Look kids, the suburbs!

[OmegaNYC]

Sears Tower Becomes Willis Tower Thursday (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/15/sears-tower-becomes-willi_n_233613.html)



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20090715/us-sears-tower/images/423f0d78-4945-4d1a-b383-e35c85a2e860.jpg

This combo of photos from March 12, 2009, top, and Monday, July 13, 2009, show pedestrians walking past the Sears Tower in Chicago. The bottom shows the granite marker outside the building covered in black in preparation for the building's name being changed to Willis Tower during a formal ceremony on Thursday, July 16. The London-based Willis Group Holdings got the naming rights as part of its lease agreement with the real estate investment group that owns Sears Tower. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)








CARYN ROUSSEAU (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/15/sears-tower-becomes-willi_n_233613.html#) | July 15, 2009 11:51 PM EST | http://www.huffingtonpost.com/images/v/ap_wire.png

CHICAGO — Sports fans have dealt with it for years: a favorite team sells the naming rights to its stadium in a lucrative, if unsentimental, money grab.
But when Chicago residents go to bed Thursday night their beloved Sears Tower, one of the world's iconic skyscrapers and the tallest building in the U.S., will no longer be the Sears Tower. It will be Willis Tower.
Or will it?

"It's always going to be the Sears Tower. It's part of Chicago and I won't call it Willis Tower. In Chicago we hold fast," Chicago teacher Marianne Turk, 46, said as she stood in line to go up to the building's Skydeck on Monday.
Mayor Richard M. Daley, the building's owners and others will be at a Thursday renaming ceremony hosted by Willis Group Holdings. The London-based insurance services company secured the naming rights as part an agreement to lease 140,000 square feet of space in the tower.
The building has been known as Sears Tower since it opened in 1973. It's original tenant, Sears Roebuck and Co., moved out in 1992. A real estate investment group in 2004, American Landmark Properties of Skokie, now owns the 1,450-foot, 110-story skyscraper.

When the renaming was announced in March, a spokesman for Willis Group Holdings said the company understood the "sentimental attraction to the Sears Tower name," but noted the company was bringing hundreds of jobs to the city.
The Sears Tower isn't the only well known building to undergo a name change – New York City's Pan Am Building became the MetLife Building and Chicago's Standard Oil Building is now the Aon Center, said Carol Willis, founder and director of The Skyscraper Museum in New York.
Story continues below http://www.huffingtonpost.com/images/v/darr.gif

Historically, skyscrapers have been ever-changing buildings and businesses within themselves, acting as a commodity to compete for high rents and tenants, Willis said. People are mistaken when they see tall buildings as symbols of a corporation, she said.


"Skyscrapers are really buildings that are about money," Willis said. "Naming rights are an asset of the building. They can be turned into money and that's what the new owners are doing."
It's become common for professional sports teams to sell the naming rights of their stadiums and arenas, as Chicago White Sox fans can attest, when their team's stadium, Comiskey Park, renamed U.S. Cellular Field in 2003.
But the public hasn't always taken to renamed skyscrapers. Many New Yorkers still refer to the Sony Building as the AT&T Building, said William Lozito, head of Minneapolis-based brand naming company Strategic Name Development. Getting the public to accept the Willis Tower name will be all the more difficult because the company is British and not immediately recognized by most Americans, he said.
"I don't think people are going to let go," Lozito said. "You don't mess with a landmark. It would be like trying to change the name of the Brooklyn Bridge. It's a reference point. I think it's disorienting to try to change the

name."
The tower's owners acknowledge it will take time for some people to accept the new name, but they're confident it will happen eventually.
"It is controversial to a lot of people," said John Huston of American Landmark Properties, who represents the building ownership. "It is an icon, but I believe over time it will become known as Willis Tower and a name that we'll be proud of."
Alex Lucas, 29, an Arlington Heights business systems analyst who works down the street from the skyscraper, was so displeased with the name change that he started a Web site, . http://www.itsthesearstower.com (http://www.itsthesearstower.com)

"The people of Chicago do value history," he said. "Just because it's a commercial structure doesn't mean it isn't historical. Chicago is going to lose a big part of what is its identity and I don't know what's going to fill that space."
John Russick, a senior curator at the Chicago History Museum, said residents see skyscrapers like the Sears Tower, with its dominance of the Chicago skyline, as landmarks, sculptures and icons.

"The first building you see when you're coming home on the horizon is the Sears Tower," Russick said. "We miss something when we don't see them as the fabric of our civic memory."
The new name isn't the only major change this year at Sears Tower. Last month, owners announced a $350 million greening effort, complete with wind turbines and solar panels, along with plans for a 50-story luxury hotel. For tourists, glass-bottomed enclosed balconies on the 103rd Skydeck were opened earlier this month, giving visitors a 1,353-foot look straight down.

