Worldwide press invited to view sales office at Chicago Spire

From the Chicago Sun Times in an article on Friday, October 5:

And so the units in the Chicago Spire, the planned supertall condo tower designed by the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, are going to be rather nice.

As members of the international media were shown last week in a tour of the Spire's impressive new 20,000-square-foot sales center in the NBC Tower, the 1,193 units are to feature 10-foot ceilings, lots of blond maple wood, herringbone-patterned floors and marble bathrooms.

More details released for Chicago Spire

From Crains Chicago Business

Prices at the Santiago Calatrava-designed twisting tower, which is to be the tallest building in the U.S. when it’s completed in 2011, will range from $750,000 to $40 million for the two-level penthouse in the tip of the 150-story skyscraper.

Price details as well as a look at the interiors were disclosed Wednesday to the media during a tour of the Spire’s lavish sales center on the 18th floor of the NBC Tower, which overlooks the building’s site at 400 N. Lake Shore Drive.

Visit to the Milwaukee Art Museum & addition designed by Santiago Calatrava

We took a company trip to Milwaukee today to visit the Milwaukee Art Museum. The Milwaukee Art Museum was housed in a 1957 structure overlooking Lake Michigan with a postmodern addition in in 1975. Trustees of the museum solicited bids for a new entrance in 1994. Santiago Calatrava won the competition with his proposal for a 27-meter-high glass and steel reception hall shaded by a movable sunscreen. Included in the new spaces are 7,500 square meters of new space, of which 1,500 square meters are set aside for temporary exhibitions.

Although Calatrava denies any influence of nature or biology, the Quadracci Pavilion has a decidedly bird-like quality to it, especially when the wings of the Brise Soleil are open.

Regular readers will remember that our company, @properties, was named the Chicago marketing firm to handle sales for the Calatrava designed Chicago Spire located on Chicago's lakefront.

Tour: Architecture Boat Cruise on the Chicago River

Chicago is a city filled with landmarks. From the world's first skyscraper to the founding of an entire school of architecture, Chicago is home to some of the finest examples of buildings in the world.

Your guides are fortunate to have season VIP passes to Chicago Line Cruise and Chicago History Museum's Architectural Boat Cruise along the Chicago River.

Born of the Great Fire, structural steel and an indomitable spirit, skyscrapers were invented here … and we have the best way to see them. Join us for 90 minutes of genuinely tall tales and head-turning sights from the breathtaking vantage point of our cruise deck.

The tour leaves the North Pier terminal & the Ogden Slip and heads towards Navy Pier. Turning through the Basin, the tour then heads up the main branch of the River. The first important examples of Chicago Style of Architecture pass by pretty quickly. These clean lined buildings from the 1970's and the 1980's are perfect examples of what became the Chicago Style of Architecture.

Continuing westward, the scenery of Downtown Chicago passes almost too quickly for comprehension. Just sit back and enjoy the sights of Michigan Avenue, the banks of Wacker Drive and famous skyscrapers like the Trump Tower (currently under construction) and the Marina Towers.

You don't really have to pay attention until you reach Wolf Point - where the river splits into the North Branch and the South Branch. The most important lesson in the tour contrasts the styles of post-modernism with contextualism as relates to the Sun Times Building (a.k.a. The Apparel Center) and the blue-glass high rise across the river that echoes the curve of the river and the surrounding buildings.

Up the North Branch and hear about the legacy of Chicago's great mail order shops and view the enormous old warehouses of Montgomery Wards.

After turning around and motoring past new construction townhouses, luxury condos and modern high-rises, the tour heads south past Boeing, past Chicago's Lyric Opera House, the Sears Tower and the Riverside Plaza buildings by Skidmore Owings Merrill.

South of the Sears Tower, the boat turns around near the River City Condominiums, a bland yet architecturally significant building by Bertrand Goldberg. Goldberg is well known in Chicago as the architect of the Marina City Towers seen earlier in the tour near Trump Tower. More of Goldberg's designs can be found throughout Chicago's Gold Coast.

Not to brag, but the photo above is notable for what's not there yet: along the river just west of Lake Shore Drive is the site of the Santiago Calatrava designed Chicago Spire. Savills, the international property advisor leading the global sales effort for The Chicago Spire, announced in July that @properties has been awarded the contract to help manage Illinois sales of the iconic residence. The Chicago Spire received final approval from the Chicago City Council in May, and construction is currently underway. Completion of the 2,000-foot tall elegantly twisting tower is expected late 2010.

Just after passing under Lake Shore Drive again, the tour turns back to the dock at North Pier. The Architecture Boat Cruise sponsored by the Chicago History Museum is packed with more info than we covered here, and every time I take the tour, I learn something new. Give us a call if you'd like to take the tour as I hope to ride the boat several more times this season.

More Architecture Boat Cruise photos at Flickr.