Chicago Tribune — "Jeanne Gang-designed, Soon to Open Vista Tower Adds to Chicago’s Impressive Gallery of ‘Down-the-Alley’ Views"
“Every so often, though, architects get extraordinary opportunities to liberate their buildings from the relentless regularity of the grid and fashion images that resonate in our collective mindset. The latest (and by far the tallest) example of this phenomenon — the soon to open 101-story, 1,191-foot-tall Vista Tower, by Chicago architect Jeanne Gang of Studio Gang — is giving northbound drivers on Lake Shore Drive a high-octane visual jolt.
Where they used to see nothing but sky, drivers now glimpse a distinctive hotel and condominium skyscraper at 345 E. Wacker Drive that brings a dose of geometric fluidity to the city’s strait-laced skyline. Not only do Vista’s interconnected high-rises (or ‘stems,’ as Gang calls them), step exultantly up to the tallest, ultrathin member of the trio. The three stems appear to curve inward and outward as they rise, evoking the infinite verticality of sculptor Constantin Brancusi’s Endless Column. (Gang admires the sculpture but told me that her skyscraper consists of three parts that play off against each other, not a lone spire.)”