All these efforts were part of a plan aimed at remarketing the building as a pioneer and reintroducing it to the world, owners say.
"Success for us is making this a place where more people want to be," Huston said. "Our goal is to transform the reality and perception."
The question now is after Thursday's ceremony what will people around the world call the transformed skyscraper.
"It will probably always be the Sears Tower," said 46-year-old farmer Jane Turmail of Vallonia, Ind. "It seems a little strange, but then things have to change."

[HoveringCheesecake]

Everything about the John Hancock building is better.

[stache]

Agreed.

[OmegaNYC]

Everything about the John Hancock building is better.

Like?

[Bob]

They can run rings around the moon, but we're miles ahead of 'em on the highway. The Sears Tower will always be the Sears Tower, and the Pan Am Building will always be the Pan Am Building.

[HoveringCheesecake]

Like?

Architecture, observatory, restaurant/bar, security is lax in comparison. Makes the entire experience more enjoyable. That being said, when I was in the Sears Tower in May while they were putting the ledge in there was *no* security, but I did get yelled at for taking a picture of the lobby. Just think of what I could do with that picture!

Before I visited Chicago I liked Sears, but now that I've actually seen it in person I think it's just a hulking mess from most angles. Only thing going for it is height.

I'll take those diagonal cross braces on Hancock anyday. :eek:

[Gregory Tenenbaum]

Everything about the John Hancock building is better.

Not if you're an English banker taking your family from the Carribean or London to Chicago. Only at Willis Tower can you boast about it all being British.

Those observation decks make it look like a carnival ride - a cheap stunt there for the people who take cheap flights to get cheap electronics before returning home. Surely the view from the observation deck was outstanding enough.

Who's idea was that?

[rkrause]

I was in downtown last weekend, and I see that people have already begun defacing the Willis Tower signage along Wacker Drive. It's rather amusing to be honest. I guess even with the obvious vandalism, they still don't get the clue that people are upset.

Then again the fact anybody can literally peel the letters off of a prominent marker in front of the nation's tallest building says a lot about the quality of Willis as a company.

--Randall

[Merry]

Suspended In Space, 103 Stories Over Chicago

By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/05/31/arts/31sky-web1/31sky-web1-popup.jpg

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/05/31/arts/31sky-web2/31sky-web2-popup.jpg

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/05/30/arts/skywalkcap/skywalkcap-popup.jpg

CHICAGO — The view looking down through the glass floor toward South Wacker Drive is just what you’d expect if you were balanced on top of 6,960 boxes of this city’s deep-dish pizza — or, as the exhibition at the Willis Tower also tells us, standing atop 313 Oprah Winfreys or 283 Barack Obamas.

That thought brings on its own sort of vertigo. The comfort is that those human towers would reach the top of the building itself, while this particular perch for a human version of Yertle the Turtle is a bit lower, on the 103rd floor: fewer pizzas, media stars and presidents would be required.

Not much help. Stand on the Ledge, as it is called, on the tower’s Skydeck, and look down on rooftops and traffic helicopters, and leftward toward the haze over the lake, and outward along the city’s grid stretching toward the South Side. Despite the reassuring rivets in the 1,500-pound glass panels, the calm stillness of the air at the Windy City’s pinnacle and the security of a 10,000-pound weight capacity for each of the four 4.3-foot-deep glass boxes that protrude past the sheer edge of the Western Hemisphere’s tallest building — despite all that, you still feel twinges of queasiness.

If the Deity had wanted us to see straight down as far as we can see straight up, he would certainly not have come up with these glass extensions, which were added to the Skydeck in 2009. It is comforting to know that they were designed by the building’s original architects, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and mounted on tracks that allow them to be pulled inside for cleaning and maintenance. But any reassurance is undercut by the elimination of nearly all visible support; you walk within them, 1,353 feet above South Wacker Drive, surrounded by open air and unbounded space.

It’s a weird sensation. The structural use of steel made the Chicago skyscraper and its epigones possible at the turn of the 20th century. Later glass-clad frames seem to almost magically dissolve the signs of massive support that we expect when confronted with buildings of such height. But the playful formality of the glass skyscraper is very different when you stand within a transparent structure in which there is no structural steel evident, either above or below. Here wit turns to mischief; it’s a tease made by technology.

But there’s also an exhilaration that you don’t get if you visit a distant relative of the Ledge: the Grand Canyon Skywalk. That attraction opened two years before these Chicago extensions and promised to be far more spectacular: a transparent-floored observation deck stretching outward 70 feet from the canyon’s rim and suspended 4,000 feet above the Colorado River (as high as 900 Oprahs and an impossible number of deep-dish pizzas).

