Chicago Tribune — “City Hyde Park High-Rise Breaks Up Apartment Monotony”
Photo courtesy the Chicago Tribune
August 20, 2016
“The real experimentation is upstairs. There, Gang worked with structural engineer Magnusson Klemencic Associates to develop a unique arrangement of stacked concrete panels that replaces conventional columns. The setup resembles a house of cards, but it’s structurally stable and functionally sound.
Narrow trapezoid-shaped balconies project out from the stacked panels like leaves coming off a stem. Some of the balconies are intimately scaled, framed by ceilings one floor above. Others offer views upward to three stories of uninterrupted space, as if the facade were a canyon. Here, City Hyde Park rises above the ordinary.
The balconies’ animated effect breaks down the deadening standardization of typical, form-follows-function apartment high-rises. Syncopated rhythms and sculptural projections, so different from Chicago’s current crop of glass-sheathed minimalist towers, deliver a quirky energy that suggests individualism, not mass.”