It was built on land owned by the Hualapai Indians, who had great hopes that, along with bellicose helicopter rides into the canyon and quaint displays of folk culture, the Skywalk would guarantee the tribe a rosy economic future. I visited the Skywalk soon after its opening and was astounded not at seeing Nature’s expansive dimensions open at my feet, but at the sheer irrelevance of the enterprise. The expense, hype and setting couldn’t match Nature’s own spectacle at the main part of the canyon, run by the National Park Service — an immensity that makes all human enterprise seem like petty gimcrackery.

The Skywalk has recently come under the shadow of various legal squabbles between the tribe and the developer, but there also may be something inherently flawed in the concept. It might be that apart from such unusual activities as a space walk or a sky dive the natural world presents itself to us with as much power when seen horizontally as vertically. We don’t need vertigo to get the point.

But with the Ledge something is sensed that you can’t really get from walking around the Skydeck with its panoramic vistas of Chicago and its labeled guides to landmarks. I don’t recall that sensation from the observation deck of the old World Trade Center years ago either. When you look out through a window at the metropolis laid out before you, the city becomes a map, allowing you to make some sense of its immensity; this is the way pilots must feel as they guide their planes into urban airports. Window vistas on the world are beautiful but not powerfully unsettling or overwhelming. They help make sense of the world, not disrupt it.

Pull the rug out, though — or rather, pull out the solid floor, all suggestions of support, and stand on layers of glass — and something else happens. You become a vulnerable observer. You look at the city and its expanse, but you can’t settle into complacency or reflective mapping. You end up feeling, along with the amazement, an all-too-human unsteadiness. You are part of that city of course, and are even relying on its technological achievements by standing in this elevated spot. But you also recognize just how unusual and vulnerable those advances are. The city might attempt to transcend the human, but it also readily reflects it. Spend a minute on the glass Ledge, and you feel that in your bones.

In fact when you visit the Ledge (which 1.5 million visitors do every year), you also find yourself in a series of exhibitions celebrating the city itself. We learn about the entertainers born in or closely connected to Chicagoland (as it is cutely called): Raquel Welch , Harrison Ford, Walt Disney, Hugh Hefner. Or about political figures: Hillary Rodham Clinton, Donald H. Rumsfeld, Ronald Reagan, the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Or writers: Ernest Hemingway, L. Frank Baum, David Mamet (with Saul Bellow strangely omitted). Or musicians: Muddy Waters, Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong. There is George Ferris, who invented his amusement-park ride for the 1893 World’s Fair here, and department-store magnates like Marshall Field and A. Montgomery Ward. O’Hare Airport, we learn, was once called Orchard Place, which is why the initials for Chicago’s major hub are still ORD.

We learn that this very tower was conceived in 1969 when Sears Roebuck & Company was the largest retailer in the world, with about 350,000 employees. Once known as the Sears Tower, the building is celebrated in statistics that appear throughout the displays: it contains 25,000 miles of electrical cable, 43,000 miles of telephone cables, 16,100 windows, 2 billion cubic feet of concrete, 104 elevator cars. It remained the Sears Tower until 2009, long after the company had sold it and moved out; it was renamed after the Willis Group, a London-based insurance broker, leased part of the building and obtained naming rights.

Now it is a monument to Chicago’s great retailing past and a witness to its passing. But when you stand on the Ledge, the entire urban fabric seems both marvelously permanent and permeated with vulnerabilities, an imposing achievement and a transitory exercise. Do you want to sense both the power and fragility of human civilization? Walk on the Ledge.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/arts/design/willis-tower-suspends-visitors-above-chicago.html?smid=tw-nytimes&seid=auto

[RebeccaM]

I think they're both interesting towers. But I don't like the fact that they are both dark buildings. It's kind of odd that the two tallest are both dark in color. They don't pop on a daylight skyline like a light colored building. I hate the steel cross members of the Hancock but like it's pinnacle shape. I also like the fact that the Sears tower isn't one big square like the WTC towers but is broken up. Overall though, there are much better and more beautiful examples of towers throughout the world.

[mariab]

Holy smokes! That glass floor would turn my legs to jello!

[James Kovata]

Hancock in beautiful, simple, yet seeming somewhat complex at the same time. It's a tower that gets slimmer as it rises and has a beautiful skeletal structure. Sears Tower/Willis Tower, is quite different. It is a conglomeration of nine buildings, each rising to a separate height, It appears different from every view. It is a chameleon on the skyline that was, regardless of the Petronas Towers, really the world's tallest until Taipei 101 surpassed it. Off subject: The Chicago Spire would be a great addition to fill in the gap between the Sears Tower and the Hancock Tower. Although Trump is officially second tallest, it cheats by use of a spire a la Petronas.